Recent weeks have seen the SABC at its most brazenly hypocritical. It called a press conference in order to try to bamboozle as many as it could about its proposals to assign its news content decisions to the corporation’s top officers, effectively removing editorial independence from its newsrooms. The chairman of the SABC board, Vincent Maphai, smugly assured everyone that the rights and independence of SABC news editors would not be disabled and that only news of “crucial” importance would be subject to board and administrative control.
The credibility of the corporation was of prime importance, said Maphai smoothly. To that he attached the obligatory blather about democratic intentions. What he didn’t even try to explain was where a defining line might be drawn between what constitutes news fit to be disseminated by SABC editors and news of a nature that in future will be subject to board and executive approval.
Why this new proposal is deemed necessary is hard to understand. An evening or so later the corporation’s main television news bulletin again showed that the current array of lickspittle SABC editors can safely be relied upon to present the news in exactly the way the Union Buildings bosses want it presented.
The bulletin’s first story was about the protest strikes in Zimbabwe called by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). According to the SABC, by Wednesday the week-long nationwide strikes had already all but petered out. Most business concerns had re-opened their doors, there was little protest action. The police and defence force patrolled an Harare that was back to normal life. Most workers were back at their jobs.
To back up its concoction the SABC spoke of an “exclusive interview” it had been granted by Robert Mugabe and from which selected sound bites were included in the news item. Mugabe sounded off in his usual manic fashion saying how deeply he regretted having been forced to use tear gas and batons on his beloved people, that he did so only in the interests of peace and security. It was the stuff of some profane satire.
All other news sources told a completely different story. To its eternal credit, e.tv broadcast the facts: that most Harare business concerns were still closed despite their having been threatened with retributive action by the government. People were still staying away from work. The police and soldiers were abroad, beating and arresting anyone they liked. Scouring overseas and local newspapers I found reports filed on the same day from Harare, all of which told the truths the SABC sidestepped. There was just too much of this witness not to be believed.
None of this deserved mention in what the SABC editors had presented as a true picture of the Zimbabwe crisis. According to their bulletins the whole MDC strike protest was a damp squib. Clearly SABC editors don’t want to be lumped in with those journalists accused by Thabo Mbeki as perpetuating invidious myths about black leaders being capable of political depravity. But then, the first casualty when joining the SABC news team is of a journalist’s balls, coupled with an increased agility of the tongue. The Cliff Saunders legacy thrives vigorously on in the likes of Phil Molefe. One marvels at how low our national broadcaster sinks when it awards a whole hour to Molefe’s grovelling interview with Mugabe. Is this what’s meant by Thami Mazwai-style objectivity?
You have to be phenomenally credulous to accept as justifiable a proposal that puts the major national news forum under the direct control of senior government politicians; even more stupid to believe that the executives of the SABC are independent of such power-mongers. For more than 50 years the SABC has been an obedient mouthpiece to the country’s rulers. It owns about as much credibility as the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation under its patron, Mugabe. What the SABC depicts about Zimbabwe is what Mbeki, his slavish minister of foreign affairs and all the rest of an increasingly politically manipulative administration want the SABC to depict.
In short, the SABC is, was and always will be a whore. It was first pushed on to its back shortly after 1948 when the Nats took over. They soon exploited the scope of its influence. Since then it’s been a case of refining SABC administration to align with the cruder modes of professional brothels. Until the early 1990s the SABC was cheapside knock shop to the apartheid government. Its board meetings were preceded by meetings of the Broederbond held in the Nasionale Pers buildings. Today Maphai holds the same position as was once held by the senior SABC procurer for the National Party, chairman Piet “Goering” Meyer. Just a glance at today’s SABC administration and it’s easy to identify current surrogates for Malan’s, Strjdom’s, Verwoerd’s, Vorster’s, Botha’s and De Klerk’s line of pimps, dutiful enforcers and “creative” bouncers.
Oh well, it is the oldest profession. What would earn Maphai real credibility is if he would admit what the SABC licence fee really purchases: short-time, all-night, hand-job, anal. All available at Auckland Park.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby