The Harbinger


SABC and funding

January 10th, 2008

Does the prospect of direct government funding for the SABC bode well for broadcasting? It is an important question.

The ANC Polokwane conference suggested at least 60% of the SABC’s budget should come directly from the state, a radical shift from the current 3% (with over 80% coming from advertising and the balance from the few people who pay for their licences.)

One should first express some scepticism. The ANC has repeatedly called for the SABC to be moved away from its commercial base, but Treasury has consistently and adamantly refused to entertain the notion of digging into its pocket to allow this to happen. Maybe things will change with the new ANC, but somehow I doubt that it will be this issue on which they go to battle to change so fundamental an element of current government fiscal policy.

But if it did happen, the positive aspect is that it should ease the SABC’s split personality - being a public broadcaster that is almost entirely dependent on advertising. It has long been caught between meeting its public service obligations and commercial demands, and a government subsidy should allow it to do more of the latter, and less competing with other commercial media.

It should also free up advertising for commercial broadcasters to be more competitive, and maybe even eventually allow for another independent free-to-air channel alongside eTV.

But a great deal depends on how it is done. Will it be done in a way which ensures there is an arm’s length relationship between the government funder and the dependent broadcaster?

It will clearly be highly undesirable if the government does it in a way which allows them to turn the money tap on and off in order to pressurise the SABC and compromise its independence. It must be done at arm’s length. Government would have to commit to a certain amount of money over a long period of time and perhaps channel it through an independent body to satisfy fears that it is prepared to pay only to get greater and more direct control over the broadcaster.

That is the big “if”. Done in the right way, public funding can be a major boost to the quality and depth of our television coverage, allowing for much more content which is not necessarily commercially viable. More documentaries, or more drama in more languages, for example.

Done crudely, it will only add to the sense that the SABC is hopelessly enslaved to the powers that be, and will continue to be roped in for short-term political advantage rather than long-term social good.

The debate, therefore, over how it is done, will be the most crucial.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation, Radio, TV

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Anton Harber: Media

Anton Harber

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa's Investigative JournalismTroublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.


What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)

Reflections on Journalism in the Transition to Democracy - Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 3 (2004).

Journalism in the Age of the Market
- Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture, Centre for Civil Society, University of KZN, Aug 2002

The Untimely Death of SA’s Finest Daily - Sunday Times, May 2005

“Two Newspapers, Two Nations? The Media and the Xenophobic Violence” from Go Home or Die Here, edited by Shireen Hassim Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby (WUP, 2008)

Remarks at Goedgedacht Forum, October 2008

The rise of social network journalism - From The 2009 Flux Trend Review (Macmillan, 2008)

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