The SABC has successfully completed nationwide coverage of the local elections, writes Hazel Friedman
‘What the hell is going on in the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga?” asks a senior South African Broadcasting Corporation television staff member, his voice thick with tension and fatigue. It’s like watching the finals of nine ping-pong matches as the television control team attempt to simultaneously co-ordinate election coverage in nine separate regions in eleven languages. “Okay, we’re nearly there.”
He breathes a palpable sigh of relief. “We did it guys. You’re one hell of a team. Who would have thought we’d have to send out a bloody helicopter emergency force to Bophuthatswana?”
Some voters might recall the emergency mission to cover the North West region, after the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation’s staff and management went on strike preventing coverage of elections in the region. Others won’t forget the face of Free State premier Terror Lekota when he forget to bring his identity document to the voting polls or, for that matter, Lester Venter’s near-fatal Freudian slip when he mistook political analyst Themba Sono for the IFP’s Themba Khoza during a discussion on election violence; or the Khanyi Dhlomo-Mkhize look-alike charms of Hope Zinde, the SABC ‘s bright new anchor star.
But all South Africans will remember November 1 and 2 as the time the SABC finally got it right. Not only did it pull off a feat that in terms of sheer complexity is unique in the world: co-ordinating the nation-wide coverage of the voting and results of South Africa’s first community elections in 11 official languages. It did so without repeating many of its old mistakes and made relatively few new ones. Even the biggest computer in the country — programmed to count the votes for the country’s 20 000 candidates — did its job without choking from info-overload.
Given the SABC’s glitch-filled history, this was nothing short of a miracle.
“It went off better than I dreamed,” says Izak Minnaar, who together with Seathlolo “Kgoro” Kgoroeadira was responsible for co-ordinating this gargantuan project, aided by a combined radio and television budget of R32- million, — R5-million more than the cost of the 1994 national elections — a research unit, nine teams deployed to the nethermost regions of the country, and a couple of television veterans from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) who co-ordinated a reporter training programme.
“We pulled in the talent from radio and gave them a crash-course in crisis management,” says the SABC’s Jane Hicks who assisted the ABC’s Robbie Weekes and Paul Brown in the two-week instruction course.”
With some obvious exceptions, this tactic clearly worked for most of the trainee reporters. They would also have rusty anchor Dorianne Berry who seemed unable to open her mouth wthout simultaneously running her hand through her hair, and political commentator Lester Venter, who by now has almost perfected the art of inane analysis.
“But most importantly, we wanted to teach our presenters how to be inclusive and generous in their coverage,” adds Hicks.
Such adjectives are not usually associated with the SABC. But this, after all, is no longer the monolithic mouthpiece of the apartheid-regime.
“We’re transforming ourselves from monolith to polyglot”, says Pat Pillai, head of publicity at the SABC. “We’re really trying to put all those hallowed principles of accountability and transparency into practice.”
“It is more than last year’s,” he explains, “because the poll needed to be covered in all the provinces and because of the number of outside broadcast vans beaming into the provinces themselves. But considering the greater size and complexity of the operation, the increase is surprisingly small.”
He adds: “One of the differences between last year’s election coverage and this year’s, is that this year our executive producers were given a large degree of editorial independence. They could deploy task teams into the different regions and cover the background issues they deemed important without a specific brief from management.”
“We’re not saying we got it 100 percent right but we now know that it’s possible to successfully restructure the SABC on a regional basis. It’s been an incredible learning experience,” says Andre le Roux, who heads this year’s provincial broadcast.
In fact it is rumoured in media corners that the SABC tower will soon be changing its name to the Tower of Babble.