Hazel Friedman
AFTER five years of negotiating and 11 months after a deal was struck, actors are still stranded by the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) failure to sign a contract to protect their rights.
And SABC officials don’t even know where the long-awaited Television Performers Contract is.
Head of television Gill Chisholm told the Mail & Guardian in a fax this week that it was in the hands of the corporation’s legal division and she could only deal with it when it was returned to her.
But a legal department representative said the contract was “most certainly” in Chisholm’s hands. “Once she signs it, the wheels will be set in motion.”
Meanwhile, actors are being forced to work in a discipline infamous for its exploitation of performers without the the most basic form of professional security.
“Negotiations for a more equitable television performers’ contract were started five years ago,” says Japan Nthembu of the Performing Arts Workers’ Equity (Pawe). “Representatives from the SABC and Pawe were given a full mandate to draw up a new document. In November 1995 the terms were finalised and submitted to Chisholm to sign as a mere formality. One year later, we are still waiting.”
The amended contract includes clauses concerning actors’ hours of labour, safety, transport and the right of actors to a residual fee for programmes that are repeated on the SABC. The clauses were endorsed by the SABC’s legal team as well as Pawe’s representatives. Signalling a substantial departure from the previous contract which was heavily in favour of the SABC, they would have brought the SABC and its labour practices closer in line with actor employment conditions elsewhere in the world.
But the failure to sign the long overdue document has meant that the conditions under which actors are employed and their rates of remuneration – regarded as archaic by world standards – have remained static. And to make matters worse, actors cannot even fall back on the flimsy security of their old performers’ contract because it was declared null and void until the signing of the new one.
“Actors are now in a more vulnerable position than ever,” says MoonYeen Lee, one of South Africa’s most powerful actors’ agents. “This makes the SABC’s talk of restructuring and transformation sound patently absurd because it is showing a total disregard for fair labour practices and a glaring inability to put into effect progressive changes.”
She adds: “It’s time the SABC bosses stopped examining lunch and parking vouchers in the safety of their offices and confronted the real, pressing issues facing them.”