An SAfm producer called me yesterday to ask if I would join them on their Sunday media programme - on Human Rights Day - to talk with Ashraf Garda about media infringements of peoples’ rights. Isn’t that interesting? The problem is framed purely as media infringing rights, and there is no desire to talk about the overwhelming majority of times when the media protected, promoted and encouraged peoples’ rights.
Continue Reading Add comment March 19th, 2011
You have to be totally dismayed at the apparent collapse – again - of SABC governance. The hopes that this new board represented a fresh broom to sweep the rot out of the Auckland Park headquarters and re-establish a notion of independent, public service broadcasting, are rapidly fading.
Continue Reading Add comment May 23rd, 2010
In Beeld this Saturday, I wrote of the implications of the Minister of Communications publishing what was the worst piece of draft legislation I have seen ever. What does it mean if one puts out a scrappy, contradictory, ill-considered Bill that has not even been discussed with your cabinet colleagues?
Continue Reading Add comment January 25th, 2010
The new National Director of Public Prosecutions, Menzi Simelane, has reportedly banned all 3 000 prosecutors who fall under him from talking to the media without permission. In doing so, he is showing, again, his lack of appreciation for the principles and values enshrined in our constitution. He is also flying in the face of ANC policy.
Continue Reading Add comment January 21st, 2010
I just had a call from SABC Durban, a reporter from Radio Lotus, asking me to be available for their morning news programme tomorrow. I will phone you before to tell you what questions we are going to ask you, so that we don’t catch you off guard, he said.
Continue Reading 2 comments January 21st, 2010
The Department of Communications responded firmly to the auditor-general’s report into the SABC.
The report showed that there appears to have been wild and uninhibited pilfering of the SABC coffers under former Group CEO Dali Mpofu and financial director Robin Nicholson (still, incidentally, the man with the keys to the safe). One’s immediate response was that at last someone was showing strong leadership at the department and taking a firm hand. But the measures they proposed were a direct move to usurp the role of the new SABC board and take control into the Ministry.
Continue Reading Add comment October 31st, 2009
In between the old SABC and the new one, I twice had a taste of what a national public broadcaster can do. It is a good time to recall those moments, as they get off to a fresh start.
Continue Reading 1 comment September 24th, 2009
How parliament chose its candidates for the SABC board - and the arm wrestling that went on behind-the-scenes - tells us a lot about power in this society, and how it is exercised.
Continue Reading Add comment September 17th, 2009
Running the SABC is like being Springbok rugby coach. Or manager of Chiefs. Or a local police commander, Everyone knows how to do it, and knows better than the person doing it, and has no problem telling them how they should be doing it. It is the breeding ground of that archetypal South African, the armchair expert.
Continue Reading 1 comment September 3rd, 2009
William Kirsh’s departure as CEO of Primedia has been on the cards for some time, and is unlikely to rock the boat much. But it represents the end of an era in South African media.
Continue Reading Add comment August 25th, 2009
There was a glaring miscommunication in the announcement that Dali Mpofu had received a reward of R11-m for his role in getting the SABC to the mess it is currently in. We were told that R4-m was a restraint of trade to prevent him working for or setting up a rival company. But surely you would want him to work for one of your competitors?
Continue Reading Add comment August 25th, 2009
The SOS (Save our SABC) Campaign has launched a petition to push for the board selection process to be more transparent and accountable. They have hit the nail on the head, I would say.
Continue Reading Add comment July 20th, 2009
If we have learnt anything in the last two years in relation the SABC, it is that how you appoint the board is as important as who you appoint. The parliamentary committee which recommends candidates, it seems, has not taken on board this very basic lesson.
Continue Reading Add comment July 3rd, 2009
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
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)
