What is most puzzling about the proposed Broadcasting Amendment Bill is why anyone thought it was needed. Nudging the SABC into fulfilling its “official language” obligations might be necessary, but the nudge could come from far less weighty mechanisms than an entire amendment Bill.
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Installing legislation that will put the SABC news editors under the direct control of a Cabinet minister is a bit like fitting the famous fifth wheel to the wagon. The SABC’s news editors are more than capable of flogging any government’s versions of the truth, they want for no extra undercarriage. This eager journalistic subspecies served South Africa’s previous government with great distinction; their descendants do so for this one. The SABC’s other-than-news programmes also often do little more than hold a mirror up to officially approved prejudices. Witness that appalling SABC programme, Looking Backwards Moving Forwards, aimed at younger children and with the apparently express purpose of installing racial hostility in innocent minds.
Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri does not need some law, some way to force the SABC to manufacture and broadcast the brand of truth she wants to hear. It’s a given. The SABC is like a battered old dog, fascinated only by its fleas. It no longer wonders who’s giving the orders.
Last Sunday’s Newshour on SABC3 was a perfect example of the public broadcaster disseminating a shady piece of government spin-accounting: a mini-documentary extolling the stupendous social and monetary benefits of the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development. It was groan-a-minute stuff. The item throbbed with encomia for the extraordinary success the summit has been. With their unbridled praise, contributors suggested that the summit ranks in historical, scientific and human consequence with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the General Theory of Relativity and the Sermon on the Mount.
The first wild monetary claim was that the summit had “created 18 000 jobs” — how the politicians love that word “create”; it must be the Genesis vibe. What was not mentioned was that these 18 000 jobs were mostly of a temporary nature: people hired to help set up the circus and clean up afterwards. There was no justification in the job-figures for the fortnight’s loss of employment and income of the thousands of pavement traders and hawkers, forcibly removed by police so that Sandton would look First World enough.
According to the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism the summit cost the South African government R500-million, to which was added a further R306-million, from international sponsors, donor agencies (whatever those might be), private companies and so on. All this, it was implied, was a minuscule investment as the summit “brought in” no less than R10-billion.
We’ve all heard of creative accounting but this one deserves some sort of booby prize. So-called “direct spending” was said to have brought in some R2-billion. This whopping figure was reached by some bean-stretching that said every delegate to the summit spent between R17 000 and R40 000. For a start, the arithmetic sucks. Multiply the rather dubious claimed number of 59 000 delegates by the mean of the two figures — R28 500 — and you get just under R1,7-billion. Where was this extra R300-million spent? On tips?
Next was a truly mythological thumb suck that stated the summit caused many of its delegates to promise to cough up some “indirect spending” to the tune of no less than R8-billion — at some vague point in the future, mark you. Here a blithe assumption was being made, based on nothing more substantial than the generous-sounding but ultimately valueless promises about future investment in South Africa that most delegates made just before they disappeared into international departures. Fragile hopes on which to hang extravagant vindications. How could any such figures possibly be determined, moreover with such certitude? What are they smoking up there?
All this blatantly one-sided material the SABC dutifully assembled and sent forth. There were a few brief and badly recorded comments from citizens in the street; the only dissenting one was about seven seconds long. Apart from that, the item included no contrary opinions, no balancing arguments whatsoever. It was the SABC at its sublimely biased, its most spectacularly unprofessional.
All of which begs the obvious question: what is Minister Ivy really trying to achieve with her amendment Bill? Surely by now someone’s told her that this one’s got Constitutional Court written all over it. Surely she can’t believe the SABC could be more slavish than it already is — after all it once even employed her. The purpose of the Bill seems entirely subversive: so far it’s achieved little apart from providing the SABC with an opportunity to stamp and bray about its editorial “independence”, for its board to whinge about threats to its precious “autonomy”. Half-an-hour of any SABC news programme will show how too many fleas can bewilder even the best-paid minds.
As they used to say at the University of Bulgaria: how many light bulbs does it take to change a Snuki Zikalala?
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby