23 September 2003
This statement coves the following:
SACP STATEMENT ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
The South African Communist Party (SACP) believes that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), as a public broadcaster, must belong to the South African public and must reflect the identity and diverse nature of South Africa.
The SABC must contribute to democracy, social development, gender equality, nation building and moral regeneration. The SABC must safeguard and promote the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of South Africa. In fact, the 1999 Broadcasting Act requires the SABC to ensure plurality of news, views and information, and to encourage the development of local programming content. But the SABC is failing in all these respects.
The SACP believes that the SABC, as a public broadcaster, must not be driven by the logic of the private market. Therefore the SABC must receive its funding primarily from the public.
Any gradual reduction of public funding will lead the public broadcaster to focus on commercially viable activities at the expense of the SABC’s public service mandates. For example, research shows that SABC reliance on adspend is 77% compared with 16% from licence fees. This effectively means that the SABC is a commercial broadcaster which accounts to advertisers first and foremost.
Morality (based on the needs and interests of our people) is relevant to Public Broadcasting
The SABC is dominated by programmes sponsored by this or that private sector company. This week we see the Sanlam Money Game and the other week we see an Old Mutual sponsored programme as if these private sector companies contribute meaningfully to poverty eradication, as if these companies treat their workers fairly and provide them with good salaries and benefits.
The SABC recently invested and spent a massive amount of money on the programme called Popstars. Yes South African youth must be mobilised to appreciate culture and music. But the programme Popstars was far from mobilising our youth behind the enrichment of South African values and cultures. Instead we see the SABC expending huge resources enticing our youth behind materialist and short-lived dreams of winning thousands of rands and brand-new cars they haven't earned, only because they've won a singing game show? This lays the basis for a false and dangerous morality that SA teenagers must believe that they don't have to work for anything, they can 'win' things on TV!
In October 2000, SABC 3 screened a Nedbank-sponsored series called "Secrets of Success". The series was devoted to case studies of Asian economic successes. The first part of the series was devoted to the development of India's information and technology capacity. The general idea of such a series is to be applauded. We need, as a country, to introduce into the public debate an understanding of the remarkable achievements in growth and development that have been notched up by a number of Asian societies. Sadly, this potentially useful opportunity was abused by the ideological myopia of the bank-roller, Nedbank.
The programme devoted to India was superficial in the extreme. It noted the remarkable success that India has achieved in producing thousands of exportable soft-ware programmers, and in attracting some big corporations, notably British Airways, to base IT related operations in India. The programme, in passing, noted the vast inequalities and deep-seated poverty in India, and somehow expressed the cheery sentiment that IT successes would trickle-down to solve everything. Out of all of this, the programme contrived to draw a lesson, which, we were told, is that government must stay out of business, and leave the economy to the private sector.
No mention was made of India's very regulated stock and financial markets a factor which is the prime reason why the Indian economy escaped the Asian contagion of the late 1990s. No mention was made of the extensive public sector in India notably the national railway system. Nedbank, pursuing its own profit-seeking agenda, deliberately manipulated public opinion, and deliberately abused public broadcasting time.
At the time, the SACP called on the SABC to suspend the programme, or, at the very least to introduce space for a debate after every episode. This call was ignored by the SABC.
The Nedbank-sponsored series is typical of the dominant approach to public broadcasting in our country. Often we hear that the ‘market’ determines what news our media covers. The so-called market still embodies and reproduces the same class, race and gender stereotypes we are trying to eradicate. Many atimes, the interests and needs of the ‘market’ have become the convenient explanation for the lack of appropriate, educational and informed coverage of the interests and issues which women, youth, black workers and the rural masses in the media.
For example, the SABC relies almost exclusively on white male corporate economists for analysing the South African economic situation. Very rarely, are economists expressing the views and interests of the working class given coverage. Like the majority of the media, the SABC has not developed a substantial cadre of journalists to cover labour news and report or a systematic focus on socio-economic development struggles of our people. The daily 'economic indicators' used by the SABC fail to say anything about poverty, or how many jobs are being created or destroyed.
Why has the SABC not included and developed economic indicators which highlight the extent of poverty and disease which affect our people? Why does the SABC not have dedicated programmes on poverty eradication struggles our people are undertaking?
This prevailing market idolatry removes human agency and morality from any discussion of public broadcasting and the media in general. The SABC, as is the rest of our country’s media is dominated by a dangerous "lotto mentality", a "zama-zama morality", of dog-eat-dog, morality through shows such as the Sanlam Money Game.
The interests and aspirations of our country’s people, the majority of whom are the workers and the poor, must be core focus of the SABC’s programming. If the SABC daily shows the stock market prices but blacks out workers’ marches it is tantamount to taking a side on the side of those who control the economy and promote the morality of greed, personal gain and exploitation of the majority.
The Independence of the SABC
Current patterns of concentrated ownership and control of the media promote commercial interests and the logic of the private capitalist market. This situation privileges and entrenches the freedom of expression of an elite at the expense of the interests, issues and experiences of the majority of our people. This situation is an anti-thesis to the role which should be played by a truly free and independent media in a free and democratic country. For these reasons the SACP strongly argues for an SABC which is fiercely independent from commercial interests and the logic of the private capitalist market. Therefore the Broadcasting Amendment Bill must include appropriate mechanisms to ensure this independence.
The SABC cannot be goal-independent of our country’s developmental objectives as enshrined in our country’s constitution and the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). As the SACP we argue, without fear of contradiction, that the SABC’s goals, aims and objectives must be accountable and answerable to the vision, aims, objectives, principles and values enshrined in the RDP. But this is not the same as state control of the public broadcaster.
This kind of independence and the need to retain the public ownership of the SABC also imply that the SABC must be accountable to the public. Parliament and the public must have direct access to the SABC Board and must contribute in key policies and programmes of the SABC.
Workers of the SABC
It is a contradiction that the SABC workers come from the very working class communities that are marginalised, misrepresented and under-serviced by the very content of the SABC programmes that the very SABC workers produce.
The SACP calls on all SABC employees to recognise that it is in their interests and of the communities they come from that the SABC practically meets its mandate of promoting the values, interests and needs of the majority of South Africans.
The SACP is also aware that many SABC workers face some of the most difficult working conditions in the media industry including continuing attempts by the SABC management to actively discourage SABC employees from joining trade unions. This is unacceptable in the democratic South Africa which does not only protect the right to freedom of expression but also the right to freedom of association too.
The SACP is also aware that there are still elements in the SABC from the old order who feel entitled to their positions without any sense of service to the public and our new democratic order.
The SACP is concerned at the high staff turnover at the SABC as this shows the extent to which working conditions at the SABC are not tolerable. Such a high turnover also means instability and a lack of focus on the SABC mandate. This turnover is also linked to the massive expenditure in consultants by the SABC at the expense of developing and maintaining skills and expertise within the SABC.
The SACP extends a hand of friendship to all SABC workers. The SACP is a friend and ally of all media workers and in particular those workers in the public broadcaster. Without any fear of contradiction, the SACP does not have a narrow political agenda in making this call. We make this call because we know that many of you, as SABC workers, have been suppressed in your attempts to give the South African public different dimensions to the struggle of the people of Palestine, Swaziland and Cuba. It was a dimension which would have exposed South Africans to the reality that the Palestine situation is akin to apartheid South Africa – this dimension is different from the dominant line in the media that the Palestinian situation is only a violent conflict between two equals which it is not. We know that your interest in these stories originates from your very strong links and bonds with poor and working people in our country and everywhere in the world. We therefore ask you to work with us to ensure in your struggle for fair working conditions, a living wage, journalistic credibility, independence and freedom of expression in the service of our people.
This also implies that you as SABC workers have a duty to build strong trade unions. The SACP is concerned that there are very few strong unions in the media industry. This weakness means that the voice of the bosses will continue to dominate not only the headlines but also the working codntions of SABC workers.
CONTACT
Mazibuko K. Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information & Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel - 011 339-3621/2; Fax - 011 339-4244; Cell - 083 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za