SABC staff make do with veggie burgers as they debate the R450-million question: who is to blame?
It’s either the fault of the new management or the old, reports Peta Thornycroft
MARTINUS VAN SCHALKWYK pursed his lips and ticked off an exhausted SABC chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu at a press conference last week. The National Party man on broadcasting was shaking his head with regret that Sisulu hadn’t heeded his wise counsel earlier. After all, Van Schalkwyk twittered, the NP had been warning and warning about the state of the SABC. Sisulu pointed out that this was rich coming from Van Schalkwyk in particular and the NP in general.
When the SABC chops 1400 jobs to save R450- million as recommended by the United States consultants McKinsey, the surgery will be the work of an axe swinging widely and imperfectly. The corporation admits talented and productive people are going to lose their jobs as well as dullards, who should have been sacked by Van Schalkwyk’s friends when they were in charge.
And while the SABC gets down to negotiate its way out of all those jobs with various unions, Sisulu has to contend with the accusations: that he has taken too long to cut away at the bloated beast. That he should have heeded the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s warning that he didn’t have enough cash for three full spectrum channels. That he should have stood up to Parliament and told it he couldn’t afford to broadcast in 11 languages. That he hadn’t budgeted for provincial broadcasting. That he was naive to believe licence fees would pour in when the corporation was loved by the people. That he has failed in his core undertaking to do more with less. And that he was unable to swing resources away from the bureaucrats to creators.
And finally, his critics say, his team failed to understand that people, advertisers and more affluent viewers don’t like change.
But his supporters outside the SABC believe Sisulu has had the worst job of the whole lot. Every move he has made has been in public. And almost everyone who deals with him says above all, Sisulu is a decent, honest man who has changed the face of the SABC from overwhelmingly white, male and Afrikaner to a management which is starting to look like the population, even if it is inexperienced.
He is cracking down on long-standing and rampant corruption and he has allowed a flowering of all sorts of talent while the news on both radio and television is manifestly better than it was when the Nats ran the SABC. And he survived the humourless interference from former SABC board chair, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.
SABC watchers also say Sisulu nurses resentment at the IBA for taking so long to look at pay station M-Net’s licence. They say he is bewildered that M-Net has been allowed to steal the wealthier sports events, and that the pay station without any onerous public broadcasting obligations continues to grow its advertising revenue during the free-to-air slot far beyond the conditions of the licence.
He has also had a rough ride with Post and Telecommunications Minister Jay Naidoo, who has kept an almost hostile distance from the public broadcaster as he negotiated the deal to sell off a stake in Telkom.
Last week when the extent of the job losses became public there was panic at the SABC. Staffers threatened all sorts of reprisals against management. This week negotiations with the unions began and the frenzy subsided.
The unions believe negotiations could take the rest of the year at least, and that there is going to be both tough and rough talking before anyone loses their job. South African Union of Journalists’ president Sam Sole said a third of the jobs cuts would affect journalists.
“Perhaps we are talking here about a general retreat from a social vision. The report is much less detailed about cost- cutting in management than the detailed slashing prescribed for production,” Sole says.
“Quite soon the SABC is going to have to compete seriously with private broadcasters and to be competitive – its reservoir of skills cannot be seriously eroded. Some of the figures of jobs cuts have been arrived at without consulting the managers. We need to examine that, and to find out where the SABC sees itself with regard to the restructuring of state assets, and if the government will feel bound to provide the unions with funds so we can employ our own consultants to check the figures.”