The recent High Court judgement which confirmed that the blacklisting of possible interviewees was common during the Snuki Zikalala period at the SABC was greeted by a great deal of high-minded but misleading condemnation. Misleading because Zikalala was only doing what Mbeki instructed; because the real blacklist was enormously more extensive than that mentioned by the High Court; because it is only part of a far larger and systematic SABC political bias; and because that bias extended far back before the Zikalala era and carries on today.
All of us have our own examples of this. In 1997, when I was director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, we published an opinion survey which caused some shock by showing that Bantu Holomisa, recently expelled from the ANC, was a great deal more popular in the Eastern Cape than Thabo Mbeki. SAfm introduced coverage of the survey by suggesting this was a case of "lies, damned lies and statistics" and asked David Everatt, an ANC member, to comment. Though neither he nor the SABC had had sight of our survey, he accused us of putting "a negative spin" on our results. We were not allowed to explain, comment on, or defend our own survey.
In 1999, when Anthea Jeffery brought out her book, The Truth About The Truth Commission, SAfm suggested that she debate her (critical) findings with two TRC Commissioners. She said she thought one against one would be fair and SAfm concurred. She went on air to find one Commissioner debating her in the studio and another on a permanent open line to the studio, exactly the 2:1 situation which had been previously agreed to be unfair. A deliberate political ambush.
In 2004, when I published South Africa: The First Man, The Last Nation, SAfm invited me to participate in a one hour "discussion" of the book. This turned out to mean an all-out attack by three opponents who attempted to prevent me from speaking at all. It was also clear that they had co-ordinated their arguments in advance. After about twenty minutes of this I just began to repeat the question "Am I allowed to speak?" over and over again until at last I got my five minutes. Again, a deliberate ambush.
In 2006 I wrote an article for Prospect in the UK in which I suggested that South Africa was fast becoming an English-speaking country. SAfm devoted a half hour programme to attacking this article but I was not allowed to explain or defend my own article.
In 2011 Numsa challenged the Institute of Race Relations to a debate over their recent survey of local election results - a weird thing to do since the Institute had merely totted up recent municipal by-election results. The results could hardly be challenged unless one disputed the laws of arithmetic. The SAIRR agreed to debate with any acknowledged expert on level terms but, again, SAfm reneged and it became clear that Numsa was priming its activists to pack the phone-in, so the Institute had to pull out. Full marks to the SAIRR for spotting the ambush.
I write for a number of international publications and quite frequently need to turn to expert analysts for comment. The best are Lawrie Schlemmer, Hermann Giliomee and John Kane-Berman. It's a pity that they are all white but expertise, not race, counts in international journalism. All three are formidably well educated, have a deep historical as well as current knowledge and have impressive records of publication. Yet none of these are used by the SABC.
Instead they rely on a small coterie of the politically correct whose analysis generally has all the rigour of cotton wool. Similarly, Jon Perlman was a fine broadcast journalist but even he respected many unwritten rules of political prudence as to who could be interviewed and who not. When the SABC blacklist was exposed it made no mention of Schlemmer, Giliomee or Kane-Berman, yet all three (and indeed myself) clearly belonged to an even lower level of the politically unthinkable. Naturally, all the bias recorded above is against liberals and free-thinkers.
The situation was similar under the Afrikaner Nationalists. But they were not operating under a liberal Constitution. The difference is that both the government and the SABC today trumpet their belief in all the values of the new Constitution, including freedom of speech, the press and opinion and the respect for diversity. This creates a treacherous situation, for those who take such professions of faith seriously are likely to become the victims of deliberate political manipulation.
This situation mirrors the larger South African situation. Of course the professions of fairness by the government and the SABC are fraudulent but then the situation is quite commonly even worse in much of Africa, for African (and Arab) nationalism are intrinsically authoritarian and illiberal. Even the limited freedom of the broadcast media that we enjoy here would seem remarkable in, say, Algeria or Zimbabwe.
We inhabit a halfway house in such matters largely because the South African print media have been diverse and free for 150 years and this has created an expectation of fairness among all levels of society. Neither the ANC nor the Constitution have given us this. This is something that preceded and outlasted apartheid. It is that precious thing, a gift from our own history.
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