SABC must give us the best of all worlds

Muna Lakhani (“Pale people, we want our airwaves all African”, Letters, June 17), there’s nothing pale about me. Mixed African, European and Asian, I am olive-skinned and of the people who evolved at the Cape over the past 350 years.

My African renaissance has no borders, taking from all the culture and knowledge available to me — from whichever continent I wish to draw on. That is what freedom means. This does not make me any less of an African, and I hope the SABC will in future select the very best of African culture and international material for its viewers and listeners.

Great art, literature, music, the best education and science are for the benefit of all, and should particularly be made available to working people, who have the least opportunities. Instead, the SABC is turning into a state broadcaster, a mouthpiece for the ruling elite.

“Cultural knowledge” is certainly held by all Africans, but the “cultural knowledge” of the acting chief operating officer of the SABC, the public broadcaster serving a diverse population of more than 50-million people, is required to extend somewhat further than the boundaries of South African tribal societies.

Don’t do the African people (all of us) the injustice of denying them access to everything of the best human creativity has to offer. —