It isn’t only at Auckland Park that its hard to run a public broadcaster. Just ask Greg Dyke, the BBC director general who was given a push on to his own sword in the aftermath of David Kelly’s suicide, or his successor Mark Thompson, this week hauled over the coals on air by Jeremy Paxman, the legendary presenter of Newsnight, for his plans to reorganise the corporation.
Juggling political pressure, commercial realities and the mandate to produce programming in the public interest while remaining independent is more than most mortals can manage. And SABC chief executive Peter Matlare, for all his obvious talents, wasn’t up to it.
Despite his strenuous protestations to the contrary, it is clear that he was unable to stand up to a board packed with political appointees.
The board clearly believed transformation wasn’t happening fast enough on Matlare’s watch nor, it thought, was its vision of public interest broadcasting, being adequately served. So it set about running the company itself, interfering in programming decisions, cancelling contracts, and altering commissioning briefs.
Matlare and the rest of senior management, by all accounts, simply looked on in horror.
A much more conservative approach to drama programming and branding, an endless parade of Cabinet ministers on the news, and a steady exodus of crucial staff, were some of the results.
To the extent that the departure of Matlare enables Eddie Funde et al to consolidate their power, there is now cause for even more concern.
But it must be said that Matlare was hardly an effective guardian of independence at the SABC. After all, he was unable to prevent the reappointment of Snuki Zikalala to the top news job last year.
The distinction between public broadcasting and state broadcasting at the SABC is now so blurred that it is almost impossible to identify.
What one wants in the CEO of South Africa’s public broadcaster is easy to identify, but hard to find: a commitment to the belief that broadcasting can be a force to improve society, however quaintly Reithian that may sound; a razor-sharp commercial instinct to keep afloat an institution funded by adverts; and a resolute political independence that puts the Constitution and Bill of Rights, rather than the government and the ruling party, at the centre of the frame.
On the evidence of the past year, we are unlikely to see the board even looking for this mythical beast. And perversely it may be that it was precisely his lack of political clout that made it impossible for Matlare to resist political interference.
President Thabo Mbeki recently defended the African National Congress’s practice of deploying its cadres into key posts in his online letter, saying it did so to ensure that those who really understood the aspirations of the masses were best placed to help realise them.
In that context, the best we can hope for is that whoever gets the SABC job, is in the mould of those who have enough political gravitas to forge their own path, and to report to Parliament, rather than Luthuli House.
Tito Mboweni and Bulelani Ngcuka are prominent examples. Nkenke Kekana and Mandla Langa have both been mooted as possible replacements for Matlare, and both of them, on current evidence, could fit the bill.
Perhaps with a chief executive who is independently and confidently able to articulate the role of the public broadcaster in a transforming South Africa at the helm, the government won’t feel the need to meddle quite so much, and perhaps if it does, it will be more firmly put in its place.
Delusions of peace
One should never underestimate the power of self-delusion in politics — particularly among leaders of oppressor states in conflict with national liberation movements. In South Africa, the ruling National Party passed through a series of delusory states before finally coming to the realisation that nothing except freedom and justice would satisfy black people.
It tried to divide and rule, it created dummy states and staged dummy elections, it mounted smear campaigns against organisations with proven mass support, it changed names without changing substance — and it harassed, detained, jailed and assassinated leaders in the deluded belief that it was destroying the movements and ideals they stood for. Likewise in Iraq and the Middle East.
The British and the American governments have entertained a series of fantasies about Iraq: that the invading armies would be greeted with cheers and bouquets by the Iraqi people; that the resistance comprised the remnants of the Ba’ath Party that would melt away; that the arrest of Saddam Hussein would settle the issue; that Iraqis would rejoice in the “sovereignty” handed them by a departing Paul Bremer last year; that the resistance could be cracked by the assault on Fallujah — and now, that elections will mark the advent of true democracy in Iraq.
The harsh reality is that no government elected under the aegis of a foreign invader can win legitimacy. Nor would it survive 10 minutes without massive American firepower.
In Israeli ruling circles, the long-held delusion was that Yasser Arafat was personally orchestrating suicide bombings and constituted the sole obstacle to peace. Now, in the aftermath of lethal attacks on Israeli targets, the same demands for the disarming of Palestinian militants are being hurled at Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas. Ariel Sharon’s first impulse was to break off contact with the Palestinian leadership and order the assassination of militants.
Abbas has neither the means nor — until the Israelis show a real disposition to negotiate — a real inclination to curb the men of violence. The only permanent way to disarm Hamas is for Israel to negotiate a settlement that meets Palestinians’ demands for freedom and justice.