M-Net corporate affairs manager Cawe Mahlati, tells Aspasia Karras how she hopes to see M-Net become the frontrunner of global broadcasting in Africa
Articulate and determined, Cawe Mahlati is a force to be reckoned with in private broadcasting. Not only does she have a vision of what broadcasting can become in the future, but she believes that the impetus of the future is already here.
As corporate affairs manager of M-Net, and an executive board member, she feels it is her duty to ensure that everybody else is aware of it.
The self-declared “rural Transkeian girl” believes that the information age is not exacerbating the divide between the third and first worlds, but is rather a bridging opportunity: “We have moved beyond atoms and into bytes.”
This, she says, has astounding consequences for our lives. Mahlati sees the information highway as a viable method with which to alleviate bureaucratic problems which hold up rural development.
Her excitement for her industry drives the representations she has being making at the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) hearings, as she takes part in the sensitive debate around restrictions, structural changes and local content, and ultimately the future of private broadcasting in South Africa.
“Wherever there is change there is opportunity,” she says. She contends broadcasting has traditionally been a single- territory-based industry represented by local national channels, but increasingly it is becoming global, and so the “product” should become global in nature. The various regulatory authorities should be aware of this tendency, and legislate for the future rather than in response to the past.
M-Net is being beamed into 42 African countries, an achievement which Mahlati feels is in line with international trends. Ultimately, her vision for M-Net as a forerunner of the globalising tendency in Africa depends on the IBA’s approach to M-Net’s proposals. Mahlati says: “If the IBA does not follow models like the French one then we are likely to see Gauteng becoming the nodal point of a South African broadcasting industry that could generate great wealth and strategic power for South Africa.”
She believes that the IBA is obliged to help create an “enlightened”, vibrant and sustainable broadcasting industry and should, therefore, not be concerned with the local production industry, but rather with the broadcasters that can take the industry into the 21st century.
In this regard M-Net resists a local-content quota. Its compromise is a specified sum allocated to local productions, escalated annually in line with the Consumer Price Index. This approach, she argues, is the only viable option for her pay channel which will soon have to compete with international pay channels. “We would be completely unable to produce the international quality show Egoli if we had quotas to fulfil, as essentially this would mean more local content but inevitably poor quality productions,” she maintains.
As to the pending influx of competition, Mahlati says: “We welcome competition. It increases efficiency as consumers have a choice, but M-Net is laying its plans to ensure that it offers the most competitive product around.”
She says M-Net’s recent unbundling is part of the global plan. Essentially the company is following an international trend of downsizing and narrowing focus to become more efficient and productive. She believes M-Net’s ultimate concern is to satisfy its customers, so programming has to conform to the needs of the customers.
Mahlati says her career has been a series of coincidences that has taken her on a heady journey to success. Her life reads like a high-powered Egoli fantasy, starting with her graduation from Inanda Seminary in Durban, “a high school run by militant American feminists who basically came to Africa to train African women to take up positions of leadership”.
Next came a law degree — she studied at the Universities of Lesotho and Edinburgh — as well as a course in international relations and diplomacy in Austria.
She is worldly and cultured: she spent time in New York both as an exchange student and working for IBM as an associate attorney, and pursued her diplomatic career in Austria, Zimbabwe and Transkei. She expresses a deep love for the opera, dance and percussion instruments, all of which she believes are excellent mediums for cross-cultural pollination. She recalls fondly M-Net’s support of a dance production called Gumboot Flamenco de Africa and she supports avidly the West Indian festival that takes place every year in London and New York.
Dukes Zondi, M-Net’s human resources manager, confirms her role as M-Net’s trump card in negotiations. “She plays a pivotal role in the establishment of relationships with various stakeholders, particularly with the government,” he
Mahlati simply wants to see M-Net become “the leading entertainment television company in Africa”.