The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) held a picket outside the
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Head Office in
Johannesburg. The protest coincided with the last AM Live show to be
hosted by veteran broadcaster John Perlman. Perlman hung up his mike
under a cloud of controversy about the role of the SABC as a public
broadcaster.
The picket was held to demand a response to a memorandum submitted to the broadcaster by members of the FXI’s Communication Rights Campaign. The memorandum was handed over during a march in November 2006 and no response from the SABC.The memorandum raised a number of issues of concern to various communities that the SABC claims to serve. Chief among these was that the SABC seemed to be drifting from its mandate of being a public broadcaster and seemed to be setting itself up as a propaganda arm of the government. The memo also included concerns around the content of news, the blacklisting of commentators, the non-screening of the documentary on President Thabo Mbeki, among other issues.
The SABC’s lack of response to the memorandum also prompted the FXI to lay a 20-page complaint with ICASA over the SABC’s violation of the Broadcasting Act and of its licence conditions. The FXI’s complaint can be read at http://www.fxi.org.za
These violations are an indictment of the ability of the Board to govern a public broadcaster. And while most of the attention on the SABC in the wake of the blacklisting saga was focused on SABC’s Director of News, Snuki Zikalala, the FXI’s picket also sought to draw attention to the fact that the current SABC Board is not fit to run the public broadcaster. Members of the Board are our public representatives, appointed by parliament, and will not let excused.
The picketers called for the Board to be replaced by people who are, as the Broadcasting Act states, "committed to fairness, freedom of expression, the right of the public to be informed and openness and accountability on the part of those holding public office".
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