Here’s whats being said on twitter about South African media freedom and the ANC’s moves to “deter” the media.
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23zamediafreedom
Please don’t let them take me to Mpumalanga.
There is mounting evidence that political pressure lay behind the arrest this week of Sunday Times journalist Mzilikazi wa Africa, despite furious denials from police top brass.
http://supportpublicbroadcasting.co.za/
SABC CRISIS DEEPENS – PARLIAMENT MUST INVESTIGATE, BOARD CHAIR MUST RESIGN OR BE REMOVED
6 AUGUST 2010
The SOS Campaign representing trade unions (including Cosatu, Fedusa and Bemawu), NGOs (including Media Monitoring Africa, the Freedom of Expression Institute and Misa-SA), CBOs, industry related bodies (including SASFED), academics and freedom of expression activists notes with dismay the seemingly endless governance problems at the SABC.
From media reports it appears that the Chair of the Board, Dr Ben Ngubane and the CEO, Mr. Solly Mokoetle are again involved in decisions that flout good corporate governance practices and procedures. It appears that the CEO, Mr Solly Mokoetle, without Board approval, has authorised additional bonuses to staff. These discretionary bonuses related to the World Cup are reportedly costing the public broadcaster R4.5m – and this at a time of great financial strain for the broadcaster. Further, there seems to be some controversy around whether these payments were in fact in lieu of overtime.
The interim Board of the SABC arranged a R1.47bn government guarantee in 2009 to pay back the SABC’s debts and further to assist with the implementation of a much needed turn-around strategy. The understanding from National Treasury was that the starting point was that all unnecessary spending would be strictly curtailed. So even if the CEO did not require specific Board approval for the World Cup bonuses, the wisdom of the decision must surely be questioned.
The Coalition believes that the ongoing crises at our public broadcaster have become so serious that urgent intervention from Parliament is, sadly, once again required.
We believe the following interventions should be undertaken by the Board:
1) First, the Board needs to pass a resolution of no-confidence in the Chair for non-compliance with Board procedures and decisions.
2) Second, the Board needs to pass a resolution to send a formal letter to the Speaker of Parliament requesting the National Assembly to initiate an enquiry into the alleged misconduct of the Chair with a view to removing him from the Board on the grounds of misconduct in terms of the sections 15, and 15A of the Broadcasting Act.If the Board is effectively paralysed and cannot act in the ways we suggest, then we call upon Parliament to act. Parliament must (as it is legally entitled, indeed required, to do in times of crisis involving the SABC) initiate its own enquiry into what appear to be serious violations of corporate governance processes involving the Chair of the SABC Board. If after due enquiry it is clear that such violations have taken place, then Parliament must act to remove the Chair. Parliament cannot afford to drag out these crises in the same way it did over the crises that plagued the previous SABC Board.
SOS notes that the Board has been in office for the last seven months and yet we have little to show for this. No new vision for the SABC appears to have been crafted and the much-talked-about turnaround strategy is still not forthcoming. Further, communication with the general public in terms of its numerous corporate governance breaches and crises has been grudgingly scarce. For the most part the public has been forced to rely on media leaks.
SOS reiterates once again the critical importance of the SABC fostering a culture of transparency and communication. As a public broadcaster, the SABC’s main stakeholder is the public. Hence the SABC needs to ensure that its decision-making and governance processes – and the details of the crises and how they are being handled – are effectively communicated to the nation.
Further, SOS is considering taking up the numerous corporate governance breaches with the Public Protector. It is critical to restore the credibility of the SABC and this may be one important way.
Finally, SOS notes the comments made in today’s Mail & Guardian newspaper that there are further crises around the appointment of the Head of News and that allegedly divisions have arisen in terms of the disciplining of the CEO, Solly Mokoetle. SOS believes that this further confirms the need for the proposals we have outlined above.
For more information please contact:
Kate Skinner – SOS Coordinator – 082-926-6404
William Bird – Executive Director Media Monitoring Africa – 082-887-1370
Siphiwe Segodi – Freedom of Expression Network – 072-655-4177
Matankana Mothapo – Spokesperson Communications Workers Union – 082-759-0900
Hannes du Buisson – President Broadcasting Electronic and Media Workers Union – 082-920-8669
Marc Schwinges – Communications SASFED – 083-901-2000
Ayesha Kadjee – Executive Director FXI – 083-500-7486
On the 12 June 2009 the tenth presidential elections were held in Iran. After Iran’s official news agency the Islamic Republic News Agency, announced that the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election. The European Union expressed “concerned about alleged irregularities” and the opposition party Presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi stated that he “won’t surrender to this manipulation.”. Mousavi believed strongly that the election was rigged and called for peaceful protests against the “manipulation”
What resulted from Mousavi’s call was hundreds of thousands of Iranians taking to the streets and a swift reaction by the Iranian government to stop these protests. In many cases the clashes between government forces and protestors turned violent. One of the actions the Iranian government took was to prevent news agencies (especially foreign news agencies) from reporting on what was taking place in the country.
Prior to the election the government had also banned access by the citizens to social networking sites such as Facebook, this can only be seen as an attempt to stifle opposing views.
With the ban on foreign media and the Iranian governments control over the local media local activists and ordinary citizens took to the internet to tell the world what was going on. The micro-blogging platform Twitter became a key avenue for Iranian citizens to communicate what was going on in their country. Twitters immediacy and accessibility (Iranian citizens were not only using the internet to access Twitter, they were using SMS to get messages onto Twitter). Pretty soon what started to emerge was that Iran was in a state of revolution.
Twitter was not the only Social Networking site to be used by the citizens in Iran. Flickr, Facebook, Youtube and others were used to communicate what was going on.
#Iranelection has highlighted again (#mumbai – the hashtag used on twitter during the Mumbai attacks) is that a) peoples ability to organise, communicate and improve their circumstances is greatly improved by technologies such as the Internet and Mobile phones and b) the traditional way of doing things is fast coming to an end. The big media houses were shown up again as being lumbering giants who are behind the times.
Social Media expert Robert Scoble at the 140 character conference (which ran between the 15/06/2009 until the 17/06/2009) asked from CNN at the 140conf “Where was CNN on that day, at that time?” (referring to the Iran revolution).
The response from the CNN representative Rick Sanchez “We had people in Iran watching the events unfold, live. Our people were tear-gassed. We were there.”
Scoble response e to Sanchez, “How would we know that? Why didn’t you share that side of the story with us as it was happening? You couldn’t because your show wasn’t on!”
The world exists around shows, people exist around shows. They (the world and people) do not wait for shows.
Progressive Governments can learn a great deal from #iranelection, they must learn that people will make use of open, transparent communication systems in attempting to improve their lives. Progressive Governments must start taking advantage of the high mobile phone penetration rates to create bi-directional communication channels that feed into their developmental programmes: COMMUNICATE.
In South Africa, Government love to spend millions on fancy, complicated, inefficient marketing and communications campaigns. Yet these campaigns are yet to show strong results in favour of the investment. These campaigns do not build communities that allow the citizen to constantly engage with Government or other citizens. #iranelection proves that citizen to citizen support is remarkable through open platforms such as Twitter.
Of course Governments need to be wary. Being open to public (not media) scrutiny does have it pitfalls. Look at the screenshot below, once again from Twitter. On the plus side it does keep government honest, Batho Pele is not a one way street.
Hopefully the people of Iran will get the government they deserve.
Yesterday the Sowetan made South African blogging history. Well done chaps. They fired a sub-editor (Llewellyn Kriel) for blogging about the inner workings at AVUSA.
This is a news media company that regularly battles in the courts for the freedom to say what it feels it has to say. But I guess employees don’t have that right.
Llewellyn was fired from the Sowetan for supposedly tarnishing the name of his employer and leaking confidential company information. Both reasons appear bogus to me, especially the charge that he leaked confidential company information.
AVUSA have set a very dangerous and shameful precedent.
