CENSORSHIP - Pro-abortion groups last week pressured the Johannesburg child protection unit (CPU) into removing a photograph of a 19-week-old foetus in a jar that was part of an exhibition on child abuse. The "Saturday Star" newspaper reported that the Reproductive Rights Alliance (RRA), in a letter to the South African Police Service, demanded that the offending picture be removed. They said the picture created the impression that abortion, which became legal in South Africa in February this year, was still a crime. A spokesperson for RRA, Tamara Braam, said: "In using this image, the CPU are saying that in terminating a pregnancy, a women is abusing a child. Giving a woman the right to make choices about pregnancy is, however, a way of protecting children from being unwanted, and possibly from abusive parents." The CPU said the exhibition dealt with crimes that had been investigated by the unit. Spokesman Collin Morris said, "In this case [referring to the photograph], a man was carrying out illegal abortions." The travelling exhibition of the CPU has been on display at several venues in Johannesburg.

PROTESTS - The Western Cape branch of the anti-crime group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) on November 8 was forced to resort to a placard demonstration in the suburb of Sea Point when permission for a march was denied. PAGAD had applied to march through the suburb of Athlone, but permission for this was denied as it would have taken place after dark. The Deputy responsible officer in the Cape Town Municipality, Eric Daniels, said police had submitted affidavits to the municipality indicating that they would not be able to guarantee the safety of people if the march took place after sunset. The municipality requested PAGAD to hold its march during daylight hours, but the group refused, resulting in permission for the march being denied. Consequently PAGAD members lined the main thoroughfare of Sea Point waving placards and chanting slogans to protest police inaction against the sale of drugs in the area. Groups of around ten people stood about 20 metres apart along the main road. Police co-operated with the demonstration, saying they had not intention of breaking it up as no law was being broken. The Gatherings Act stipulates that notice of gatherings of more than 15 people must be lodged with the municipality, but demonstrations of less than 15 people can be held freely.

MEDIA FREEDOM - The American organisation, the Freedom Forum, on November 11 opened its first centre in Africa, the fourth such centre established around the world. Speaking at the inauguration of the Freedom Forum Africa centre in Johannesburg, the chairman of the media group, Times Media Limited (TML), Cyril Ramaphosa, stressed the crucial role the media had to play in supporting democracy. He said the media provided a forum outside Parliament in which the government could interact with the country’s citizen’s, and in which citizens can interact with government. He warned though that a media which was not free to criticise government, or which was not representative of the broad spectrum of society, was inherently limited in its capacity to support and bolster democracy. He said the media should guard against being a sweetheart or a sworn enemy of the government, but should rather ensure its coverage of society was informed, accurate and fair. Among the Freedom Forum’s stated missions is to support the development of independent media worldwide. Other Freedom Forum centres are located in Hong Kong, Buenos Aires and London.

INDEPENDENT BROADCASTING - The Johannesburg-based Muslim community radio station, Radio Islam, on November 12 served an interdict on the Broadcasting Monitoring and Complaints Commission (BMCC) preventing it from going ahead with a hearing into a complaint against the station. The matter will instead be heard in the Johannesburg High Court on November 14. The BMCC was due to hold a hearing into the licence conditions of Radio Islam following a complaint lodged by a community organisation about the station’s policy of not allowing women on air. The station is arguing that its policy is in accordance with Islamic religious beliefs about the role of women. The station is also claiming that the BMCC is not qualified to hear the complaint and adjudicate on the matter.

MEDIA OWNERSHIP & DIVERSITY - The night editor and co-deputy managing director of the "Sowetan" newspaper, Mike Tissong, has challenged new black media owners to bring about an ideological shift in the newspapers under the their control. Tissong was speaking at a recent conference of the Forum for Black Journalists (FBJ). In a report on the conference in the "Sowetan" on November 13, Tissong was quoted as saying that new black media owners were not living up to their responsibilities. He said it was not enough for the new black owners to claim control of companies and boast of growth and huge profits when the newspapers which had been following a particular ideological line remain where they were, doing business as before. Tissong, who is also secretary of the Black Editors Forum and a council member of the South African National Editors Forum, called for black people to be given greater operational control in  newspapers to ensure that change did take place. Noting that the former Secretary-General of the African National Congress, Cyril Ramaphosa, had become the chairman of Times Media Limited (TML) through his position in the Johnnic controlling company, Tissong said: "Despite the fact that Ramaphosa sits as head of TML, his position is meaningless if he does not extend the capital control of the company by black people to operational control of the company by black people." He said TML along with the Perskor group, which is owned by Kagiso,  the company headed by former anti-apartheid activist Eric Molobi, should take their cue from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), which Tissong said had put "effective operational control of radio and television in the hands of black people". Tissong said the new political dispensation placed new responsibilities on black journalists to write and interpret the unfolding history. Many of them were ill equipped and the new black takeovers should commit themselves to training needs of staff, who had been denied opportunities in the past. During deliberations of the conference, "Sowetan" political editor Mathatha Tsedu reported that delegates had called for an increase in the use of black experts to comment on issues. Black academics were called upon to write articles and raise issues from a black perspective, which would help dampen the overbearing influence of a clique of white liberals who dominate opinion pages.

MEDIA REGULATION - The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) on November 13 called on the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCCSA) to dismiss a case against the SABC about its coverage of a rally addressed by the leaders of the United Democratic Movement (UDM), Roelf Meyer and Bantu Holomisa. The complaint was lodged by the New Alliance Students’ Association. The group complained that the SABC report on August 5 suggested that Meyer and Holomisa had been disallowed from addressing the rally and that misleading camera shots were used to create the impression that most people present were against the presence of the two leaders. The student group said only about 50 people had protested against the politicians, while between 800 and 1500 supporters were present, insisting on their right to hear the two men. The group also provided the BCCSA with video footage taken by a student to show that the SABC footage had failed to show a large section of people who wanted to hear Holomisa and Meyer speak. According to the SABC report, Holomisa and Meyer were forced by a rowdy crowd of South African Students Congress and African National Congress Youth League members to move from a hall to a balcony to address their supporters. SABC general manager Malan Otto told the BCCSA that the complaint would have been valid had viewers stopped listening after the first two sentences of the report. The sentences read: "ANC-aligned student and worker groupings prevented Roelf Meyer and Bantu Holomisa from addressing students at the University of Port Elizabeth today. The students said they were driven to protest against the two political leaders because of their association with expelled Richmond ANC leader Sifiso Nkabinde." However, the report continued with the following: "There was no way the meeting was going to take place in the hall ... and later the two opposition politicians were moved to a nearby balcony on the university campus. But their calls for order were in vain."
Malan said the disruption was the main focus of the news item because that was what grabbed attention in terms of television coverage. SABC reporter Mokhokeli Thanda submitted to the BCCSA that the meeting was covered in good faith, with no ulterior motive for discrediting the two politicians or their parties. The BCCSA was unable to reach a decision and said it would hand down a ruling early next week.

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION - The government is to introduce regulations that will force municipal authorities to provide wide-ranging information on their financial affairs to provincial authorities  and central government, which will then automatically become available to the public and the media. The regulations, which will be published in the Government Gazette on November 14, comes at the behest of the Department of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development. In terms of the regulations, the chief executive officers (CEO) of every municipality will have to report regularly on their financial indicators such as the council’s debt, cashflow, payment levels and the number of people subject to strict credit control measures because of nonpayment. They will have to provide comprehensive analysis of rates debits and figures reflecting the number of defaulters on water, electricity, refuse and sewerage service charges. The reports will also have to include the number of ratepayers and consumers liable for service charges every month and the number of households that have not been billed during that period. The reports will have to contain information on the number of electricity disconnections and reconnections in a municipality, and must offer details of legal suits against defaulters, including the number of summonses issued. The CEOs will also be compelled to reconcile municipalities’ cashbooks with bank statements and explain the reconciling of all items found to be outstanding for more than three months. They will be required to report on the expected cash flow for six months and plans on how to finance any shortfall. The renumeration package of each municipality’s CEO and the second-highest ranking official will also in future have to be submitted to the municipal council and central government. These details will have to be published in a newspaper circulating in the municipality’s area of jurisdiction and in the Provincial Gazette on or before October 31 each year. CEO’s will be able to apply to be exempted from the regulations but they will have to do so in writing to their provincial MECs, giving reasons for their applications.
The issue of information relating to municipalities is not new. In August this year, the public accounts committee in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature expressed disappointment at the lack of information coming out of hearings for local authorities in which they were questioned on issues raised by a provincial auditor-general’s (AG) report. The AG’s report alluded to, among other things, unauthorised expenditure, unaccounted-for municipal assets and nonadherence to procedures that ensured accountability. In March this year, the Minister of Finance, Trevor Manual, said the government would not hand over financial information about the risk profile of individual municipalities to the private sector as this would undermine attempts to monitor their finances. At the time, it was estimated that one third of municipalities in the country were financially unviable. In a Budget Review tabled in parliament that same month, it was found that municipalities had a total debt of about R26 billion at the end of June last year. Of this, the largest amount was in the form of overdrafts and loans from banks, which had also extended R70 million in leases and instalment credit to them. Referring to calls by banking representatives for the risk profiles of individual municipalities to be made public,  Manuel said the government’s ability to monitor local authorities’ finances would succeed only if specific information was kept confidential. He added that in any case the government had no power to demand information from local authorities.