South Africa: Mokoetle’s record bodes ill for change at the SABC [opinion]

While senior leaders in the African National Congress (ANC) are fighting among themselves over the spoils of the national democratic revolution, things are falling apart. They are not paying attention to issues that matter, and after 15 years of the ANC in office, education is worse than it was under apartheid.

Proposed remedies are nothing but band- aids, which are bound to fail . Another example of this is the so-called transformation of the SABC.

How can Parliament appoint a new board but retain an old hack as CEO? It is a farce, and the prognosis surely is self-evident. Shortly after being appointed to a senior position for the first time, Solly Mokoetle was quoted as saying: “It’s zero tolerance for any amount of malpractice. No manager or editor will do things without being accountable.”

As he specifically mentioned managers and editors, we may assume that he was referring, in the case of managers, to corruption and wasteful expenditure and, in the case of editors, contraventions of the Broadcasting Act of 1999, which obliges the SABC to “provide significant news and public affairs programming which meets the highest standards of journalism, as well as fair and unbiased coverage, impartiality, balance and independence from government, commercial and other interests”.

Mokoetle is by vocation, training and background a propagandist — he broadcast on Radio Freedom, the ANC’s radio station in exile. It was on his watch that the SABC embarked on a programme of censorship by the omission of any news that exposed the ruling party’s systemic corruption.

The two most significant ruling party scandals, those that have shaped our political and economic landscape, have been the arms deal scandal — in particular President Jacob Zuma ’s involvement in it — and the Eskom blackouts. On Mokoetle’s watch, news of both was consistently suppressed.

This matter first came to light in March 2003, when former SABC broadcaster Pat Rogers complained to the SABC and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission that the SABC was censoring by omission a story that was dominating the headlines in other media — including e.tv — that the Scorpions were investigating the then deputy president Zuma and his involvement in the arms deal .

Six months later, then SABC CE Peter Matlare further attempted to prevent coverage of the issue.

In February 2005, the SABC suppressed news that businessman Richard Young had subpoenaed government papers showing that the Mbeki regime had sanitised arms deal reports . It also suppressed later reports that the government had paid Young a R15m out-of-court settlement, an acknowledgment at taxpayers’ expense that the deal was corrupt.

Then, on November 11 2005, the first of Eskom’s rolling blackouts hit Cape Town, throwing the city into chaos. Yet not a single picture was shown on the SABC’s 7pm English news bulletin — another example of the news corruption that existed while Mokoetle held a senior position at Auckland Park.

This unconstitutional censorship by omission is still being prosecuted with venom by the corrupt cabal of news staff left in place by the departing Snuki Zikalala, and who, so far, are still untouched.

It was on Mokoetle’s watch that the SABC incurred its first major losses, when Thaninga Shope and Molefe Mokgatle left the SABC in 2001, with no attempt to recover the more than R350m they had spent on programming that was never broadcast. The looting, from board level downwards, escalated thereafter and all we know is the loss to the taxpayer has been more than R2bn — R1bn stolen and wasted and R1bn in bail-outs. We also know that nobody at the SABC has been dismissed, not a cent has been recovered, and no charges have been laid.

Will the new board take action and assert its autonomy? Or, will we see a Damascene conversion in Mokoetle? Will he buck the system and fire Zikalala’s corrupt cabal? Will the looters be dismissed and charged? Will the pervasive censorship by omission end? If we cannot clean up the SABC, we can never hope to transform the education system or other critical aspects of South African life.

 

- January 28, 2010 by Rhoda Kadalie

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Source: www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx (accessed on 29.01.2010)