airwaves
Ferial Haffajee
Allister Sparks is an unlikely Ted Turner. Other than the grey hair, the local journalist has until now had little in common with the American media magnate.
Now Sparks is the driving force behind SABC-Africa, a 24-hour news channel going head-to-head with Turner’s CNN for supremacy of the African airwaves at least. The satellite channel will be available to a limited audience (those with Dstv decoders and dishes) in 44 African countries. It airs at the end of the year (no date has yet been specified) in a joint venture between the SABC and Multichoice, the operator of M-Net.
The dtente between the public broadcaster and the pay channel was not easily negotiated. Their tenuous coexistence has witnessed a competitive campaign and an attempt by the SABC to end M-Net’s open time. The contract has also raised eyebrows because it entrenches the Multichoice monopoly while the government wants to expand the pay television and satellite market.
It’s not an argument which Sparks will brook. He was the conduit for the deal and had early discussions with former Multichoice MD Koos Bekker, who first broached the subject. Sparks sold the plan easily to former SABC chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu over a lunch date. “Zwelakhe could achieve his ambition of making the SABC a world- class broadcaster,” he says, adding, “I thought about it and suddenly it seemed to me that this was the obvious thing to do.” It was the obvious way out of the SABC’s Astrasat experiment which chose to use analogue instead of digital technology. Although some subscribers bought the cheaper service, it never really caught on.
The deal with Multichoice means those subscribers with decoders for the Astrasat system will have their systems upgraded to digital and it will give Multichoice the news service it has long hankered after. “We’re killing two birds with one stone,”says Sparks whose shirt sleeves are already rolled up in anticipation of the new task.
Multichoice will guarantee income of R20-million a year to the two SABC channels it will carry on Dstv. It may sound like a lot, but R10-million (SABC-Africa’s share of the income) a year means that the channel will run on a very tight budget.
It will be, to borrow a CNN-ism “a 24- hour news operation” and the 65-year- old editor-in-chief relishes the task. “Sharks die if they stop swimming,” says the veteran editor, teacher and author from his office at the SABC. Because Africa does not have many time zones, the hours between midnight and six in the morning will be less stressful broadcasts.
The new channel will piggyback on the SABC news operation. At first this will very much be a local news operation beamed to Africa. News and current affairs are one of the more expensive items on the broadcasters’ budget: it employs a plethora of journalists and producers who are responsible every day for 10 English news bulletins and weekly current affairs programmes.
All the news programmes and current affairs, like Special Assignment and Newshour, will be repackaged to give them an SABC-Africa identity. The new channel will have its own theme tunes and graphics and Sparks is working on exchange agreements with other African broadcasters. But on the whole, much of the television on the continent – especially news – is pure propaganda. He is also trying to build up a body of stringers in other countries who will service the new channel. “This continent gets broadcast by First World agencies. Africans speak to each other via CNN, or the BBC or Reuters. This will be Africa finding out about itself.” For a while at least, it will be more a case of Africa finding out about South Africa.
But already, says Sparks, many residents of the region in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Maputo and Swaziland are watching the SABC through the spill- over into those countries. In turn, the SABC has secured its own coverage of those countries either by sending its own journalists across borders on assignment or by setting up bureaux (Joe Louw is in charge of the Nairobi office) and putting stringers, like Chris Bishop in Harare, on retainer. “A lot of people are finding out what’s going on in Zimbabwe from the SABC.”
Foreign television crews have long been castigated for their vision of Africa. The starving African child and a diet of war, coup and famine characterise their despatches. It’s what Sparks calls “catastrophe reporting where the good news never makes it”.
He is determined to ferret out the good news: “Culturally, there’s great stuff. And the ingenuity of poor people in making a living makes wonderful stories.”
It won’t all be sunshine. With over a dozen wars being fought on the continent and the young democracies which must be nurtured and protected, the editor-in-chief of SABC-Africa also hopes the new channel will “have a huge stimulating influence on democracy”.