Gaye Davis
MEDIA-BASHING and government-run media slots offered no solution to the problems the government was having in informing people about what it was doing, ANC MP Carl Niehaus said this week.
Calling for an urgent presidential commission to investigate how government communicates, Niehaus said the South African Communications Service (Sacs), formerly the propaganda arm of the National Party government, was an “entirely unreconstructed” organisation. He was speaking during a Sacs budget vote debate on Wednesday.
In what could be interpreted as veiled criticism of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, under whose portfolio it falls, Niehaus said Sacs, whose budget last year was almost R52-million, had not been subjected to the detailed scrutiny other key institutions had faced. While there were “many good people within it, dedicated to free and open information”, it still carried baggage from the past.
Government had started delivering, Niehaus said. “Why then the sensitivity about how the government and its work are being perceived? Is it because the media in this country is not always accurately and adequately reflecting the progress we are making for ordinary people? Or does at least some of the problem lie closer to home?
“Our aim must be to ensure that those who communicate on behalf of the government do so fairly, effectively and in a manner which better equips the media to reflect on what we are doing.” People had a right to know what the government was doing. But there could be little purpose in “declaring the media to be an enemy as a first justification for withdrawing from an ongoing engagement with them in favour of government- run or controlled media slots”.
Mbeki said assessing Sacs’ role could not be done without addressing all other information structures within government. He said a conference of all central and provincial government communicators had been planned for August to recommend a “comprehensive and all-embracing government communication policy”, including the issue of government-controlled media
He announced that a cabinet committee would be discussing a Freedom of Information bill — aimed at ensuring transparent and accountable government by giving citizens the right to access to information — within the next two weeks.
He said Sacs had made a “serious effort” to redress its staff racial imbalance and hoped new arrivals, especially those who were black and female, would help in the re-making of Sacs “so that it gains the confidence of this House and the country at large as an instrument of democracy, non-racialism, non-sexism and accountable and open government”.