The Big Read: SABC: the dream trampled

Many of our leaders might not realise it but the distance from hope and achievement to despair and mediocrity can be remarkably short.

Think back to the SABC of the 1970s and 1980s. This was an institution so deep in the pockets of the National Party that it did not twitch without an express instruction from the Union Buildings. The SABC was useful for many of us as an alert service: if the corporation told us that something had not happened, we could then deduce that something of significance had taken place.

For lessons on how not to run a public broadcaster, the SABC of the 1980s stands today as a powerful example.

Cast your mind back to the late-1990s and you will remember an SABC that was beginning to reclaim the values, ethos and practices of a real public broadcaster. Journalists of stature from across the globe were recruited, news managers who believed in South Africa and its constitution - not just in one or other political party - were elevated and producers keen for truth ran the programmes from behind the scenes.

People such as Zwelakhe Sisulu, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, John Perlman and Barney Mthombothi walked the corridors of the SABC's Auckland Park studios. Hope was in the air. A new country and a new public broadcasting code were being born.

Politicians were grilled as they should be. Objectivity was the mantra of the day. In just a few years, we knew that it was possible to take a lethargic, compromised institution and begin to meld together a broadcaster of quality and pride. In the SABC, despite its size and history, we were a South Africa that was beginning to put its best foot forward. At the SABC we began to build a public broadcaster that many across the world could come and learn from.

That was then. The hope and achievement of that SABC have been terribly destroyed. In its place is an ugly monster: a state broadcaster in thrall to a few callow, incompetent men who see their role merely as delivering a mandate to the ruling party.

Over the past few weeks South Africa has witnessed the crowing, vanity and self-obsession of the man in charge of the SABC, one Hlaudi Motsoeneng, parading himself through the press and forums, holding forth about his "achievements" at the public broadcaster. He has cast himself as the hero of the hour, the man giving us a glorious service.

What a fraud. The reality is entirely different. The SABC is today a demoralised, divided, mediocre product at which senior staff cannot work and junior staff live in fear of persecution.

Motsoeneng himself is a fraud who, according to the public protector, falsified his qualifications (he claimed to have a matric, when he did not) to land his job.

Worst of all, what kind of leader tells the world, without any shame, that someone else falsified his qualifications for him? What do the trusting young people joining the SABC today say when they see this sort of practice? I am sure they know now that lying, scheming and jumping into bed with politicians will get you far in this country.

It would be an insult to spaza shops to say that the place is run like a spaza shop. It is worse: it is run like the piggy bank of a tin-pot dictator like the late Nigerian Sani Abacha. Motsoeneng famously said he does not have to understand corporate governance, others are there for that.

That explains it all. Any manager who does not understand corporate governance should not be in the job. But the SABC is neither a meritocracy nor a place where the usual corporate rules apply.

How depressing, how miserable, how sad it must be for the hundreds of extremely talented and dedicated people who continue to toil at such a place. It must be a truly mind-numbing experience to be told constantly not to run footage of President Jacob Zuma being booed, or to interview government ministers "respectfully".

Of course, Motsoeneng will one day get a fat settlement package and go, leaving chaos behind him.

But that is not the true extent of the damage he and the successive SABC boards, which have allowed this to happen, will have wrought. The biggest damage will be to our democracy.

As elections get closer, are we getting a true and unvarnished picture of our country from the SABC? Are the failures of those in power being interrogated? What about exposure for the opposition? Are Julius Malema and his EFF, and Helen Zille and her DA, getting the coverage they should be getting in a free and fair media environment?

Our democracy, and the coming election, have already been compromised by the rot at the SABC. And we are silent.