The possible appointment of Dr. Snuki Zikalala as managing director of news and current affairs at the SABC has been a running story in all the major papers for a few months now. The angle? That Zikalala could undermine the editorial independence of the SABC by manipulating the news towards a pro-government stance, and that in turn key news personnel are fleeing. Both Zikalala and board chairman Eddie Funde have strongly denied these allegations, so readers of the papers are left at a bit of a loss.
On the one hand it is not unusual for public broadcasters on the African continent to be controlled by the government. In South Africa, there are very recent memories of a state-controlled SABC that was a key instrument in propagating apartheid policies. Alternative points of view, robust journalism, and languages other than Afrikaans and English were explicitly disallowed to that SABC. So there is in the public consciousness and in the media the following default view: never again shall a key means of freedom of expression be left in the hands of pro-government journalists and managers.
In part, this explains the constant stream of articles alleging bias on the part of the current SABC. Of course, this vigilant attitude is a positive thing because, once lost, editorial independence is not easily regained. Further, without freedom of expression and editorial independence almost all freedoms exist at the whims of those who wield power.
But naturally there’s more to it. South Africa is still a new democracy. The ANC may be a majority party, but it has not attained hegemonic control of society and its institutions (including the media) to the extent that it avoids daily questioning of its decisions or suspicion about its intentions. The existence of opposition parties and civil society organisations that see themselves as watchdogs over hard-won freedoms creates a situation of near permanent contestation over society’s direction.
Consequently, when people who openly announce their allegiance to the ANC get positions (even in open processes) in key institutions, alarm bells ring. Strictly speaking, both Funde and Zikalala got into their positions through prescribed processes; they were not parachuted from Luthuli House to Auckland Park. True, the ANC could have used its majority in the portfolio committee on communications to get its preferred candidate through as board chair, but most parties in the world (where such a process is the route) would do so. That includes the Democratic Alliance, contrary to its stand that implies only apolitical candidates would get the nod.
That said, there are dangers for political parties that are perceived to be controlling the media – any coverage they get is seen as the result of an invisible hand. In this regard, the ANC has a lot of work to do to ensure that SABC news is not discredited.
And something else is at work here, which is also not a particularly South African phenomenon. There is always a degree of inter media jealousy between private media and public broadcasters, who often get subsidies in the form of license fees and direct government grants or guarantees for loans. Public broadcasters also get preferential treatment in terms of access to senior state officials for exclusive interviews. They often have the widest audience reach too.
Lastly, all the focus on political bias ignores some of the real weaknesses of the SABC, which were articulated by Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions). This is the SABC’s elitist bias, which causes it to favour big business (the advertisers) to the exclusion of the interests and voices of ordinary people. And the newspapers are blind to the criticism of elitism because they are elitist themselves, even though in their case they don’t have a public responsibility not to be.
Tawana Kupe is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Head of the School of Literature, Languages and Media Studies at Wits University.