The Creative Workers Union of South Africa (CWUSA) has released the following statement regarding public broadcaster SABC’s decision to withdraw participation of certain political journalists from MetroFM’s Sakina Kwemendo Show. The statement reads: CWUSA, the ideologically clear and class conscious voice of the creative workers, supports the decision by the public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), to withdraw participation of certain political journalists from MetroFM’s Sakina Kwemendo Show, without the involvement and participation of the ANC itself.
We are disturbed by misguided, spurious and malicious offensive views unleashed by certain political commentators and newsroom editors directed towards the SABC for withdrawing the participation of mainly AVUSA journalists. We strongly believe that there is a well-orchestrated and planned strategy by certain political commentators and editors who want to capture the SABC to further their narrow, self-centred and political factional agenda’s intended not only to destroy the political image of the ANC, but to poison the minds of society against the democratically-elected ANC government and its leadership.
We applaud the SABC for taking this progressive decision to withdraw the participation of the journalists in the interest of defending itself from political manipulation and bullying.
As CWUSA, we want to remind these self-anointed and newly found champions of media freedom or freedom of expression that they should not develop selective amnesia. Not so long ago, in 2007, just before the ANC Polokwane Conference, the then head of News and Current Affairs, Snuki Zikalala, abused and manipulated the SABC news in favour of certain powerful and dominant faction in the ANC. And we can’t afford now for the SABC to be dragged into ANC internal processes under the guise of “independent’ political analysts and commentators. This is nothing, but a back-door strategy to capture the ANC.
Our support of the SABC’s decision is informed by our ideological convictions, that newsrooms (not journalist workers) are not class neutral, but they are the property and mouthpiece of the dominant class, which owns and controls the economy. Therefore the newsrooms will always act in the interest of its owning class, by advancing its political interests and agenda’s.
Furthermore, we condemn personal attacks directed towards the Acting GCOO of the SABC by certain political reporters, particularly by The Star’s editor. The questioning of the Acting GCOO’s academic qualifications seeks to implant a notion that to be in position of authority and responsibility you must be “certificated’. We strongly believe that the Acting GCOO given his track record and experience is fit to hold the position he occupies. This understanding is consistent with our own unique South African and popular Nguni idiom “umuntu ufunda azafe’.
