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DA: Phumzile Van Damme: Address by DA Shadow Minister of Communications, on the Communications Budget Vote, Parliament (06/05/2016)

DA: Phumzile Van Damme: Address by DA Shadow Minister of Communications, on the Communications Budget Vote, Parliament (06/05/2016)

6th May 2016

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Honourable Chairperson,

Under Apartheid, the government controlled what the people of South Africa were allowed to watch, listen to, read, say and think.

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It was able to do so because it exercised total control over all aspects of print and broadcast media in South Africa, thus limiting free speech and restricting the flow of information.

The SABC , in particular existed to entrench the Apartheid government’s power and was its de facto mouthpiece and conduit for propaganda.

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To guaranteee that the SABC would continue to be its mouthpiece, the Apartheid government ensured that it had the sole authority to appoint board members and staff of the SABC. It also determined the SABC’s editorial content and programming.
When in 1994 South Africa attained freedom, the drafters of the Constitution agreed never again to allow this to happen again.

Various sections were drafted into the Constitution protecting free speech, the freedom and independence of the press and creating an independent authority to regulate broadcasting in the public interest.

In the years after 1994, legislation and policy was approved creating greater openness, accountability and independence of South Africa’s broadcast and print media.

Fast-forward to present-day South Africa, and, boy, have things backslidden.

Because the ANC is under pressure at the polls and stands to lose support in a number of major municipalities, it now, like the government before it, seeks total control over South Africa’s public print and broadcast media.

Over the last year, Faith Muthambi, the Minister of Communications, or rather, the Minister of Propaganda has embarked on a state capture project to once again ensure that government has total control over public broadcasting, in particular.

The project will reverse the culture of openness, accountability and independence of the sector leave South Africa’s hard-won rights to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought and right to receive and impart information severely compromised. All this, in the name of keeping the flailing ANC in power.

First in Minister Muthambi ’s total control project was the Films and Publications Amendment Bill.

If passed, this Bill will give the government the right to censor communications by all Internet users in South Africa, including digital news media outlets. This will be done by the imposition of heavy penalties by a Penalty Committee, a body appointed by the Minister and Cabinet. This Penalty Committee will not only restrict freedom of speech online, but is likely to be used as a political hit squad.

The Broadcasting Amendment Bill is another draft law in the Minister’s total control project. The Bill will remove Parliament’s role in the appointment of the SABC’s non-executive board members, and give the Minister and the President, members of the executive, the power to do so.

Along with the Memorandum of Incorporation secretly signed by Minister Muthambi in September 2014, her office will through this bill have total control over the SABC board. Combined with the power she already has to appoint the CEO, COO an CFO of the SABC, the Minister will have now firm control over the SABC’s day-to-day operations, killing its independence.

Honourable Chairperson, the Memorandum of Incorporation is unfortunately not the only document the Minister has signed in secret in order to gain total control of the SABC.

In my hand, I have the SABC’s revised Editorial Policy, approved, in secret, by the SABC board and Minister Muthambi in February 2016.

Had it not been for a parliamentary question I submitted, the public would have never known that the SABC had finalized its Editorial Review Process and according to Minister Muthambi, already implementing the revised policy. Had it not been for the likelihood that we would go to court to gain accesses to this revised policy, the Minister made it available to me after I wrote to her, and requested it.

But I ask Minister, why was the final revised policy kept a secret, and no draft policy released for public comment like during the 2004 Editorial Review process?

Despite an undertaking by the SABC in 2014 that there would be thorough consultation on a draft Editorial Policy, this did not happen.

Instead, by your own admission, the final Editorial Policy was presented and approved by the SABC board following an “internal review process”.

I ask again Minister, why the secrecy?

Is it because, as is evident in a thorough reading of the revised policy, that the government has, by stealth, captured the SABC’s editorial content and programming?

In the policy, the COO of the SABC, the infamous Hlaudi Motsoeneng is given “…the final overall responsibility for SABC content”.

What giving Hlaudi Motsoeneng full responsibility for the SABC’s content means, is that a person appointed by and beholden to the Minister – a political appointee – will have final say on content, thus giving the Minister and the ANC government direct control over the SABC’s editorial decisions and programming.

Another problematic inclusion in the revised policy is that it makes the principle of “upward referral” mandatory and Motsoeneng’s decision on all editorial issues, made final. Editors and content creators are threatened with severe consequences should they not refer “contentious” matters to their superiors and Mr Motsoeneng.

This is a complete U-turn from the old policy, where it was made clear that it is not management’s role to make day-to-day programming and newsroom decisions and although not ideal, upward referral was largely voluntary.

This mandatory upward referral will have a major detrimental effect on journalistic freedom at the SABC.

As indicated by the Freedom of Expression Institute journalists are on the coalface of accessing information for the broadcaster and as a result they are more in touch with the news as it happens than the broadcaster’s management. Managers are not practicing journalists and even if some in management of the SABC are former journalists themselves, it would still be a matter of principle that editorial decisions should be left in the hands of editors.

There is absolutely no reason for upward refefal to the COO at the SABC, the public broadcaster has a legal department where contentious issues can be consulted.

Honourable Chairperson, it is no wonder that the Minister has suspended the GCEO of SABC for reasons she has chosen to keep secret. It was to help Hlaudi Motsoeneng build an empire.

We are told that such is Motsoeneng’s desire to centralize and exercise total control over the SABC, that reporters in the regions have to apply to his office to use vehicles to cover stories. In some instances it takes up to five days for this approval to given.

I have noticed Honourable Chairperson that almost every day there is a puff piece about Motsoeneng on SABC news, presenting him as some sort of magnanimous demigod.

Enjoy this while it lasts. We will see you in court this month, and you know, we do not lose.

Honourable Chairperson,

President Zuma has established this department as his Department of Propaganda and Faith Muthambi is delivering on that mandate.

The ongoing failure of South Africa’s migration to digital broadcasting must rate as the most spectacular blunder of the current Cabinet in general and Minister Muthambi in particular.

Digital Migration is about freeing the airwaves in order to allow the poor and marginalised people – particularly in rural areas – access a wide world of knowledge, government and commercial services and educational and economic opportunities.

Minister Muthambi’s misguided meddlings are denying these people the opportunities to better their lives and use their hard-won freedoms. This ANC government is unfairly widening the digital divide.

While the Department and its entities’ Strategic Plans and Annual Performance Plans have some noble intent, it is difficult to look past the sinister plans to reverse the gains of democracy.

The concerns extend to other entities; the GCIS is due to implement the Cabinet approved National Communication Strategy. The public has not seen this National Communication Strategy, but we can already guess that it seeks to turn government communicators into an army of compliant tellers of the ANC’s “good story”.

We will be counting on ICASA, which receives the leargest allocation of the department’s entities, to exericse its constitutional duty to be an independent and impartial regulator of South Africa’s broadcasting.
I thank you.

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