This introductory chapter provides preliminary remarks which the rest of the book discusses in more detail. It analyses a publicly aired documentary, The Kenyan Attack, to show how terrorism knowledge and expertise are manufactured in an era of the âGlobal War on Terrorâ. Above all, it aims to illustrate that the construction of African and South African Muslims as a societal threat is brought about by associating them with terror in a manner that replicates Western discourses on Muslims and terrorism. Confirming that knowledge and power interface in processes by which social and moral order are constructed, this chapter draws attention to how non-state actors, such as a terrorism âexpertâ and the media (the Carte Blanche documentary in his instance), participate in the political act of constructing South African Muslims as a source of terror and contributors in global terror networks.
We now proceed to analyse, from a historical perspective, the South African Carte Blanche documentary, The Kenyan Attack, which was aired on 29 September 2013.
Carte Blanche is M-Netâs prime-time current affairs programme, broadcast throughout southern Africa on a Sunday evening to over 500,000 people each week (DStv, Undated). This investigative journalistic series, produced by Combined Artistic Production, was first aired on 21 August 1988.
The purpose of this analysis is to show how Carte Blanche used the documentary genre to depict and perpetuate the idea of an association between Muslims and terrorism.
At this point it is necessary to comment on the documentary as social practice. It is often assumed that documentaries present the truth or reality in contrast to films that focus on fictional narratives. Bill Nicholsâ (1991) book Representing Reality and Patricia Aufderheiderâs (2007, in Werner, 2014, p. 325) assertion that a documentary âtells a story of real life, with claims to truthfulnessâ reinforce such an understanding. However, a documentary is not ideologically neutral as it has the potential to be a political tool. In practice, power and interest are central in the production and dissemination of a documentary. So, unlike footage collected by surveillance cameras, a documentary presents the arguments and/or the point of view of the filmmakers by combining the ârepresentation of actuality with the presentation of an argument or pointâ (Werner, 2014, p. 325, emphasis in original).
The presentation of the documentary, The Kenyan Attack, will be analysed here because the way the Carte Blanche team reported the context and outcome of their investigation illustrates the main theme of this book, namely, the processes by which the South African mainstream media and South African-based security think-tank experts have constructed perceptions of Islam and Muslims as a source of subversive violence and a threat to the safety of South African citizens.
The documentary investigated the alleged South African link to the military attack of the âpart-Israeli ownedâ Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on 21 September 2013 (Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 01:30). In this account, a woman called Samantha Lewthwaite was said to be the leader and/or one of the perpetrators of the attack, which was allegedly carried out under the command of the armed Somali guerrilla group al Shabab. According to the documentary, al Shabab attempted to overthrow the Western-installed Somali government. Introducing Lewthwaite, Carte Blanche informed viewers that she was a British citizen who had converted to Islam and was married to a person called Germaine Lindsay. The narrator emphasised that Lindsay was âone of the four bombers of the July 2005 terror attacks in Londonâ, which killed fifty-two people and injured âhundredsâ. It is alleged that Lindsay killed himself during the London attacks, resulting in Lewthwaite becoming a widow. Because of this, and her being ethnically a European, Western media nicknamed her, âthe White Widowâ (Potgieter, 2014, pp. 175â6).
We must ask why it was necessary to introduce Lewthwaite as a Muslim convert. I maintain that doing so was part of a process that constructed Muslims as a âsuspect communityâ (Hillyard, 1973, p. 7). Germaine Lindsay, in the Carte Blanche narration, served as so-called âevidenceâ that Muslims are dangerous because they have the inclination to commit âacts of terrorismâ. This notion of âterrorismâ is one that is already pervasive in popular mythology and has been deliberately and consistently perpetuated by media, which disseminates the prejudiced idea of an association between Muslims and calculated acts of random violence against innocent citizens. Before commencing with a full analysis of the documentary in question, it is necessary to locate it within the broader frame of the idea of a âGlobal War on Terrorâ.
Through his declaration that the US âwill call together freedom-loving people to fight terrorismâ, and to conduct a âwar against terrorismâ (Bush, 2001b, no pagination), the former US President George W. Bush declared a global emergency. This declaration constructed the idea of âterrorismâ as an existential threat to the United States and the âfree worldâ that urgently required extraordinary actions to counter it. The Carte Blanche sequence suggested that âterrorismâ became securitised (Buzan, WĂŚver, & de Wilde, 1998; WĂŚver, 2003): the âSpeech-Actâ or the utterance of the emergency was essential in the construction of the threat itself. This move relates to securitisation theory, in that âby labelling something a security issue, it becomes oneâ (WĂŚver, 2004, quoted in Taureck, 2006a, p. 55). To reiterate this intellectual move: âthe utterance itself is the actâ (WĂŚver, 1995, p. 55, emphasis in original). This construction, certainly theoretically, suggests that any actor can securitise any and every issue. However, in actuality, successful securitisation is limited to those who have the appropriate power and capability as well as the means to construct a threat socially and politically (Taureck, 2006a, p. 55). When âsecurityâ is uttered by an appropriate securitising agentâsay, the US Presidentâhe is also declaring a âspecial right to use whatever means necessary to block itâ (WĂŚver, 2003, pp. 10â11). However, securitisation does not necessarily imply that an issue is an objective security threat. Instead, as we have noted, it implies that an issue has been constructed as a threat by an appropriate âsecuritizing agentâ, who has articulated the nature of the threat, within the accepted rules (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 24). According to these rules, the securitising agent has the capability and power to construct the threat as well as the institutional authority and means to block the constructed threat.
Locating the analysis of the Carte Blanche documentary in a wider discourse is not simply a digression into abstract understandings of securitisation; rather, a critical engagement with this discourse will permeate this book which, to repeat, is concerned with the securitisation of Islam and Muslims by associating African Muslims with terrorism.
We will now return to a historically contextualized analysis of the Carte Blanche documentary which is the focus of this Prolegomenon.
Part 1 of the documentary opened with the singing of a Christian hymn intended to symbolise the grief of Kenyans. One could ask why the grief of Muslim Kenyans was not shown. The sense of grief was reinforced by the narratorâs statement that Kenyans were in mourning and âdevastated, shattered, grief stricken, by the terrorist attack âŚ; but as a nation they [were] not brokenâ (Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 00:07). However, the narrator continued, âthe situation on the groundâ is tense, with âscores still unaccounted forâ. An anonymous voice then appealed, both to his compatriots and the viewer, for people not to point âfingers at any religionâ, since â(w)e are one ⌠we Kenyans. Let us love each other, let us protect each otherâ (00: 35).
In contrast to this voice of reason and reconciliation, the âattackersâ were introduced as âterroristsâ who aimed to establish an âIslamic stateâ. Here is a verbatim clip:
The deadly four-day siege was claimed by al Qaeda linked terrorist group, al Shabab. Al Shabab is an Islamist militant group who is fighting to overthrow the Somali government and establish an Islamic state. On Saturday a group of attackers stormed the up-market, part-Israeli owned, Westgate Mall [âŚ]. (Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 1:28)
Confirming that over sixty civilians died in the âsiegeâ, the documentary suggested that the âShabab terroristsâ killed indiscriminately. Carte Blanche dramatised this by interviewing Zachary Yach, an eighteen-year-old South African, who was in the Westgate Mall during the attack. In his reconstruction of the course of events, Yach said that he witnessed a âhuge explosionâ which he experienced as a âgust of wind onto your face; like a sand storm; like a huge crack; like an ear piercing sound. ⌠For the initial 20 to 30 minutes it was just constant bomb blasts; grenades being thrown over; ⌠gunshotsâ (interviewed on Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 1:56â2:25).
By choosing to privilege this particular account, the documentary highlighted the personal and immediate dangers which individuals encountered on the scene. Simultaneously, it also allowed the investigative team to construct al Shabab as a threat to countries beyond Kenya. By presenting South Africans, like Yach, as victims and/or potential victims of âterrorismâ, Carte Blanche constructed âterrorismâ as a threat to all South Africans. In other words, it securitised âterrorismâ. The implication of this portrayal was that, since the Carte Blanche team lacked the institutional capability and authority to block this constructed threat, the documentary needed to convince those in powerâthe South African governmentâto take urgent action against âterrorismâ. Accordingly, this securitising move should be viewed as an attempt to convince South African policymakers to urgently block âterrorismâ, and that dealing with this threat might involve the South African authorities in becoming actively involved in pursuing perpetrators of attacks like the Nai...