Jacquie Golding-Duffy
THE government conceded this week that the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) mandate for the SABC, central to plans to transform the broadcaster, is too expensive.
The Telecommunications Ministry and the SABC said funding constraints and suggestions that the broadcaster become commercially self-sufficient had rendered many of the IBA’s recommendations impractical.
The government has undertaken instead to finance specific SABC projects and will be funding the broadcaster to the tune of R177,4-million from October 1997 to March 1998. Minister Jay Naidoo and SABC management will revisit the IBA mandate to determine what more can be salvaged.
SABC spokesman Enoch Sithole said management had been “made to understand that recommendations by the IBA could be overturned by Cabinet and the changes would then be binding on the broadcaster.
“We are at a crossroads and the government needs to tell us what type of broadcaster it envisages. If they want us to be profitable some things will have to go.”
Naidoo’s representative Connie Molusi said: “How feasible is the mandate and will it be attained over a long period of time?”
The IBA declined to comment, beyond saying it expected to be notified first of any changes to the mandate
The mandate, costed at R191-million, includes broadcasting in 11 languages, increasing local programming content and educational programming.
But the SABC is suffering heavy losses, blamed in part on the ambitious mandate and its overall transformation drive. Of the IBA proposals, the ministry believes the 11 languages element is the most impractical.
Government has to decide what it can afford to allocate the SABC for it to meet the national broadcasting service mandate set by the IBA. The SABC has to consider what it can deliver with the funds provided.
Sithole said the SABC needed a clear direction from government. “If the SABC has to be self-sufficient there must be a realisation that we are talking about a totally different type of public broadcasting as was recommended by the IBA and different to what is practised elsewhere in the world.
“We are possibly talking about a form of public broadcasting which is mainly commercial and which accommodates a public service mandate in a commercial environment.
“There cannot be any beating about the bush, public broadcasting will then be secondary.”