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16 November 2006

Memorandum for SABC Management

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) and social movements are marching to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to demand a transparent and accountable public broadcaster.

The march is meant to highlight the frustrations of poor communities with the SABC, which is supposed to report in a manner that is fair, balanced and free from prejudice. This stems from the fact that the SABC is a public broadcaster and has to ensure that the voices of the working class and poor communities are also heard. The recent developments at the SABC have been worrying, and the SABC seems to have become a fully-fledged mouthpiece of government and the ANC.

The past six months has also seen intense engagement between the FXI and communities, on one side, and the SABC, on the other, on issues related to the public broadcaster and censorship. These engagements have led to many grievances being aired about the conduct of the SABC. The SABC issue that attracted the most attention in the past six months, and that has angered poor communities, was its decision to halt the screening of a documentary on President Thabo Mbeki, as part of the “Unauthorised” series. The documentary takes a critical stance towards Mbeki, and includes - most shockingly - information that is already common knowledge and is therefore of no surprise to anyone. With all the energy at the SABC and the media attention relating to the SABC being diverted towards dealing with these controversial issues, the needs of the public - particularly poor and marginalized communities - that should be fulfilled by the public broadcaster, often get ignored.

Then allegations emerged that some analysts who have been critical of government’s lack of service delivery to poor communities and the general conduct of the state were blacklisted. The SABC then set up a commission of enquiry to look into the allegations. Subsequent to that the SABC did not want to publish the findings of the commission, and even attempted to interdict the Mail and Guardian newspaper to force it to take the report down from its website: yet another indication that the SABC was moving towards censorship.

The FXI supported by community organisations and social movements has been engaging with have also expressed deep dissatisfaction on this issue as well. The current struggles and campaigns for social services that are waged by working class and poor communities have received little or no coverage from the SABC. Poor communities can only assume that these matters are not reported because they are embarrassing the commissars of the SABC, namely the ANC-led government.

Our demands, which must be addressed by the SABC before the end of the year, include: -

  1. The SABC has to increase the number of programmes that reflect on the realities of working class and poor communities.
  2. We need to have platforms in the SABC that gives the space for the poor to articulate its interests.
  3. Communities and working class people must be provided with a real space for participating and reviewing SABC programming.
  4. Rural and working class women must have a strong voice and appearance in TV programmes of the SABC.
  5. The SABC must work with our organisations to establish forums for regular consultation of our communities by the SABC. This will allow for our communities to be consulted and for the SABC to be able to fulfil its objective of citizenship empowerment.