Please find attached a soundbite by the DA Shadow Minister of Communications, Phumzile Van Damme MP.
The DA will today report the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) for violating its Code of Conduct, to which the SABC is signatory, for its broadcast of Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech as ANC President.
On Wednesday, the Democratic Alliance wrote to the Chairperson of the SABC board, Bongumusa Makhathini, requesting a right of reply for the Leader of the DA and Leader of the Opposition, Mmusi Maimane, to respond on to the ANC’s position on land.
In response to our request, Makhathini, said amongst other things that the “the SABC as a responsible public service broadcaster, made efforts to deliver a balanced story by soliciting reactions from other political parties, including the Democratic Alliance. In fact the Democratic Alliance represented by the Spokesperson for the leader of the DA, was on Morning Live today responding to this story.”
Makhathini’s response shows that the SABC lacks an understanding of how a public broadcaster should operate and the rules that guide it.
His response is in direct violation of the BCCSA Code of Conduct which in Section 13(1) states:
Controversial Issues of Public Importance
(1) In presenting a programme in which a controversial issue of public importance is discussed, a broadcaster must make reasonable efforts to fairly present opposing points of view either in the same programme or in a subsequent programme forming part of the same series of programmes presented within a reasonable period of time of the original broadcast and within substantially the same time slot.
The SABC has not offered the DA, as the official opposition, the opportunity to present its position as is required by this section of the BCCSA Code of Conduct, and in fact, appears to refuse to do so.
In the first instance, the fact that the public broadcaster accepted a recording from a political party and halted normal programming in order to flight it is unacceptable. If the SABC deemed the recording “newsworthy” it would surely have made more sense to flight it as part of a news bulletin and not as a separate programme.
Second, the SABC misunderstands the DA’s request. We have not asked to provide commentary on Ramaphosa’s announcement, we are asking for an opportunity to present our own offer on land and jobs to the electorate, as has been offered to the leader of the ANC and is required by the BCCSA Code of Conduct. That the spokesperson for the Leader of the DA responded the following morning is insufficient and does not satisfy the requirement of S13(1) of the BCCSA Code of Conduct.
“Equitable coverage” means that the public broadcaster must ensure that the public has adequate knowledge, from different points of view of issues of public importance. It is on this basis that the SABC should have acceded to our request.
The SABC’s failure to grant the DA’s request is a clear indication that the SABC is once again becoming a mouthpiece of the ANC and not a public broadcaster. This places our multi-party democracy under threat, and the DA will not stand idle while attempts to recapture the SABC is underway.