Jacquie Golding-Duffy
SEVERAL members of the government’s communications task group, Comtask, have accused the Cabinet of endorsing a “stage- managed operation” to ensure the survival of the old-guard South African Communications Service (Sacs).
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who established Comtask last year to investigate the government’s relationship with the media, last week rejected its recommendation that Sacs be closed. The Cabinet concurred with him.
Mbeki opted to establish another committee – with staff drawn from his office and Sacs – to implement those Comtask’s recommendations that had been “broadly accepted in principle.”
Some Comtask members say they have no idea which of their recommendations had been accepted or rejected. One said Mbeki was sabotaging efforts to improve the government’s communications service “in favour of a one-party state style of information service”.
Comtask members may protest in writing what many see as a dismissal of their intensive research.
Sacs costs R50-million a year to run and has 300 staff. Justifying the closure, Comtask’s report said Sacs had “no clear mandate” and “low credibility … with government only using it from time to time”. The report said there was “a lack of enthusiasm for Sacs across government and in the media”.
The report also attacked the government’s in-house communications departments as bulky, inefficient and “structurally disempowered”.
Deputy minister in Mbeki’s office, Essop Pahad, said the proposed committee would consider Comtask’s other recommendations and “ensure Sacs is transformed into an efficient and viable government service.
`Cabinet has decided that Sacs should not be closed down but that the entire nature of Sacs should change. We have to look at how this change can take place as well as closely look at how the other recommendations can be implemented,” he said.
Pahad said the committee would be largely in-house to save costs. Its members would include Mbeki’s representative Thami Ntenteni, Joel Netshitenzhe from the president’s office, and Sacs head Sol Kotane.
Comtask convenor and SABC board member Mandla Langa would be a useful committee member, Pahad said, as he had “an abundance of accumulated experience”. He had not yet been approached, however.
Pahad was optimistic that the committee could complete its task within three months as the “deputy president is keen that the entire matter should be expedited”.
Comtask has cost about R3-million since it was set up at the beginning of last year. Its report is a compilation of impressions, recommendations and alternatives offered by members of the team as well as the input of various other stakeholders.
Ntenteni said the report did not centre on Sacs, and was puzzled that the decision to keep Sacs alive had created such reaction. Sacs was no different to any other structure inherited from the old South Africa. “It simply has to be transformed and not dissolved. One has to question the motives behind the insistence that it shuts down.”
Forget the fantasy, Thabo, PAGE 22