COSATU's SABC Campaign

Here follows the official COSATU media release:

It was because of our belief that the SABC was not adhering to the spirit or even the letter of its Charter that we embarked on this campaign. Our campaign was aimed to coincide with Heritage Day, on September 24 next Tuesday. We chose this day because we felt that our heritage as a working class, African society was not being served by our own publicly-owned broadcaster, which does not set an example for private, profit-driven media institutions.

Since Exco took its decision, much has happened with regard to both the SABC and COSATU. We have recently expressed ourselves and voiced our displeasure in front of the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications.

We have had a meeting with the CEO of the SABC, Mr Peter Matlare, from which meeting we have come to understand some of the SABC s initiatives in fulfilling its mandates, as well as received an explanation on the difficulties faced by the broadcaster in the new industry environment.

Though we have consequently broadened our campaign to include reform of the entire regulatory and market environment in broadcasting (specifically arresting the movement towards unsustainable liberalisation and rampant commercialism), we still feel that the SABC itself could be doing more to demonstrate its commitment to public service broadcasting. As our parliamentary submission points out, the SABC has far outstripped the requirements of the new regulatory environment when it comes to corporatisation and even semi-privatisation of itself.

We will therefore continue with our Heritage Day actions at SABC offices across the country.

Since Exco, we have also had to deal with a new phenomenon centred especially in the print media sector. Since our decision to embark on a general strike against privatisation on October 1 and 2, we have had to endure an unprecedented attack against our federation, its leadership, and the union movement and workers in general.

This attack takes the form of scathing editorials accusing unnamed union leaders of the worst kinds of financial malfeasance, stories from senior sources written without any reference to or consultation with the union leaders concerned, and endless column inches aimed at convincing the public that COSATU or its affiliates are split over the anti-privatisation strike.

Particularly guilty of this form of shoddy journalism has been the Sunday weekly, the City Press. No matter what our interventions have been with the newspaper, the City Press persists with stories calculated to suggest that South Africa s union leadership is corrupt, divided, weak, and more bizarrely, rich.

Both COSATU and the leadership of some of its affiliates have tried to engage with the editorial leadership of the City Press, in a bid not aimed at disputing their journalistic right to question, but rather to aid them separate fact from fiction.

The COSATU leadership s meeting with the newspaper has sadly yielded no results, while meetings scheduled with affiliates have been summarily cancelled by the newspaper at the last minute.

We once again call on the leadership of the City Press to return to acceptable standards of journalism, and to save the newspaper from wallowing in the gutter, which eventuality will only serve to make the City Press irrelevant to the debates and politics of South Africa without doing any similar long-term damage to COSATU and the union movement.

We will march to the offices of the City Press and Media24 in Auckland Park on Tuesday, September 24, to hand over a memorandum calling for the broader transformation of the entire journalistic media sector in South Africa. It should never be imagined that only the public broadcaster has a transformational and developmental mandate to pursue.

The details of our marches and pickets in Johannesburg and around the country this coming Tuesday are as follows:

JOHANNESBURG: Gather at COSATU House in Braamfontein at 9am, march to proceed to SABC headquarters in Auckland Park

PRETORIA: Picket at SABC office, cnr of Festival and Schoeman Streets starting at 9am

NELSPRUIT: Picket at SABC Office in Alrof Park starting at 10am

POLOKWANE: Picket at SABC Park in Hospital Street starting at 9am

MAFIKENG: Gather at Ipelegeng Primary School at 10am for a march to SABC office

BLOEMFONTEIN: Gather at Setshabelo at 11am for a march to SABC office

KIMBERLEY: Gather at Social Centre in Galeshewe at 9am for a march to SABC office

DURBAN: Picket at the SABC office in Old Fort Road starting at 9am

PORT ELIZABETH: Picket at SABC office in Greenacres starting at 10am

CAPE TOWN: Picket at SABC office in Beach Road, Sea Point starting at 9am