Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
A good deal of last week’s SABC current affairs output was given over to Mr Thabo Mbeki. In two faintly embarrassing appearances he generously donated us the benefit of his wisdom.
First up was the annual State of the Nation speech, which turned out to be more a state of the state president’s petulance than anything else. More memorable were the home-video effects of the SABC’s presentation: the frequently lurching camera, the murmur of dialogue leaking in from some other programme. It made me think of those hilarious out-of- tune small-republic military bands. This was the best the SABC could muster for the occasion.
Better was to come, in the form of Mr Mbeki’s welcoming speech to his Dr Strangelove Aids advisory panel. This turned out to be 20 minutes of sophomoric maundering. Clearly the boss seeks fresh acknowledgement as poet-president and elder-statesmanlike oracle. The speech was a small masterpiece of its kind, right from its bogus humility to the stirring central gaffe about the Aids pandemic: “… we are faced with a catastrophe and you can’t respond merely by saying, ‘I will do what is routine'”.
By any definition the recent Mozambique flooding was a catastrophe. Sending in the helicopters was a very “routine” response. Perhaps Mr Mbeki should have sent metaphors instead. Or, as Dr Mary Crewe observed afterwards: “When your house is on fire the first thing you do is try to put out the fire. Don’t sit around trying to decide on how it started.”
Much of the rest of the SABC television week was spent in sturdy reinforcement of the latest Mbeki scaffolding. Newsmaker on SABC2 last Sunday morning was almost entirely devoted to this end. First came Jacob Zuma in conversation with Snuki Zikalala, always the first SABC tongue to be deployed when an efficient bum lick is called for. Not that Jacob needs any lubrication when it comes to being bombastic and overbearing. It is rich to hear him detonate on the subject of irresponsible government spending when his baas is busy lashing out R300-million on a personal airliner.
Then back to the preternatural Aids panel with Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba, director general of the Department of Health – the first faintly rational voice in the whole gruesome exercise.
The trouble is they also spooned in someone called Professor Stephen Owen – Aids panel facilitator – who, with an exhibition of virtuoso gobbledygook, shunted the whole affair back in the realm of the adamantly ridiculous – where it rightly belongs.
What emerged from the entire exercise is the continuing and blatant bias of the SABC. Anyone with a contrary view to Mbeki’s was given scarcely a look-in. The SABC is today more obsequious a tool of government than ever it was under the Nats. Our public broadcaster has yet to be anything like independent of political control.
And now some copious kudos for the Carte Blanche team and their exposure of yet more corruption at the core of Chief Buthelezi’s Department of Home Affairs. Mind you, when the KwaZulu-Natal administration appoints suspected murderers to run its prisons, there can’t be much surprise in seeing that the Department of Home Affairs is as contaminated.
The piece investigated the appalling human disgrace of in particular Lindela, the Gauteng holding centre for illegal immigrants, which, it is already well proven, operates more like a concentration camp. Hidden cameras revealed bribes being taken by minor officials at the home affairs side of the camp, their hostility and violence when confronted with proof – another camera showed them looting the Carte Blanche vehicle for the tapes.
What was most revealing were the investigations made via the records of the Registrar of Companies and which showed dubious behind-the-scenes manipulations involving the changing of names and dates, the elaborate camouflage of those who own and profit mightily from Lindela. The enterprise gets up to R52- million a year from the government. Is it a surprise to see what Carte Blanche revealed: that a list of Lindela’s owners, starting with Lindiwe Sisulu, reads like a who’s who of the ANC?
It was Sisulu who put the whole thing into perspective. Contacted by Carte Blanche, she refused to comment, saying that the matter had previously been dealt with by the media. It seems that as long as your atrocious hustle has been exposed it’s quite okay to go on with it, just as before.
Carte Blanche’s piece was as fine an example of investigative reporting as you’ll find.