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We now have an election date – May 8 – which will see the culmination of what are undoubtedly the most hotly contested elections in our country’s democratic history.
Alongside the imperative for the Independent Electoral Commission to act impartially while conducting the elections, to ensure a free and fair assessment of the electorate’s wishes, the SABC is, once again, in the spotlight.
The end-of-year hiatus has pushed the crisis at the public broadcaster off the agenda, helped, no doubt, by the crisis at power utility Eskom. It seems we can deal with the implosion of only one state-owned enterprise at a time.
It’s time to refocus attention on the SABC.
South Africa has ratified and is obliged to comply with the African Union’s African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, 2007. Article 17(3) of the charter requires state entities to “ensure fair and equitable access by contesting parties and candidates to state-controlled media during elections”.
Not to be alarmist, but without a functioning, independent board responsible for overseeing the SABC’s operations during the run-up to the elections, how can government really guarantee compliance with its obligations to the charter? Worse, what if the SABC runs out of money before then and cannot even operate in April or May?
The SABC has been unable to meet its obligations to creditors (numerous content providers have yet to be paid long-outstanding invoices), and its board is inquorate and unable to operate. Each of these problems poses a direct and significant threat, not only to the broadcaster’s sustainability, but, in my view, to the credibility of the elections themselves.
The SABC is the voice the majority of South Africans rely on to obtain information about news and current affairs. Remember that nearly half of the country’s citizens have no access to the internet, and a vast number don’t have access to TVs – only radios.
Because the SABC has not been given a government guarantee (note, not a bailout), it might well run out of funding to cover salaries and other operational expenses as early as next month. At the same time, the board cannot adopt strategies such as the new editorial policies, which are awaiting board approval – editorial policies that must be in place before the election.
As the SABC itself reported, President Cyril Ramaphosa has “dismissed claims that the ANC is trying to collapse the SABC board so it can take full control of the public broadcaster to advance the party’s election campaign”.
The deadline for nominations of candidates to fill the vacancies of eight SABC nonexecutive board members passed in December. At the time, Parliament’s communications committee chairperson Hlengiwe Mkhize was quoted by SABC news as saying: “We … will meet in mid-January and the committee will meet and determine the quality and the number of applications, and we will further communicate with the public. It’s hoped that the interviewing process and the final approval of the recommended candidates by the National Assembly will have been concluded in February.”
Well, we are now in the second half of February and, to date, the committee has failed to even compile a short list of candidates, let alone conduct interviews and recommend candidates to the president. We are being told that the nominees are subject to qualifications checks, which take time. Indeed, they do, but why vet all nominees? At most, it would be necessary to vet only those who are short-listed and, in any event, qualifications checks can be done simultaneously with the interview processes and prior to the final recommendation stage.
And the guarantee? It is well known that Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams publicly stopped engaging with the SABC board at the end of last year over its stance (since changed) that retrenchments might be necessary to cut costs. While it appears she has been engaging with management in the interim, the lack of apparent progress on the guarantee cannot be allowed to continue, particularly after her recent “hand over the camera” debacle, when she forcibly prevented an SABC camera operator from filming a protest at the launch of the ANC’s election manifesto in the Eastern Cape. She has apologised for the censorious error, and has met with the SA National Editors’ Forum to reconfirm her commitment to freedom of expression and access to information.
Read: Ndabeni Abrahams' not so free media
However, if Ndabeni-Abrahams, Mkhize and Ramaphosa want to demonstrate their commitment to ensuring the public broadcaster is able to fulfil its legislative and international treaty obligations to provide citizens with accurate, fair and impartial election coverage, they had better start acting together to do two things immediately – fill the vacancies on the board and provide the SABC with a government guarantee so it can secure commercial bank loans. If they don’t attend to both issues urgently, the inescapable conclusion will be that it suits the governing party just fine to have an inquorate and/or collapsed SABC ahead of the elections.
The last thing this country needs is a credible court challenge to the elections results based on the inability of the SABC to cover the process properly or due to political interference at the broadcaster of the kind South Africa has committed to preventing in terms of its obligations under the elections charter.
Limpitlaw is an electronic communications law consultant and visiting adjunct professor at the Link Centre at Wits University
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