We hear that Free State Premier Ivy Matsepe- Casaburri may soon be without a job. Perhaps it is opportune now for Parliament to give her old job back to her. The SABC needs a new board and, while the jury is still out on her premiership, there are few who will deny that she was a skilled board chairperson for a difficult broadcaster.
These are turbulent times for the SABC and it needs to recast its board to guide it through rough seas. The government’s twin plans for greater control of the broadcaster and a sell-off of some assets will mean profound change. Corruption in programme commissioning – worth some R200- million to the production industry – has not been rooted out. Attempts to reform it have repeatedly been stymied. The amount of local programming may be significant, but does the SABC behave as a public broadcaster?
The broadcaster is a powerful tool … in the right hands. In the wrong hands, it can do immense damage as we know from the experience of the past. That is why the SABC board was one of the first places to which democracy came. Public hearings at which a panel of esteemed South Africans decided on the first democratic SABC board attracted world attention. Some five years down the line, democracy’s first elected watchdog is moribund.
It is a board as secretive and closed to public scrutiny as the Broederbond boards which ran the place in its darkest days.
While Matsepe-Casaburri delegated authority to recognised experts in her ranks, her successor, Professor Paulus Zulu, wields an iron fist. Matsepe-Casaburri let the experts deal with their areas of expertise like advertising, language spread or policy. Now nobody except Zulu is allowed to speak on behalf of the board and that he rarely does.
For example, the board did not make a peep about a radical broadcasting Bill which proposed deep changes for the SABC. It took the president’s office to determine that the broadcasting minister was appropriating too much power for himself in relating to the broadcaster.
Zulu’s board is an invisible guardian of democracy. Few know the members of the board. With one or two exceptions, they are a motley crew with hardly any of the essential skills necessary to keep the corporation’s managers on their toes.
How does one explain the presence of several academics, a little-known priest, a member of the Afrikaner Taal en Kultuur Vereeniging, a representative of the blind and of private emergency medical services? How do you explain the absence of an advertising brain, broadcasters, film- makers, and linguists? It is time for Parliament to reinstate accountable democracy at the SABC and make the sorely needed changes.
Stop stereotypes
The row over Brian McMillan’s use of the phrase “bowl him a coolie creeper” – to mean a delivery in which the ball runs along the ground – offers a double-edged lesson to South Africans. On the one hand, we have no doubt that “coolie creeper” – with its association of servile, obsequious, self- effacing conduct – should be struck from the vocabulary out of respect for the Asian community.
At the same time, we cannot help but feel sympathy for the great all-rounder who, we have no doubt, is no racist and who must be feeling somewhat bewildered, if not outraged, to find himself at the centre of such controversy. There must be numerous cricket commentators of similarly non-racial disposition thanking their stars that the China lobby has not picked up on the even more frequently used phrase, “a chinaman” – meaning a deceptive delivery which spins in an unexpected direction.
The minefield represented by the etymological slur is a frightening one for the innocent. Take the recent case of David Howard, aide to Washington mayor Anthony A Williams, who was “allowed” to resign after being denounced by a subordinate for use of the word “niggardly”, and then reinstated after his boss had been persuaded that the term had nothing to do with the “n-word”.
And it is not sufficient to know the meaning of the word itself to appreciate whether it is politically correct to use it; the racial identity of the user also needs be taken into account – enabling a black band to famously name themselves “Niggaz Wit’ Attitude”. Even the racial identity of the user’s boss can be a factor, as demonstrated last year by Spike Lee when he denounced Quentin Tarantino for having his black actors use the word “nigger” – 28 times in Pulp Fiction and 38 times in Jackie Brown.
The problem – which boils down to stereotyping – is not limited to race. The stereotypes are endless: the bellicose Zulu, the crafty Xhosa, the drink-sodden Irishman, the humourless German, the limp-wristed gay … Some have the confidence to deal with stereotyping – the Australians are wont to give a grin and a rude finger-sign when South African rugby fans characterise them as a nation of sheep-shaggers.
But at root, when dealing with stereotyping, it is necessary to bear in mind that it was the major factor behind that most monstrous of events known as the Holocaust. It is, therefore, incumbent on everyone to be sensitive to the use of derogatory generalisations when these make reference to a minority community which is, or feels, threatened – as do terms including “coolie creeper” and “white racist”.