In the past years the SABC has been criticised for its programming policy, for being too close to the government and for self-censorship multiple times. In 2006 the broadcaster took a critical documentary on President Thabo Mbeki off air. Later in that year the SABC was accused of having a blacklist for commentators critical of the government. Although the SABC had admitted this method saying this was not in line with its code of conduct in November 2012, it was accused of it again in 2015.

In 2009, one week before the national and provincial elections, the SABC withdrew a documentary on political satire exploring the fact President Jacob Zuma suing a cartoonist. Eventually, in 2013, SABC’s COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng called for more “sunshine news” saying he believes “70% should be positive stories and then you can have 30% negative stories”.

Overall it becomes apparent that more than two decades “after apartheid crumbled, SABC cannot shake off perceptions that it is still a propaganda tool of the country’s rulers – this time the African National Congress“ (Gershwin Wanneburg). Due to this development various Civil Society organisations have emerged. The Supporting Public Broadcasting Coalition, formerly Save Our SABC (SOS), was formed in June 2008 and campaigns for public broadcasting in the public interest with primary focus on the SABC. The Coalition is made up of a broad range of NGOs, CBOs, Trade Unions, Trade Union Federations, and individuals such as academics, policy and legal consultants and artists. The Right2Know Campaign (R2K) was launched in 2010 and is centered on freedom of expression, access to information and communication rights. Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) has been monitoring SABC content since 1993. Therefore it is in a “unique position to make judgments about the extent of the broadcaster’s delivery on its mandate”.

As media consultant Hendrik Bussiek and his team have researched, there are widely differing views on the causes of the enduring crisis: “Many attribute the problems to poor governance, or more specifically bad management”. Some experts regard the broadcaster’s dependence from commercial sources of funding as one reason why it’s not fulfilling its mandate. Media Monitoring Africa has attempted deeper analyses concluding that the crisis is a conglomerate of “political upheavals, mismanagement, absence of effective systems and structures, corruption, loss of credibility in the eyes of the public, a failure of oversight structures, and a ‘great dollop of greed of the most disgusting order by some of the employees who cared not a jot that they were screwing the public to be rich’.” Right2Know Campaign's Micah Reddy depicts the SABC leadership and its connection with politicians as another cause: „Under the heavy-handed and incompetent management of Hlaudi Motsoeneng we have seen worsening censorship. In recent months we have witnessed some of the most egregious violations of the Broadcasting Act and Charter. Especially under Zuma the state capture has worsened: The Zuma faction wants to undermine SABC’s independence. As Motsoeneng is very close to Zuma being his political lapdog, he has made very clear that he has a pro-Zuma political agenda. He is very close to turning SABC into a PR machine for the ruling elite.”

The recent crisis at the SABC has shown once more “that South Africans are passionate about their public broadcaster and there are high levels of civil society mobilization around the broadcaster”. On the basis of a chronicle it will be analyzed by experts such as MMA’s Director William Bird, Micah Reddy from the Right2Know Campaign, Sekoetlane Jacob Phamodi from the SOS Coalition, Justine Limpitlaw, an independent electronic communications lawyer, and Franz Krüger, Director of the Wits Radio Academy. Please click on the PDF to read the full chronicle.

Julia Brömse, the author of the chronicle, was a research fellow with KAS Media Africa from July to August 2016.