Filmmakers fast in protest against SABC’s local content cuts
”The first three days of the hunger strike are the hardest,” said TV director Michael Lee, who, on Tuesday, reached the 30th day of his hunger strike in protest against the SABC’s treatment of local television production houses.
Wearing the hat of a food nutritionist, the American-born Lee said that during those three days sugar particles in the liver are broken down, and when those are exhausted the body gobbles up any form of nourishment that comes its way.
”In hunter-gatherer mode”, Lee said, ”the body shifts to plan B — burning up muscle — and then to plan C, consuming fat for energy”.
Another five television industry players have followed Lee, aiming at 21-day fasts ”to bring to the attention of the nation what the SABC is doing to the nation”, how ”insensitive” the organisation has become and the scant regard it has for filmmakers.
Production manager Zamambo Tshabalala planned to be on day five by Friday, Afda film school student Keitumetse Qhali on day three, fellow film student, the appropriately monikered Aluta Mlisana, on day eight and writer Thabiso Mafane on day 12. Gwen Britz, of the Television Industry Emergency Coalition, was also aiming to be on day 12.
The coalition is protesting against the SABC’s massive cuts of local content in its attempt to claw its way out of a financial black hole. But this will result in repeats, a decline in original programming and ”a crash in the local production industry”, the strikers said. They intend to continue their hunger strikes until the SABC makes a business plan public that is ”acceptable to the majority of stakeholders”.
Lee broke his fast on Wednesday. In a cotton-soft voice akin to a loud whisper, he told a press conference that the hunger strike was not personally motivated because he had not worked for the SABC since last year.
To avoid falling ill he had weekly medical check-ups. On day four of the strike he began having ”anxiety dreams”, followed by ”beautiful dreams” in which he ”felt calm, straight and clear”.
He developed what he called a special relationship with water — ”in my second week it became my best friend” — and ended his strike for health reasons, having shed 11kg.
Lee said he was struck by the fact that people did not have the same uncompromising attitude to the SABC as they did to failures of service delivery. ”People seem not to know that’s it’s their broadcaster, that the SABC is their platform,” he said.
The SABC was ”totally undemocratic”, he said, and, in 30 years, had ”never been an agent of demoÂÂcracy”. In a prepared statement he expressed sadness that the SABC ”has still not contacted us, or extended any humane gesture of goodwill”. But his ad-libs were more acerbic: the SABC ”is more intransigent than the British were to the IRA”.
SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago told the Mail & Guardian he had not gone to the strikers’ press conference because they wanted to use the opportunity ”to throw insults at the SABC”.
He insisted that the broadcaster has ”never said it is cutting content”: the SABC is simply ”deferring programming because we won’t be able to pay now. We have made a commitment, we know we owe them and we can’t incur more debt when we still owe them.”
Lee, who has begun eating light food, said the strike ”is a rolling action that will continue” until the SABC satisfactorily addresses the concerns of the television industry.
Meanwhile, Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda has said government will increase its financial contribution to the SABC to reduce the public broadcaster’s reliance on commercial income.
Nyanda told the M&G that he had asked the ministerial task team, established earlier this year, to develop a rescue strategy for the SABC. This will involve formulating a model that will enable government to increase its annual contribution to the public broadcaster.
The ANC has proposed that the SABC’s reliance on advertising be reduced dramatically by raising the state’s contribution to the public broadcaster’s revenue to 60% annually by 2010.
The state’s contribution to the SABC’s annual revenue is 2% and the broadcaster receives 76% of its operating income from commercial sales and advertising and 18% from licences.
The task team will present Nyanda with a detailed report on the new funding model in the next few weeks.