South Africa’s advertising industry will appear before
Parliament’s communications committee on Tuesday to report back on progress made in transforming the industry following last year’s hearings into racism.
Weekend newspaper reports said the industry was divided on what steps needed to be taken to redress the situation.
Johannesburg firm, The Agency, reportedly wanted to make an individual submission. It did not want to be part of a unified front consisting of the Association for Communication and Advertising, the Marketing
Federation of South Africa, the Communications and Advertising Forum for Empowerment and the Media Directors Circle.
The two-day hearings in Parliament will include reports from industry bodies and the government, as well as inputs on advertising spend, empowerment, representivity and regulation.
At last year’s hearings, committee chairman Nat Kekana (ANC) and several media consultants cautioned against legislative intervention. Others such as The Agency chairman, Jannie Ngwale, said such a measure might be necessary.
Ngwale told MPs last year that the ignorance or naivete of white people could no longer be an acceptable excuse for continuing racist practices in the advertising industry.
The advertising industry had to play an important role in helping to create a non-racial South Africa,
”perhaps more so than most industries because its work is at the heart of shaping ideas”, he said.
Real black shareholding and not tokenism was the first necessary step to transformation.
Moreover, there also had to be a commitment to employment equity, he said.
”We cannot continue to argue that there are no blacks fit enough to employ in this industry, if blacks run government, parastatals, the Reserve Bank, mining houses and other businesses.” – Sapa