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Further thoughts on the SABC

Parliamentâ€™s Portfolio Committee on Communications is trying to fix the mess-up it made with the SABC board, but could just as easily make things worse.

Continue Reading Add comment July 8th, 2008

The SABC dilemma

Something has to be done to break the current SABC logjam, but I am not sure the proposed new law giving the government power to get rid of the board is the right way to go about it.

Continue Reading 1 comment July 5th, 2008

eTV comes of age with eNews

Walk around the sparkling new high-tech newsroom that eTV has built for eNews, its 24-hour news pay-TV channel, and you sense a small, spunky station coming of age.

Continue Reading 1 comment June 8th, 2008

Tread carefully on SABC funding

Government funding for the SABC could be a boon to public broadcasting. Or it could be a total disaster, depending on how it is done.

Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2008

SABC and funding

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

Continue Reading Add comment January 10th, 2008

A prediction: all predictions will be wrong, including this one

A basic rule in journalism is that there is only one prediction one can make with confidence, and that is that oneâ€™s predictions will likely be wrong.

Continue Reading 1 comment December 4th, 2007

My Business Day column of today: SABC boss Dali Mpofu called me a â€œrightwing conservativeâ€?. Last time we had a public disagreement he called me an â€œultra-rightwingerâ€?. Let me spell out a few things about myself, so you can judge.

Continue Reading 3 comments September 12th, 2007

They have Carte Blanche - even to mess with journalism

Somebody tell George Mazarakis of Carte Blanche to stop defending his Gert van Rooyen story. He must do what his programme has done before, to their credit: admit that they erred and set the record straight.

Continue Reading Add comment August 12th, 2007

A breakthrough in broadcasting: a global channel no-one can see?

It is excellent news that the SABC is launching a 24-hour international news channel to bring an African perspective to global coverage. There is only one detail that is being left out: will anyone be able to see it?

Continue Reading 2 comments July 19th, 2007

Adriaan Vlok - My part in his downfall

It is a small thing forgotten by all except me and my immediate family, I suspect, but I had a part to play in the downfall of cabinet minister Adriaan Vlok (now facing murder charges). Those around in the early 1990s, might remember that I confronted him with evidence of Inkathagate on live television one Sunday night. He was demoted a few days later. It is worth recounting the story because it was the first and last time the SABC allowed a rambunctious, angry, independent journalist to go head-to-head with a cabinet minister.

Continue Reading 3 comments July 18th, 2007

The world has changed, Dali

SABC may have a tantrum about losing rights to South Africa’s Premier Soccer League, but if they don’t wake up to the fact that the world has changed forever in the relationship between sport and broadcasting, they will lose out badly. Remember Rupert Murdoch …

Continue Reading 3 comments June 20th, 2007

ANC’s new views on the media

The ANCâ€™s latest discussion document on the media is more interesting for what it does not deal with than what it does deal with. Here is my analysis.

Continue Reading 1 comment June 17th, 2007

News, news, news

I have returned from a few days abroad and come home to find a new daily newspaper and two new television news channels (CNBC and Al Jazeerah International). It is extaordinary how fluid our media market is.

Continue Reading 3 comments June 13th, 2007

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Anton Harber: Media

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 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)