Last week I welcomed and applauded the wonderful move by SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng when he launched the introduction of the 90 percent local music content on all of the broadcaster’s radio stations.
I told you of how much value this is going to be for the nation and its music industry and the well-being of the artists, whom we have always criticised for being extravagant and impulse spenders who often die as paupers.
And I also told you how Motsoeneng is never shy and short of controversy, and here is this week’s controversy from the less-learned man of the SABC.
Motsoeneng ordered his TV newsroom staff never to show any visuals of protesters that burn public infrastructure as he fears copycats. However, he has not tested this with us, the public, that relies on that corporation as the source of information and news.
The problem with Motsoeneng is that he rules the SABC by decree and hence there is no democracy in the institution. He wields too much power. Power that has been bestowed on him by his political bosses in order to reign over us all without being given the option to say yes or no to certain decisions.
In fact, what he is doing is worse than what the apartheid regime was doing to the SABC those years ago.
Everybody knew the SABC then was controlled by the government. Today we have party political figures running the show and masquerading as civilians. Putting political figures in top echelons of the SABC in order to practice the subtle self-censorship is even worse than the open censorship of the apartheid era because not all of us will know, understand and detect that kind of censorship, and it has the ability to go on forever.
Motsoeneng thinks he is the saint of the SABC and whatever he says or thinks goes. Those are typical tendencies of despots who rule by decree. It happened in the then Soviet Union, East Germany, Yugoslavia, and closer to home in Zimbabwe.
Motsoeneng has just insulted all of our intelligence as he believes we South Africans are like monkeys – he believes we copycat whatever we see on TV – that we behave in the monkey see, monkey do fashion, and that we have no capacity to think for ourselves and differentiate between good and bad or right and wrong.
He thinks he is the only person gifted with the powers of thought and that his word is final. Motsoeneng said it at the recent SABC conference to announce his so-called new talent which was nothing but a damp squib, there’s nothing new about Sophie Ndaba, Somizi Mhlongo, Arthur Mofokate and Khanyi Mbau – in fact, it is an insult to them because they’re legends of the game.
Motsoeneng told his management team in no uncertain terms that anyone who does not want to sail this ship with him must jump ship now. It will not be surprising if we start seeing SABC management adrift in the coming few months.
If he thinks showing visuals of people burning infrastructure is wicked and evil and leads to more burnings and violence, then ban the protests themselves. And also consider banning sexual scenes and violent movies as they too lead to rape and murder and can be copycatted.
The SABC needs to mirror the nation, in good times or bad times, or whether in ugly or beautiful scenes, or the next way we shall be hearing of our own news occurrences is through international news media, as was the case during apartheid.
