‘The gaze’ is part of the ‘social fantasy’, ‘a point at which the very frame (of my view) is already inscribed in the “content” of the picture viewed’ (Žižek 1989: 105-127). Fantasy is the way antagonistic fissure is masked. Psychoanalytical Žižekean ontology is used in this chapter to deconstruct the ANC's gaze on the media.

In 2008, Jessie Duarte was one of the most hostile people in the ANC towards the media. The quotation here, opening this chapter, highlights her ‘gaze’ – inaccurate and fantasmic – on journalists and how she perceived the profession to operate. This chapter will elucidate the concepts of ideology and social fantasy, then the concept of the gaze, before it deconstructs the ANC's discourse through the words of the first three post-apartheid presidents, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma; the ANC ‘Letters from the President’; ANC online contributions to the public about the media; and the national spokespeople for the ruling party, Duarte in 2008 and Jackson Mthembu in 2010. This chapter focuses strongly on Mandela, and in the next two chapters there are specific case studies featuring Mbeki and Zuma respectively. The chapter discusses the proposal, put forward at the ANC's policy conference in Polokwane in December 2007, to investigate the possibility of a media appeals tribunal, the ostensible reasons for which were a lack of transformation and diversity in the media, that the self-regulatory mechanism was inadequate to curb ‘the excesses’ of the media that was a law unto itself, and there were many mistakes in the shabby journalism produced in the country. But I believe there was more to this than meets the eye.

In psychoanalysis, individuals are always split subjects (Lacan 2008; Laclau 1996; Žižek 1989). There is a split between what they consciously know and do, and what they unconsciously know and do.