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The Economic Freedom Fighters were direct victims of editorial interference and marginalisation at the SABC, a commission of inquiry into the public broadcaster heard on Monday.
The commission, chaired by the Press Council’s executive director Joe Thloloe, is looking into political and editorial interference at the state broadcaster.
In May, the SABC announced that the commission would investigate the veracity of interference in the newsroom and probe “personal favours” in the workplace.
Read: SABC sets up inquiries into editorial interference, sexual harassment
Acting group chief executive Nomsa Philiso made the announcement, saying that the investigations were part of “fixing what’s wrong before it festers”.
“For the SABC, integrity of news is key and while we’re in a phase of renewal in the newsrooms, we also want to future-proof them to make sure some mistakes of the past don’t happen again,” she said at the time.
For the editorial inquiry, the commission was looking into the periods between 2012-2018, because that is when, according to Philiso, the “wheels may have started to fall off”.
“We will look at the news diaries of those periods and whether there was – aside from political interference – any commercial, non-governmental organisation, or pressure group interference,” she said.
Making his submissions on Monday before the inquiry, EFF spokesperson Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi claimed that the party was “marginalised as a new player and opposition political party, particularly before and during the general elections of 2014”.
Ndlozi claimed that, when other media platforms invited the party during its launch, Morning Live refused to do so. In 2016, former SABC chief executive Jimi Matthews reportedly admitted that the public broadcaster deliberately banned the EFF and its leader Julius Malema.
Ndlozi said during that time, Matthews was quoted as saying the EFF and its leader were a “nuisance”.
“Although Mr Matthews never testified under oath to this effect, neither in front of the [parliamentary] inquiry or any other authorities, as far as we are concerned, he is on public record,” he said.
Ndlozi also alleged that former SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng “explicitly asked us to retreat on criticism in Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications in exchange for more coverage.
“We obviously did not retreat and we were at the forefront of holding accountable and demanding a parliamentary inquiry into the SABC.”
He also claimed that there had always been an attempt by the ANC to “marginalise and force marginalisation of opposition coverage”.
“The idea that I am a dominant political party in Parliament and therefore I must get more news coverage is not only absurd, it reflects a very fascist attitude.
“As long as the ANC is not doing anything new, they don’t deserve any news coverage at all,” he said.
He said any station that gave the party a platform would be criticised internally.
“In fact, many producers, if not all producers who invited us to their shows and platforms they were responsible for, would always share with us that inviting the EFF and its leader Julius Malema came at a price and pressure from management.”
Philiso said they hoped to have a draft report ready by early August on the preliminary findings from the commissions.
– Additional reporting by News24
