Former president Jacob Zuma. (Mlungisi Louw/Getty Images)
The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) will apply to join as amicus curiae in the case Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has brought against the SABC to bar it from calling the ruling coalition a government of national unity.
Sanef executive director Reggy Moalusi said the forum would oppose the application, inter alia as an attack on the editorial independence of the public broadcaster.
The MK party filed papers in the Johannesburg high court after the SABC responded to its demand, in a lawyer’s letter sent in late June, to stop using the term by invoking the right to editorial independence.
The broadcaster said it viewed the party’s demand as undue political pressure and an affront to media freedom.
In a founding affidavit signed by Zuma, his party seeks to fashion an argument that greater rights than media freedom are at stake because President Cyril Ramaphosa’s new government is a racist formation that undermines the constitutional call for political redress.
“The so-called GNU amounts to racism in that its spirit and letter does violence to the transformational ethos of the Constitution and the need to heal the divisions of the past.”
Zuma is asking the court to declare the broadcaster’s use of the term “to be unconstitutional and invalid, in terms of section 172 and/or 38 of the Constitution”.
He claimed that by applying it to the ruling coalition, the SABC was also breaching the Broadcasting Act and its own charter because it was misleading the public by disseminating political propaganda.
“The effect of the repeated impugned conduct is to contribute to the golden rule of political propaganda known as the big lie technique and infamously employed by the fascist German Nazi Party.”
He said it was apparently working because world leaders, among them US President Joe Biden, had adopted the term in messages of support to Ramaphosa for his new government.
He argued that the SABC could not rely on section 16 of the Constitution, which guarantees press freedom, because it does not extend to spreading disinformation “and/or the advocacy of hatred that is based on race”.
Therefore the MK party would argue that “this is one of those situations in which the other rights relied upon, including the right to human dignity, ought properly to trump and/or prevail over the right to media freedom”.
He said the application was urgent, given the extent of the alleged harm to the public and the reach of the SABC.
“With every passing hour the alleged violations are repeated across the SABC platforms and in no less than 11 official languages.”
Zuma relies on the Oxford dictionary and Wikipedia for his definition of a government of national unity, and said it applied only to coalitions formed after a national emergency or crisis.
This was not the case in the current South African context, he argued, adding that the governing coalition further fell short of the definition for not including all political parties.
“No cause has been defined around which the nation intends to unite, for or against. Not all major parties have been included.”
Zuma claimed the SABC had been “warned” repeatedly that the term was inaccurate. This included, he said, by former finance minister Tito Mboweni and political analyst and academic William Mervyn Gumede on the current affairs programme It’s Topical on 23 June.
“It would be safe to state that both of them possess more expertise in the subject matter than the relevant decision maker(s) at the SABC and/or, with respect, this honourable court.”
He then cited an address he made to the media in Sandton on the same day, where he described the new government as “a white-led unholy alliance between the DA and Ramaphosa’s ANC” and said “it must be crushed before it finds its feet”.
Zuma said in that speech he cautioned the SABC that calling it a unity government amounted to misleading the poor majority that cannot afford to pay for access to news.
His party, which is contesting the outcome of the May elections, wrote to the SABC on 25 June to demand that it stop using the term within four days.
SABC group chief executive Nomsa Chabeli wrote back on 28 June to reject its demand, which she termed “not only meritless but an irregular step”.
Chabeli noted that the same laws on which the MK party referred to guaranteed its right to freedom in the exercise of its editorial discretion.
“We view your clients’ demands and conduct as undue political pressure, and interference with the SABC’s editorial independence,” she wrote.
“Accordingly, please be advised that the SABC vehemently disagrees with your clients’ assertions, and thus the SABC is not prepared to accede to your clients’ demands.”
Chabeli said if the MK party had a valid editorial complaint it should make use of the company’s editorial dispute resolution mechanism.
“The process your clients must follow involves lodging its complaint, not a demand, directly to the SABC for internal adjudication and decision.”