Umsebenzi Online
Umsebenzi Online, Volume 15, No. 22, 1 July 2016
In this Issue:
. Workers are "not free at e": the whole media industry in South
Africa needs a decisive self-introspection, not only the SABC around which
almost all now coalesce in action against wrongdoing.
* SABC believes we can't be trusted with the truth.
Red Alert
Workers are "not free at e"
The whole media industry in South Africa needs a decisive
self-introspection, not only the SABC around which almost all now coalesce
in action against wrongdoing.
http://www.sacp.org.za/pubs/umsebenzi/images/umsebenzi_hand.gif
By Alex Mashilo
The unlawfully appointed SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng's personality cult is
surely one of the factors at play in the ongoing administrative and
governance decay at the SABC. Indeed a personality cult emerges among others
when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods to create
an idealised, heroic, and at times worshipful image, often through
unquestioning flattery, praise and, based on being in charge threats to
others as a means of manufacturing consent. This includes, internally inside
organisations such as the SABC as it has now clearly turned out, the use of
disciplinary processes to stifle engagement, suppress freedom of expression
and other important rights.
Progressive policies such as the 90 percent local content are attributed to
the role of the personality cult and not the organisation. Yet it is the
same personality cult that was probably behind the black-out of the South
African Communist Party's (SACP's) march to the SABC in 2012 and other mass
actions demanding more time and space for progressive local content and an
end to corruption and the corporate penetration that has now graduated to
the level of corporate capture. The black-out and belittling of these
progressive efforts were not dissimilar to the recent action taken at the
SABC that has led to the suspension of three journalists last week and the
hauling of three more this week to processes of disciplinary hearings.
The Guptas-owned ANN7 and The New Age are the worst in such actions and
other maltreatment of workers, as declared by the Congress of South African
Trade Unions (Cosatu).
At the SABC, the main problem lies in the weaknesses embedded in the
structures and processes that allowed for the emergence of the personality
cult that is at the centre of the ongoing administrative and governance
decay. But the SABC as a public institution cannot be understood only from
within. There are public structures that should play an oversight role and
hold the SABC accountable. The public, too, should frankly engage in a
self-introspection because the buck should stop with the public if all other
structures fail.
But the whole media industry in South Africa needs to engage in a decisive
self-introspection despite now almost all coalescing against the rot at the
SABC. The fact of the matter is that there are serious problems that cut
across the board. Some media houses that are playing a "holier than thou"
protagonist character in relation to the death of the journalism profession
and the ongoing administrative and governance decay at the SABC are in fact
worse than the SABC in certain respects. They too, do the same things such
as prohibiting negative coverage of certain personalities showering them
with positive coverage while either not giving others coverage or covering
them in a negative light.
Let us look at the situation facing workers at e.TV/e.NCA and how the media
has treated them as we intensify our condemnation of the rot at the SABC.
Contrast this with the SABC situation. You will recognise that there is
politics in the media that determines at each given time who is covered, how
and who is not covered.
On 10 September 2015
<http://www.sacp.org.za/pubs/umsebenzi/2015/vol14-35.html> Umsebenzi Online
(Vol. 14 No. 35) carried a piece titled "The revolution will not be
televised, is this different for workers in the media, workers at
e.TV/e.NCA". A part of this title, as can be seen, was adopted from Gil
Scott-Heron's "The revolution will not be televised", a phrase Scott-Heron
adopted from the slogan of the 1960s struggles in the United States against
the racist oppression that was suffered by black people.
The piece called for support to workers at e.SAT (commonly known as
e.TV/e.NCA) who had gone out the previous week publicly declaring: "We are
not free at e". They released a statement and said it was time members of
the public know what was going on in the media as the world of work, in
particular at e.TV/ e.NCA. They appealed for support both from the public
and the media industry. The news of their situation did not make it in the
media, starting at e.TV/e.NCA where they are being exploited and said they
suffered various forms of draconian treatment.
The media ignored the plight of the e.TV/e.NCA workers and did not bother to
give them prominent or any coverage at all and organise campaigns in
solidarity with them. The issues they raised are no different from what is
going on at the SABC by the way if not in certain respects worse.
According to the e.TV/e.NCA workers, e.SAT had over 70 percent Black
employees and the viewership is 87 percent Black, yet the top management was
made up of White males only. They wanted this discussed and believed that
the absence of transformation at e-SAT had a negative bearing on news
content and coverage. They wanted to exercise basic employment and labour
rations rights, their constitutional right to freedom of association, to
join a trade union and have a workplace forum to discuss transformation.
They did not find any joy then, indicating, according to what they saw, that
e.TV/e.NCA paid lip service to transformation thus enabling an atmosphere
where racism and racist innuendos thrived. A week before, they said, a White
female employee referred to Indians as "Coolies" on the Output Desk and no
action was taken against her.
The workers further said e.TV/e.NCA's massive Black audience did not find
expression in its editorial policy which was driven by the White-only top
management. They pointed out that at an editorial meeting earlier in 2015 a
top manager said "reporting on rural areas is pointless because the 'middle
class doesn't care about the poor'".
During that time, the e.NCA's Africa Bureau was closed and fifty workers
were retrenched, according to the workers despite the ironical fact that
e.NCA calls itself "e.News Channel Africa". Meanwhile in May the same year
top management received 10 percent salary increases and performance
bonuses", said the workers who further asked "Performance for what? How can
they be rewarded for job losses?"
Let us be consistent!!!!!
. Cde Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson and writes in
his capacity as a full-time professional revolutionary
SABC believes we can't be trusted with the truth
By David Niddrie
As this contribution to Umsebenzi Online is being uploaded, progressive
journalists (among them journalists from the SABC) and media support
organisations will be picketing the SABC's Johannesburg headquarters and
marching to the Constitutional Court.
A similar march is planned for Cape Town.
All are protesting censorship of the public broadcaster's news and current
affairs programming unilaterally imposed by the illegally appointed chief
operations officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
The explanations offered by the SABC for its decision to bar coverage and
broadcasting of violent protests not only lack any credibility but also
demonstrate a level of contempt for ordinary South Africans that has no
place in any democracy, and none at all in an organisation, the ANC, whose
supporters are drawn mainly from among South Africa's working class and poor
communities.
The ANC's own Media Charter not only opposed any restrictions on the right
of the media to report, but imposes on the media a duty to provide South
Africans with accurate information on which they can base decisions that
affect their lives.
And if significant segments of communities in part of the country are
protesting - violently or otherwise - all South Africans are entitled to
know that, they need to know that.
If you withhold that information from them, you effectively lying to them -
lying by omission is lying.
But Motsoeneng has decided - in the name of the SABC, and thus of the
government that formally owns it, and of the people of South Africa who,
directly or indirectly, own and pay for it - that SABC audiences are to be
denied this vital information.
What are the implications?
The overwhelming majority of SABC TV viewers and radio listeners are poor
and working class.
What Motsoeneng has thus decided is that poor and working class South
Africans can't be trusted with the truth. To prevent them blindly joining
the protests or doing something equally irrational (voting for the wrong
party?) he has decided the SABC therefore have to lie to them - lie by
omission, but lie.
This logic is almost inseparable from the kind of logic that prevailed the
last time the SABC imposed similar censorship - in the late 1980s. And it
demonstrates the same level of contempt for the poor and working class South
Africans.
How can a democratically elected government, or an organisation that
produced the Media allow this kind of contempt for so many South Africans to
be blatantly trumpeted to the world by a publicly owned institution?
And we should recall the consequences for the SABC of lying to South
Africans in the 1980s. Ordinary people, working class and poor people, are
not stupid, whatever Motsoeneng may believe. If you lie to them and they
find out you're lying - and they will, just as they did in the 1980s - they
will simply stop believing you, or listening to you.
Motsoeneng and his cohorts have already done untold damage to the SABC.
Officially introducing lying as a news policy could ensure the damage is
fatal.
It is time to put a stop to this, and to do so in the name of the
organisation that gave the country the Freedom Charter and the Media
Charter, the African National Congress, on whose behalf neither Motsoeneng
nor his backers can claim to speak.
We therefore salute today's marchers, and the true heroes of this process,
and the champions of the people: those courageous SABC journalists who have
publicly defied the censorship . those who have already been suspended,
Thandeka Gqubule, Foeta Krige and Suna Venter, and those who have bravely
risked dismissal - Lukhanyo Calata and many others.
They are fighting to defend all South Africans' right and freedom to know
the truth of what is happening in their own country.
By their actions, Motsoeneng and his ilk seem to believe many South Africans
are too irresponsible to have that right.
If the Freedom Charter's promise is to be honoured, that the people shall
govern, it is essential that they do so knowing what is happening around
them, and are armed
We should not forget that the SABC's outgoing head of news Jimi Matthews may
have fled from Motsoeneng's side. But the affidavit he gave to the Icasa
Complaints Committee defending the censorship remains with the committee,
informing its decision, as does the letter he wrote in support of a legal
bid to keep Motsoeneng in his illegally occupied office. If he wishes to
join Gqubule, Krige, Venter and Calata, he should have the courage to
withdraw them publicly and to tell the truth.
. David Niddrie is a media strategist. He was head of strategic
planning at the SABC from 1994 to 1997 and served as a board member on the
SABC board from January to October 2010.
Umsebenzi Online is an online voice of the South African Working class
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UMSEBENZI ONLINE IS THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKING CLASS
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