Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian

SABC attempts to interdict M&G Online

5 min read

The Mail & Guardian Online was on Saturday morning interdicted from publishing the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) report into whether there was a policy blacklisting some commentators because of their political views.

On Saturday night, M&G lawyers were fighting the interdict in the Johannesburg High Court. It is probably the first time that a major South African online news publisher has been interdicted.

Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee, who wrote the original article, ”Inside the SABC blacklist report”, obtained a copy of the 78-page report on Thursday. The report confirmed the existence of an arbitrary blacklist of outside commentators who should not be consulted and said there was a climate of fear in the broadcaster’s newsrooms. It was scathing about the arbitrary decision-making, the iron-fist rule and the lack of editorial knowledge of the news and current affairs managing director Snuki Zikalala.

Commissioners Gilbert Marcus and Zwelakhe Sisulu said that ”it would indeed be abhorrent, and at gross variance with the SABC’s mandate and policies, if practices of the old order were being repeated in the new, with the effect of again disqualifying South Africans from democratic discourse and debate.

”For this reason, we are firmly of the view that this report should be released to the public after consideration by the board.”

The SABC issued a seven-page summary and statement about the ­commission.

On Thursday both the board and the SABC’s group chief executive, Dali Mpofu, said they had ”full confidence” in Zikalala, meaning that he will not lose his job or face other serious sanction.

In the SABC statement, the board ”expressed its full confidence in [Zikalala] and his staff, noting that they operate under very difficult circumstances in an environment that is, rightly or wrongly, always challenging the integrity of the public broadcaster”.

Property of the SABC

The Mail & Guardian Online published the report late on Friday evening and the interdict was served on Saturday morning.

Haffajee said from the High Court in Johannesburg on Saturday night that the SABC’s lawyers argued that it would be detrimental to have the report published on the website and that the report was the property of the broadcaster.

Haffajee said the broadcaster’s lawyers had also argued that publishing the full report would heighten their management problems and violate the trust of their employees.

The SABC lawyers said that 31 of the 39 people that had appeared before the commission were employed by the broadcaster.

What the report said

While the SABC on Thursday reported that the commission had found no evidence of a blacklist of certain commentators, the commission found that:

  • Zikalala banned Business Day political editor Karima Brown from the airwaves, ostensibly because he said her credibility had been dented by a report in her newspaper that required an apology. His reason was ”unsustainable and inconsistently applied”. He later said she could be interviewed about articles she had written.

  • The treatment of analyst Aubrey Matshiqi was ”simply not objectively defensible”. Matshiqi alleges he was taken off air on Zikalala’s instructions. Zikalala denies this. Zikalala objected to Matshiqi on two counts: that an article he wrote in the Sowetan was an incitement to violence (which the commissioners dispute), and because an analysis of Matshiqi’s had linked the outcome of the Schabir Shaik trial to Jacob Zuma. The commission found this to be ”a direct interference with the expression, not simply of a point of view, but one which has dominated political discourse in our country”.

  • While there was no evidence of an outright ban on journalist William Gumede, the report found that ”the judgement passed on Mr Gumede by Dr Zikalala was unfair. While on the evidence it may be true that no instruction was given not to use Mr Gumede, it is inevitable that when views of this sort are expressed by a man in Dr Zikalala’s position, they would be understood and interpreted as amounting to an instruction. This pattern appears to have developed in other instances.”

  • A direct instruction was given not to use Paula Slier [a freelancer in the Middle East] for improper reasons and in direct conflict with the SABC’s policies and codes.

  • While there was no evidence of an outright ban on political analyst Sipho Seepe, Zikalala told his editors that Seepe was ”very controversial” and that Business Day and the Star ”will never use Sipho Seepe”. He considered that Seepe’s articles were ”not articles that were building this nation but articles that were undermining the president”. The report says: ”We are also profoundly concerned that this attitude to Mr Seepe should be conveyed because of his apparent disrespect for the government and the president in particular. It is not the role of the SABC to represent the government or to shield government from criticism.”

  • The commission found direct evidence that Zikalala gave instructions that businessman Moeletsi Mbeki, activist Elinor Sisulu and M&G Media CE Trevor Ncube should not be used as commentators about Zimbabwe. Both Mbeki and Sisulu appeared before the commission. ”Contrary to Dr Zikalala’s impression that they were out of touch, both struck us as having deep roots and connections within Zimbabwe,” the report says. ”This is especially true of Ms Sisulu.” It adds: ”We find that there was an instruction given not to use Mr Mbeki and Ms Sisulu for reasons which are not objectively defensible. We also find that Mr Ncube was directly informed by Dr Zikalala that he could not be used for reasons which are not justifiable.”

  • On AM-Live presenter John Perlman’s explosive on-air interview with SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago, in which Perlman said he had had experience of bans, the commission found that Perlman’s position ”was in conformity with the factual situation”.

    • The commission found ”a number of instances in which instructions were given either not to use a particular analyst or commentator at all, or to use a particular analyst for limited purpose only”, contradicting the broadcaster’s view that there was no evidence of a blacklist.