Mark Gevisser
THE deadlock over the future of ex-bantustan broadcasters — notably Bop-TV — may have been broken.
Broadcasting Minister Pallo Jordan has created a ministry-led task group to investigate the issue and will promulgate an omnibus Broadcasting Bill this year that will set conditions for “provincial public media”.
These two initiatives are the result of a two-day conference held this week in the Magaliesberg, called by Jordan to iron out disputes over which level of government is responsible for regional public broadcasting, and to deal with what will happen to the ex-TBVC broadcasters. The event was organised by Jordan’s new adviser, Willie Currie, and was attended by all the major stakeholders in the industry.
According to Jordan, “there was consensus that all the current broadcasters be integrated into a single public broadcasting service, but that this didn’t preclude the right of provinces to exert their prerogatives to establish their own public broadcasting systems, as stipulated by the interim constitution”.
According to conference sources, the only party not part of this consensus was the North-West provincial government, represented by MEC for media and information Riani de Wet. While the Broadcasting Corporations of Transkei, Ciskei and Venda want to become part of the SABC, the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation prefers to remain a separate public broadcaster. Its control is now a bone of contention between the province and the SABC.
De Wet says that “we have never disputed the SABC’s role as national public broadcaster, but we feel strongly that there should be provincial public media. Nonetheless, we have never said that Bop Broadcasting is ours, and that we’re keeping every last bit of it. It’s negotiable. We’re willing to sit down with other provinces, and if they state their needs, we are willing to assist them with skills and even the transfer of assets.”
But is Bop Broadcasting North-West’s to give away? True, the province was assigned control of Bop Broadcasting by a presidential proclamation. This, however, has been described by many as an error that needs urgent rectification. Meanwhile, North-West has appointed its own management to the corporation. The SABC has claimed that this is an instance of a regional government “grabbing control” of a public asset.
Some, including Jordan, have noted that the former Bophuthatswana spreads over five new provinces, and that North-West alone cannot lay claim to it: “Does the mere fact of the physical location of a facility in a province give that provincial government first claim on it?” asked Jordan at the conference. “Clearly it does not.”
The SABC has argued, before the Independent Broadcasting Authority, that it alone has the capacity to provide regional public broadcasting. But the constitution says the “public media” is a provincial competency. And the ministry’s legal advice is that if Bop Broadcasting or North-West were to take the issue to the Constitutional Court — which it has indicated it might do — it may well win.
Nonetheless, Section 126 of the interim constitution requires that national “norms and standards” be maintained in areas of provincial competency. So, to resolve the issue, Jordan told the conference that his omnibus Broadcasting Bill would set down certain standards to which any public broadcaster had to conform.
He mentioned four: that they are politically independent, that they are politically impartial, that they are representative of the communities they serve, and that they are not “racially, ethnically and sexually divisive”.
Every public broadcaster would thus have to be governed by a representative, independently-appointed board, as the SABC now is. North-West’s current control of Bop Broadcasting would then be illegal.
There was much debate over how provincial broadcasting would be governed. The kwa-Zulu-Natal government proposed that the SABC board be constituted entirely of people appointed by provincial governments; an idea, noted one SABC source, “that would take us back to the dark ages of state control”.
The SABC itself proposed that each province set up a board to advise the SABC board, to be elected in an independent manner.