Daily Dispatch

SABC – a real live freakshow

LAST December was calamitous financially and politically. This one seemed milder until Monday spat into our faces revelations about the SABC so bizarre and frightening that they were emotionally draining for anyone still hanging on to the dream of a semi-functional South African democracy.

Indeed, if what has been going on at the SABC under the Zuma administration is any measure of how far we have strayed off course as a nation, then we are very far from home, somewhere out in the deep blue yonder, possibly near the outer Hebrides en route to the Arctic Ocean.

And if the state of affairs at the SABC is a microcosm of the greater wrack and ruin caused in the Zuma years, then little is left of the institutions that we, as a nation, had hoped to erect and strengthen upon our world famous foundation, the constitution.

That the SABC does not exist was made plain this week during a parliamentary ad hoc committee hearing. Turns out that what we thought was the state broadcaster is actually a freakshow – one in which both the purpose of public service and the profession of journalism have been so abused and misshapen that it is now the stuff of spectacle.

In fact, the SABC of December 2016 is not unlike Saartjie Baartman who was put on a stage in London by cruel masters in order to make money out of her.

It beggars belief that Hlaudi Motsoeneng, an individual without sufficient basic education let alone the requisite professional skills, has been able to so thoroughly asset strip this massive enterprise. And not only did he turn it into a personal fiefdom but a financial prop for a Gupta-owned company. How did we ever get here? The seasoned journalist Thandeka Gqubule – one of eight fired for going against the grain – told parliament that politicians constantly dictated how journalists should cover stories. But, she said, the crisis in the newsroom did not necessarily start with Motsoeneng – he merely “exacerbated” the situation with “crude underhandedness”.

Space precludes an examination of the origins of the SABC’s problems. For the purposes of this editorial we will confine ourselves to the present administration. The most important point is that Motsoeneng did not rise to such dizzy heights of power by himself. Nor has he managed to stay there unaided.

Rather, in defiance of all procedural norms he was strong-armed into place by the Minister of Communications Faith Muthumbi who later fought hard to disregard the Public Protector’s sanction against retaining him.

All of this happened under a cloak of presidential favour and under the noses of sycophantic parliamentarians. It also represents a design that is uncomfortably close to the pattern of Eskom – the one revealed in the Public Protector’s State of Capture report.

Meanwhile Muthumbi continues to reveal an astonishing inability to appreciate the parameters of her position. This week it emerged that she had been part of the interministerial committee delegation that met bankers to discuss the closure of Gupta bank accounts. Muthambi was however, not appointed to that committee by the cabinet.