With just three days to go to the kick-off of the African Cup of Nations, it is unclear whether South Africans will be able to watch Africa’s premier soccer spectacle on television.
The Mail & Guardian has established that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is still in negotiations with SportFive on whether it will screen the soccer tournament.
At the heart of the negotiations lies the disputed R1-billion contract that the SABC is reported to have signed with SportFive for the TV rights to all games of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for the next eight years.
Sources close to the negotiations confirmed that there was an attempt to resolve the dispute by Friday so that local soccer fans would be able to watch the tournament.
Pay TV broadcaster Multichoice has the rights to broadcast the tournament to the rest of Africa, but does not have the rights for South Africa.
However, the M&G has established that Multichoice’s sports arm Supersport has been in negotiations with the SABC regarding the dispute.
‘Waiting for clarity’
The M&G is in possession of an internal SABC email in which staff are ordered to cease all reference to the African Cup of Nations event.
‘We are waiting for clarity regarding the broadcast of this event,” states the email.
A second internal SABC email states that the decision is legally binding and that no contact should be made with officials of SportFive.
Sources at the public broadcaster told the M&G this week that the national broadcaster has pulled all promotion of the tournament following legal advice.
‘It was our lawyers who decided we shouldn’t promote the tournament because it would look like we are agreeing that we do have a contract,” said an SABC source.
SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said on Wednesday that the broadcaster was still negotiating with SportFive and that no decision had been made about broadcasting the tournament.
‘Negotiations may go either way, so we don’t want to preempt them,” said Kganyago.
The contract was signed in late 2008 by the SABC’s group executive for content enterprises, Mvuso Mbebe, who has since been suspended by the broadcaster.
The contract was flagged by the SABC’s interim board that picked up that the previous board had not approved the deal.
The interim board felt that the price paid for the contract was excessive and made attempts to renegotiate it.
At the time, interim board member Leslie Sedibe said it was ‘shocking” that such huge sums were agreed to in the contract when it would be difficult to recoup the costs because Bafana Bafana would not be playing in the tournament.
However, in December last year, SportFive took the SABC to court in France, demanding that it pay up.
The French court dismissed SportFive’s case, stating that the matter could not be dealt with under the French civil code as the SABC was contesting the validity of the contract and whether or not it had been properly authorised by the SABC board.
Sedibe said that the ruling allowed the broadcaster to reopen negotiations with SportFive.
‘We believe that we can resolve the issues through negotiations, rather than deal with this through the courts,” said Sedibe.
However, the M&G understands that SportFive intends contesting the court judgement.