VZCZCXRO4866
PP RUEHDU RUEHJO
DE RUEHSA #4513/01 3040843
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 310843Z OCT 06
FM AMEMBASSY PRETORIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6629
INFO RUEHJO/AMCONSUL JOHANNESBURG 5635
RUEHTN/AMCONSUL CAPE TOWN 3559
RUEHDU/AMCONSUL DURBAN 8310
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRETORIA 004513 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR AF/PDPA, AF/S, DRL/MLA, ECA/AEAF 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM PINR SCUL KDEM KPAO SF
SUBJECT: SOUTH AFRICAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION CIRCLES ITS WAGONS 
AFTER REPORT BLASTS ITS NEWS CHIEF 
 
REF: A) PRETORIA 2755; B) PRETORIA 4417 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:  The embattled South African Broadcast 
Corporation (SABC) took another hit to its credibility with the 
unauthorized release of a report confirming the Managing Director of 
its News and Current Affairs Division banned certain commentators, 
in some cases for politically motivated reasons (Ref B).  By 
releasing a watered-down summary of the report, frantically seeking 
to suppress publication of the full report, and expressing "full 
confidence" in the much-maligned news chief, the SABC Board has 
stoked concerns that the public broadcaster is failing its mandate 
to be independent and not a government mouthpiece.  The SABC chief 
executive officer's subsequent attempt to portray the criticism as 
the whining of whites unhappy with black governance has added a 
racial undertone to the controversy.  End Summary. 
 
----------------------- 
SABC's Annus Horribilis 
----------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) Public Broadcaster SABC is the dominant media organization 
in South Africa.  With three of the country's four free-to-air 
television stations and a far-reaching radio network that broadcasts 
in all 11 national languages, SABC is uniquely positioned to 
influence politics and national discourse. 
 
¶3.   (U) Earlier this year, SABC came under fire for behavior that 
recalled the days when the public broadcaster was little more than a 
mouthpiece for the white apartheid government (Ref A).  Raising 
alarms were a last-minute decision to reject a documentary that 
voiced criticism of President Mbeki and reports that certain 
commentators critical of the government had been banned from the 
public airwaves.  Reeling from the resulting criticism, the Board 
asked a former SABC group chief executive and a widely respected 
lawyer to investigate the allegations of a commentator "blacklist." 
The probe was expected to focus on Snuki Zikalala, the Managing 
Director of SABC's News and Current Affairs Division, who is a 
former government spokesman and viewed by many as an apparatchik of 
the ruling African National Congress. 
 
--------- 
Whitewash 
--------- 
 
¶4.  (SBU) After several months of investigation, the appointed 
commission submitted its report to the SABC Board in late September. 
 On October 12, the Board released a nine-page summary of the 
commission's 78-page report.  Much of the report's detailed 
criticism of Zikalala's management style and of his decisions 
regarding the use of commentators (Ref B) was not included.  The 
summary did include the commission's relatively few positive 
findings about Zikalala -- such as an acknowledgment he wanted to 
improve the quality of reporting and the failure to uncover a 
consistent political motivation for his actions -- and ended with an 
expression of "full confidence" in him and his staff.  In explaining 
why it refused to release the entire report, the Board among other 
things noted that witness allegations had not been tested in court. 
[COMMENT: an odd consideration for a media organization that 
routinely airs material that fails that standard.] 
 
¶5.  (U) The following day, the weekly Mail & Guardian newspaper 
published a series of articles quoting from the full version of the 
report and posted a leaked copy of it on its Website (www.mg.co.za). 
 In several cases, the commission harshly criticized Zikalala's 
exclusion of commentators from SABC, saying they were not 
"objectively defensible."  Their report also argued that there was 
sufficient evidence to suggest that the SABC newsroom under Zikalala 
was poisoned by fear and self censorship. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) In response, the SABC Board circled its wagons.  It 
publicly expressed its full confidence in Zikalala in its report 
summary.  It went to court in an unsuccessful effort to suppress the 
publication of the commission's full report on the Mail & Guardian 
website, even though the report itself clearly recommends the full 
text should be made public.  A high-profile Board member, Thami 
Mazwai, wrote a scathing opinion piece in the influential Business 
Day newspaper that accused Zikalala's critics of a witch hunt. 
 
--------------------------------------------- - 
Public Reaction: Outrage from the Usual Quarters 
--------------------------------------------- - 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Not surprisingly, those moves outraged freedom of 
expression advocates, editorialists, and opposition politicians. 
Political cartoonists had a field day, with one giving Zikalala the 
 
PRETORIA 00004513  002 OF 002 
 
 
none-too-flattering titles of "Comrade Commissar, Censor-in-Chief 
(and) His Staliness." In Contrast, most government and ANC leaders 
have been conspicuously quiet so far. While public opinion is 
difficult to gauge without polling data, there have been no overt 
signs that the controversy is resonating deeply among South 
Africans. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Still, SABC Chief Executive Officer Dali Mpofu attacked his 
critics in a full-page vitriolic commentary that appeared in the 
October 22 City Press newspaper. Instead of acknowledging the 
freedom of expression concerns raised, he dismissed his critics as 
right-wingers and their fellow travelers - commonly-used terms 
referring to the white minority and their black supporters - and 
said the Mail & Guardian coverage reflected "the pervasive 
anti-establishment hatred of anything connected to the 
democratically elected black-dominated government."  Mpofu said not 
only was he reviewing allegations of wrongdoing by Zikalala, who is 
black, but is also investigating John Perlman, a white SABC radio 
presenter who contradicted on air an SABC spokesman who insisted 
there was no blanket ban on commentators.  [NOTE:  The commission 
report had exonerated Perlman, saying "we cannot fault him" for 
confronting an untruth.] 
 
¶9.  (U) The saga has left at least one intellectual arguing for a 
political revolution to usher out failed national leadership. 
Xolela Mangcu, visiting scholar at the Public Intellectual Life 
Project at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, argued 
in an October 19 Business Day column that both Zikalala and Mpofu 
were appointed to be political mouthpieces and not captains of an 
independent media, as required by the SABC charter. Mpofu's apparent 
inaction against Zikalala, he said, is "simply a symptomatic 
manifestation of a broader political, cultural and institutional 
malaise in this country.  It is a malaise born of a cynical 
political culture in which political leaders brook no dissent, feed 
on public resources and then tell the sick and the poor to eat cake. 
 Such political cultures never change until and unless there is a 
political revolution that ushers in a new leadership cadre." 
 
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Comment 
------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU) While the commissioners made clear that much of the 
testimony they heard focused on Zikalala and a narrow range of radio 
and television programs, their report left little doubt the SABC is 
not properly performing its role as an independent broadcaster 
airing a wide spectrum of opinion.  The SABC Board's initial 
response to the commission's findings is not encouraging for those 
who believe meaningful reform of the newsroom is urgently needed. 
Mpofu's subsequent public diatribe suggests an appalling 
misunderstanding of legitimate freedom of expression concerns. 
Those responses are troubling for post-apartheid South Africa, in 
which an independent SABC was envisioned to be a pillar of 
democratic development in a color-blind nation. 
 
BOST