South Africa needs principled journalists, principled politicians and principled servants of the state, writes Malusi Mpumlwana.
Jimi Matthews resigned from the SABC and expressed regret at his complicit behaviour by accommodating the “prevailing‚ corrosive atmosphere” at the public broadcaster, which had “impacted negatively on (his) moral judgment”.
The question may well be asked of many of us who gave up our youth for a free South Africa that would be the home of justice, peace and freedom, as proudly enshrined in a legislation that fortified and ensconced this national ethos in the constitution’s Bill of Rights: what are we complicit to? What have we become as a society? Where were we when it was happening? Is this a case of the boiling frog and the slow death of South Africa? How do we restore the promise of South Africa?
Complicity
The SA Council of Churches (SACC) has confessed its complicity of being silent over the years when the signs were there that all was not well for our constitutional democracy.
The SACC campaign launched in December – The South Africa We Pray4 – has five pillars, one of which is anchoring democracy, dealing with maladministration, corruption and the loss of public trust in state institutions. The SABC, with its capacity to shape public perspectives, is a key state institution. This is why it is always one of the first targets of occupation when a coup is in progress in any country. I’m not suggesting that a coup is in progress in South Africa, but the situation begs the question, whose interests are served by what is happening?
And so the questions flow:
* Is Hlaudi Motsoeneng on a personal ego trip over his actions at the SABC?
* How does the SABC chief operating officer control the office of the chief executive, all news content, editorial management and the career fate of all?
* Or is there any relationship between Motsoeneng’s institutionally uncommon control over the SABC and how Minister Faith Muthambi appointed him in the face of the public protector’s condemnation?
* Is this an agenda-making political appointment? If it is, is it the agenda of the ANC, and would that explain why the ANC first hailed the Motsoeneng edict as a good thing?
* Or was it unthinking reflexive support for the SABC, including labelling Jimi Matthews as “a tool… used to attack the entire integrity of the SABC”?
* Will sanity be restored through Jackson Mthembu’s reclamation of the well-known ANC positions on media freedom?
We would hope that the answer to the last question is in the affirmative, and also for other areas that have caused concern over the slide in our public institutions through corruption and allegations of state capture by narrow private interests as alleged in the case of the Gupta family influence through the person of the president.
Or is Motsoeneng’s SABC a Frightening Sign of the Times? Could it be that this is indeed part of a larger private “coup” that captures the state broadcasting apparatus for politically nefarious goals that may have little to do with even the ANC, as the Mthembu rebuttal may suggest? Does Mthembu’s reclamation of ANC tradition on media freedom, represent an Alternative Sign of the Times through the conscientious ANC?
Doing contextual theology as we do, we are bound to follow the questions from one to the next until there are no more questions to ask when the answer is patently before us. In his statement on the SABC, SACC president Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa, who is also the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, said: “We lived through many years of pain because the media was driven by propaganda, and we cannot allow this to happen again.”
The bishop is condemning what we see as a shameful return to the prescripts of the Broadcast Act of 1976, which, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard, prevented broadcasting of what caused “unrest or panic… (or) threaten state security… (or) damage the Republic’s image abroad”. There was a staff code whereby one “could be fired without being given a reason or explanation, as long as the manager suspected that his or her ideological convictions were not in line with the government of the day”.
Déjà vu?
The godfather of this attitude to broadcasting is the very father of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, who said in his argument against television in 1964: “The government has to watch for any dangers to the people, both spiritual and physical.”
Déjà vu, Motsoeneng?
Under what circumstances would anyone in state authority in this hard won constitutional democracy seek to undermine, collaborate with or acquiesce to the undermining of the constitutionality of national institutions and systems? Can personal and group greed explain it all? These questions are behind the grave concerns raised by the SACC leaders. The concerning issues include our perceptions of:
* A growing culture of corruption and maladministration – now lately manifest in the allegations of outside influence in cabinet appointments.
* Cheque-book politics where the stakes for elected positions are so high as to threaten the lives of people. We daily experience this now!
* Chronic instability in the management and governance of institutions of state, of which the SABC is one.
* Securocratic tendencies where the influence of security agencies hold sway.
In this situation, people are herded towards a few scary interpretations of reality, and alternative thinking is labelled as a security threat – remember the rooi gevaar and swart gevaar of yesteryear, with dissidents dubbed Russian agents, banned, imprisoned or dying mysteriously?
In justifying his position, Motsoeneng said: “All the bishops, the churches, they are very happy, because they know the responsibility of the SABC as a public broadcaster and here we are not talking about politics. People should not compare a democratic society and apartheid, those are two different animals.”
In the name of the churches we suggest that he has taken up the cloak of the apartheid SABC that served the Broederbond. Indeed, we need all South Africans to strengthen that voice of the Alternative Sign of the Times for a better South Africa.
The SACC’s campaign of The South Africa We Pray4 is but one such effort. May all sectors use their space to recover the South Africa of our dreams. For this we need principled journalists, principled politicians and principled servants of the constitutional State.
* Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana is the general secretary of the South African Council of Churches.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
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