ANC needs to do more to achieve an SABC we want

In preparation for its national policy conference from June 30 to July 5, the ANC has released sets of discussion documents outlining proposals on various issues.

The proposals will be referred to the national elective conference where they will be further refined and approved as final ANC policies, from which public policy takes cue.

This article focuses on the proposal made in respect of the broadcasting or the audio-visual sector as contained in the discussion document titled Communications and the Battle of Ideas.

While the proposals therein may be sound, the environment, characterised by declining public funding, overly compounded by a negative credit rating, may inevitably impact on their implementation.

SABC averts blackout, gets Sentech reprieveThe cash-strapped SABC has escaped a blackout of its television and radio services after reaching a payment agreement with signal distributor Sentech. 

With regards to the SABC, the negative sentiments towards it due to recent scandals have left behind a huge integrity deficit which will make the task of turning it around complex and difficult.

On its own, the document underlines systematic implementation challenges as some of the proposals can be traced to the Stellenbosch conference of 1998. Unless implementation is addressed, ANC policy making processes will be rendered mere ritual routines.

It should be made clear to ANC "deployees" that their failure to implement these policies will result in them being recalled. Such approach will guard against the pursuit of personal legacies and minimise the apparent widespread incongruence between the party vision and government, thus ensuring policy certainty, continuity and uniform messaging.

Again, the document is conspicuously silent on the hanging policies of transition. These are the policies that were deferred in the early 1990s with the hope that they would be resolved by a democratic government post the 1994 general election. Key among these policies include the funding of the SABC and its governance model. While foreign direct investment is one of the building blocks of broadcasting policy, it seems to have been off the table in the last few years. In the current economic climate, characterised by lack of domestic capital, this is critical to unbundle monopolies.

It is quite inconceivable that despite the funding model appearing on all the ANC's policy documents, starting with its submission to Codesa, the media charter, ready to govern and all conference resolutions, it remains unresolved. Previous efforts to deal with this matter were thwarted by competing interests. We need a separate national conversation on public service broadcasting to decide on the nature of the public broadcaster we want.

In addition, the policy should:

With regard to local content development, this industry cannot be built unless it has a regional tone because South Africa is, despite its strong advertising base, a small market. Finally, the hogging of content of national interest, including parliamentary channel, by pay-tv, should be dealt with aggressively.