Feel strongly about something in this newspaper? Want to question a reporter? Want to say something to the editor? Now’s your chance, with a new radio talk-back show starting this week.
Mail & Guardian reporters, editor Anton Harber and other guests will be in the SAfm studio with Will Bernard this Friday morning (June 2) for the launch of a new weekly talk show. Talk at Will with the Mail & Guardian will be on SAfm every Friday from 8.30am to 9.45am. This week’s topics will be:
* Jobs or conservation in Saldanha Bay — an ANC MP’s controversial views
* The revolutionary new land Bill — will farmers accept this?
Editorial: IBA’s signals are jammed
EIGHTEEN months ago, the country enjoyed a vision of dynamic, open broadcasting appropriate to an emerging democracy. We were going to have an Independent Broadcast Authority (IBA) empowered to issue commercial and community licences and oversee the SABC as a public service broadcaster. The IBA would cut the SABC back to size in order to create space for an active commercial sector and an equally important community sector — and all three would co-exist to create an exciting, competitive and free broadcasting environment.
The opportunities were exciting. Investors — local and international — were eager to become involved. Everyone welcomed the prospect of an end to the domination of the most powerful modern media by the omnipresent SABC. Never again would we rely on one source of electronic information. Democracy would be strengthened. South Africans would enjoy a proliferation of radio entertainment.
All that was required was for the IBA to breathe life into the vision, providing our first on-ramp to the information highway. That was no easy task, but the commissioners were a skilled bunch of individuals chosen for the task in a careful public process.
Today, only the haziest outline of that vision is still in sight. The SABC is more expansionist than ever, arguing not only to retain its dominance through three television channels, but planning a new “youth” radio station and hoping to take over former homeland broadcasters. This would probably give it more staff, more stations, more equipment and more licences than it had a year ago.
Community broadcasting, intended to be a major platform for educational broadcasting and non-commercial voices that were previously stifled, has become the medium of religious and right-wing stations.
And privately-owned commercial broadcasting, the mainstay of any free media environment, cannot be found on the dial. Plans to issue at least some licences to those who would provide alternative sources of information and entertainment to the SABC have repeatedly been delayed. The IBA is reluctant even to put a deadline on the issuing of these licences.
The IBA has spent some R25-million, occupied fancy new buildings in Rosebank, employed scores of people, held countless public hearings — but the airwaves are only marginally more free than they were under apartheid.
Many reasons are offered for this. The IBA was given a mammoth task, one that has taken at least four years in other countries, and few resources to speed up the process; the law which guided it was faulty; skills were in short supply, experience was non-existent; the politicians’ decision to fast-track temporary community licences caused insurmountable delays.
There is some truth in each of these reasons; together they may add up to a half-credible excuse. But the task of the IBA commissioners was to solve these problems and free the airwaves. They haven’t. Now we are going into the November local government elections with a still-not-free media. Democracy itself will suffer.