South African Broadcasting Corporation Research Articles

ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING AS A KNOWLEDGE RETENTION STRATEGY IN SELECTED PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORPORATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY

This article reports on a study that assessed the organisational learning activities for the purposes of retaining critical knowledge in three Southern African Development Community (SADC) public broadcasting organisations. The article reports the partial findings of a doctoral study that focused on analysing the knowledge retention strategies in three public broadcasting corporations, namely, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Department of Broadcasting Services (DBS) and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), in the SADC. The aim of the study was to establish how organisational learning strategy captured and retained knowledge in these public broadcasting corporations. A structured self-administered survey questionnaire was used to purposively sample 162 professionals and managers in the three organisations. The study concluded that through organisational learning the three public broadcasting organisations captured and retained knowledge but were limited by the lack of knowledge management officials. The study recommends the establishment of knowledge officers’ posts to manage the organisational knowledge and to implement sound mentorship programmes to assist learning in these organisations. While the Human Resources (HR) departments may be managing the training of individuals as a way of acquiring knowledge, the study further recommends that the management should provide HR with more funds to improve the learning culture that allows for innovation, continuous knowledge creation and transformation.

Balancing tradition with new norms: the case of online newsmaking at the SABC

ABSTRACTScholarship on the impact specific digital technologies have on the practice of journalism from the different media contexts in Africa paints many interesting, yet varied pictures. It is evident that the specific levels of impact are subject to contextual nuances. Public broadcasting remains a crucial media player in many parts of the continent, and that is most often subject to significant influences from the local political, technological and sociocultural environment. This article explores how online newsmaking practices and formats at the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) – one of Africa's foremost public broadcasters – are shaped by the identified local factors. Employing a mix of key informant interviews and content analyses, the findings reveal that there is quite a strong traditional element to the online news production process, shaped by dominant old broadcasting routines and structures. That said, the online news team is increasingly being challenged to work with converged skillsets, innovative tools, and evolving mindsets that are shaped by distinctive digital influences. The study suggests that such an arrangement, while allowing newsmakers in this domain to meet the demands of the local media environment, does limit their ability to harness the full potentials of the digital platform.

Public Servant or Censor?: The South African Broadcasting Corporation in the Era of Political Television Advertising

Political television advertising is becoming an important feature of democratic elections and essential to election campaign strategies. In this article we take a close look at the role the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is playing in the new era of political television advertising ushered in in 2009. We focus our analysis on the banning by the SABC of election advertisements by two major opposition political parties before the 2014 elections. The country's regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) upheld the decision of the SABC when the two parties filed complaints. The banning of the advertisements and Icasa's decision are assessed on two important principles for public broadcasting - editorial independence and public accountability. We argue in this article that the action by the public broadcaster undermines freedom of expression and the credibility of both the SABC and Icasa, especially when contextualised within other controversial editorial decisions taken by the broadcaster over the years. Further, we argue that laws governing political advertising in South Africa are constitutionally problematic and contain contradictions in how they should be applied and implemented by both broadcasters and Icasa. We conclude by arguing for a review of these laws.

Language, programming and propaganda during the SABC's first decade

ABSTRACTThe present article argues that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), along with a number of other institutions, was a key site in the promotion of Afrikaans linguistic autonomy and a popular Afrikaner cultural self-identity ahead of the 1948 elections. It takes as its point of departure that – in keeping with the idea of the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991), of nationhood being a constructed reality built from the raw material of history, culture and language – the struggle for Afrikaans within the SABC was part and parcel of the movement to create a viable Afrikaner ‘volk’, and thus helped pave the way for Afrikaner-led National Party hegemony in 1948. By using sources that include the annual reports of the SABC, the Hansard record of parliamentary debates, and the Commission of Enquiry into the SABC (Schoch 1948), the article traces the introduction of Afrikaans programming on public radio in South Africa in the mid-1930s; the turbulence of broadcasting through World War II; and outlines some of the issues of both technical infrastructure and programming production, in an attempt to provide co-equal programming for both English and Afrikaans listeners.

‘Sikhuluma Isikhethu’ : Ndebele Radio, Ethnicity and Cultural Identity in South Africa, 1983-1994

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) established nine African language radio stations ostensibly to cater for the diverse linguistic and cultural needs of the African communities in the country. In reality, however, these stations acted as a government mouthpiece and means through which a monopoly over the airwaves was asserted. Through these stations the government promoted ethnic compartmentalisation and popularised the ethnic ‘homelands’ created from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. One of these stations was Radio Ndebele, established in 1983, with a clear mandate to reinforce Ndebele ethnic nationalism. This article seeks to explore the history of this radio station, using both oral sources and documentary material, though privileging the former. The article makes a two-pronged argument: Firstly, Radio Ndebele came into existence not only because of the government’s mission but because of pressure from Ndebele-speaking people who needed radio programming in their own language. Secondly, this radio station helped turn a spoken language that was on the throes of extinction into a vibrant written language that found its way into the schooling system, particularly in areas with a large concentration of Ndebele-speaking people.

In service of Empire: the South African Broadcasting Corporation during World War II

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was a microcosm of the wider South African political situation, riven through with political, racial and linguistic divisions. A substantial English-speaking population compacted an alliance with a sizable sector of Afrikaans speakers under the leadership of Jan Smuts to form the United Party, dedicated to a unified, bilingual South Africa with strong ties to the wider British Commonwealth. The largest majority of Afrikaans speakers nurtured a desire for republican autonomy and Afrikaner cultural supremacy. In 1939, both sides of the divide were employed by the SABC, which tended to wait until the waters cleared before making any strong policy decisions on broadcasting either way. Once it became clear that the country would go to war, the SABC threw its weight behind this effort. Programming, including news, was relayed from the British Broadcasting Corporation, keeping South Africans up to date with the war efforts. World War II fundamentally changed social, economic and political relationships on a global scale. René Caprara's foresight of a National Party in power came to pass, and with it, the SABC changed too. But for the war years at least, South African broadcasting had firmly been part of a larger Empire.

Language policy and practice in the electronic mass media in multilingual, developing countries: The case of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)

Along with other parameters such as standard of living, level of education and literacy, and rate of industrialisation (often used in determining the socio-political and socio-economic status of a country), South Africa also evinces the features and challenges of official multilingualism, i.e., the formal adoption and use of several languages amongst its peoples. With a population of about 50.59 million (Statistics South Africa 2011 estimates), it is a classic example of ‘one nation, many peoples’. It has, therefore, become crucial to examine the various linguistic and mass communicational issues and challenges arising from this situation of official multilingualism in several spheres of everyday life in South Africa. This study focuses on the policies and practices guiding the use of many languages in disseminating information to all the peoples of the country through the electronic mass media. Examining the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) as a case study, this mini survey attempts to identify some of the challenges associated with the delivery of daily news and entertainment to all the peoples of South Africa in the 11 official languages, and reports on the reactions of a sample of the SABC's practitioners and listening and viewing audiences to the corporation's current performance in meeting the multilingual information and entertainment needs of all the different ethnic and cultural milieux that make up today's republic.

Moomin/Mūmin/Moemin: apartheid-era dubbing and Japanese animation

Under apartheid, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) dubbed large quantities of Japanese children's animation into Afrikaans, to fulfil bilingual broadcasting requirements. This article examines one such work, Moemin, which was dubbed into Afrikaans during the early 1990s, just as apartheid's grip on the national broadcaster was slipping. This series presents a unique case study of apartheid-era dubbing, because the dubbing team did not have access to full scripts and had to invent dialogue and plot as they went along. This means that the Afrikaans and Japanese versions differ significantly. This article uses a comparative close reading of the Afrikaans and Japanese versions to show how the process of dubbing should be seen as one of hybridisation between a transnational cultural commodity and a local specificity. In this case, the hybridisation provides glimpses into both the ideological flux that characterised South African life during the early 1990s, and into a transitional phase in the global circulation of Japanese pop culture. At the same time, the series becomes an eloquent artefact of a relatively unexamined aspect of north–south globalisation – the flow of media from Asia to Africa.

Vector-control personnel’s knowledge, perceptions and practices towards insecticides used for indoor residual spraying in Limpopo Province, South Africa

BackgroundContradictory arguments regarding the benefits and harm of insecticides, especially DDT, have caused concerns in different societal circles, threatening to undermine the achievements of the indoor residual spraying (IRS) programme in South Africa. These concerns were exacerbated by the screening of a documentary on South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Television with anti-DDT sentiments. Consequently, Limpopo Malaria Control Programme (LMCP) Management advocated for an investigation to determine the potential effect of such campaigns on vector-control personnel’s knowledge and perceived effects of insecticides on human health, with a view to improving the educational materials designed for use in training vector-control personnel.MethodsThe study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey using a structured field-piloted questionnaire, administered to 233 randomly selected vector-control personnel. Ethical clearance was granted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Approval for the study was granted by the Department of Health, Limpopo. Participation in the study was voluntary and all respondents signed informed consent. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the collected data.ResultsMost respondents (96.6%) had a positive perception of IRS as a method to control malaria. Despite their positive perception, 93.6% viewed IRS insecticides to be potentially harmful to the users. DDT was perceived to cause long-term reproductive and respiratory effects, whereas alpha-cypermethrin and deltamethrin were largely associated with skin irritation/itchiness and skin burn. Study participants were more worried about DDT’s potential effects on their reproductive system, including poor sexual performance, decline in libido, miscarriage and bearing children with genetic defects. However, none reported personal experience of bearing a child with genetic defects or miscarriage.Most anti-insecticide messages, especially relating to DDT, emanated from sources external to the LMCP, mainly through radio (62%) and television (33.9%) and about 70% believed such messages. While most respondents preferred to work with a moderately itchy deltamethrin, DDT was admittedly the most effective insecticide.ConclusionVector-control personnel faced health and ethical dilemmas, in that, while they perceived insecticides used for IRS in Limpopo to be potentially harmful to the health of users, as purported through media, they also viewed IRS using insecticides to be effective in controlling malaria.

Radio, Race and Identity in South Africa: The Case of Metro FM

This article presents a qualitative content analysis of Metro FM, a commercial music station owned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Metro FM has the second largest audience in the country and was the first SABC station to intentionally target a black audience. While fostering black pride, the station attempts to create a narrative of responsibility while simultaneously negotiating the cultural imperative to interpellate listeners as consumers. The narrative of black identity assumes a homogenous black audience located in urban areas, and while broadcasts are in English, a great degree of codeswitching allows for in-group identification.

Public Radio Broadcasting and Cultural Pluralism South Africa’s case of ‘Holy Cultural Matrimony’

A closer analysis of the long and arduous journey traversed by African nationalism often shows ethnicity marching along as an invisible ‘matrimonial’ partner. It is on that note that this article seeks to present South Africa’s project of managing ethnic diversity using public radio broadcasting as new form of cultural ‘holy matrimony’, with its consummation evinced through the implementation of policies that encourage ethnic diversity. The article acknowledges that the re‐appropriation of meaning for ethnicity in South Africa now denotes the politically correct and constructed descriptor of ‘culture’, and is characterized by the continued conflation of ethnicity and race relations. Unlike in some parts of Africa, where ethnicity is criminalized as ‘tribalism’ – thus emphasizing its instrumentalized destructive element – in South Africa cultural diversity is seen as the panacea for a stable democratic arrangement. This article proposes to discuss cultural pluralism as a democratic imperative within the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), which is a public service broadcaster (PSB). Two case studies of ethnic minority radio stations will be presented as empirical evidence: Munghana Lonene FM and Phalaphala FM .

‘A world in creolization’: Inheritance politics and the ambiguities of a ‘very modern tradition’ in two Black South African TV dramas

From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) emphasized social engineering policies such as nation building and neo-liberalist policies in their programming that were in line with South Africa's new political economy. Through a study of two South African drama series, Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, this article will demonstrate how these films drew from the neo-liberal policies and popular culture discourses germane to contemporary creolized cultural processes to construct ‘aspirational’ narratives (as defined by Vundla and McCarthy, producers of Generations and Gaz' Lam II respectively), that reflect changing economic patterns in post-apartheid African society. Furthermore, the article will demonstrate how these films highlight notions of contemporeinity brought about by the interplay between tradition and modernity, the international world system and the local, and the flow of metropolitan meaning through national culture right up to that of the most remote backwater villages. The change underpinned by the thematic frontiers of these films is read against the traditional cultural frames of inheritance convention, which in both filmic narratives are signalled by the pivotal use of the genres from the oral/popular discourse.

Thinking aloud/allowed: pursuing the public interest in radio debate

This article examines the controversy that erupted in 2006 when the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was accused of banning certain commentators. The ‘blacklisting’ saga surfaced differences in ideas and practices of publicness among the contenders in the controversy and revealed that notions of the public, public accountability and the public interest were contested. The research describes independent newsroom practices conducted in terms of journalistic ethics and professional ideologies, and shows that journalists assume a powerful role in defining publics and calling them into being, as well as in orchestrating their participation in public deliberation. This is a professional responsibility that is recognised and defended. However, the practices associated with that responsibility and the power to orchestrate the debate in particular ways are not critically engaged within the profession. Just as the debate illuminates the concept of publicness imported into journalistic practice, it also illuminates concepts imported into SABC institutional practice which are rooted in a long lineage of national democratic struggle. In the controversy, the two concepts chafed against each other, propounded in each case by protagonists embedded in their respective lineages. The controversy was thus more than simply a struggle for political control; it was a contest about the meaning of democratic citizenship itself, rooted in differing but intersecting political‐intellectual logics.

The Community in Community Radio: A Case Study of XK FM, Interrogating Issues of Community Participation, Governance, and Control

This article provides a critical analysis of XK FM as a community radio station for the !Xû and Khwe ethnic communities in Platfontein, South Africa. Various political undercurrents and factors are examined, including the refusal to accept the two groups as separate ethnic communities and the anomalous creation of XK FM as a community radio station under the auspices of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). The article concludes that XK FM is not a community radio station in the strict sense, but is an extension of the SABC in a decentralized version of the public broadcaster.

‘Treating officials with kid gloves?’ An appraisal of government in two South African television news programmes

In response to widely reported perceptions of pro-government bias on the part of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), this study applied Appraisal analysis to television news recorded from SABC3 on the one hand, and e-tv, a commercial channel, on the other, in order to explore at least the notion of relative bias. Bias was construed in terms of partiality (evaluative language used) and lack of balance (the range of voices given access to the newscast and the amount of time they are afforded) and three types of discourse were extracted for analysis: lead and closing sentences of news items; instances where voices other than the broadcaster's were attributed (in effect, reported speech); and instances where other voices were given direct access to the newscast. The results revealed a pro-government bias by SABC3 relative to e-tv, more in terms of partiality than balance.

Executive overstretch: South African broadcasting independence and accountability under Thabo Mbeki

In this article I examine the extent of the South African broadcasting sector's independence and accountability since Thabo Mbeki became president in 1999. I trace how the independence of two institutions – the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) – has been eroded over this period. While initially the government justified this erosion as being necessary to attain developmental objectives in the context of a globalising economy, more lately there have been attempts to justify greater state control of content. Icasa has been subjected to greater direct executive control, and there are attempts to intensify this control, while the executive exercises indirect control over the SABC. Greater accountability to the state has been accompanied by a decline in public accountability. I conclude by arguing that the experiences with Icasa and the SABC give credence to the argument made by several international NGOs that media freedom in South Africa is declining, in spite of official protestations to the contrary. I also argue that this control has damaged the integrity of these institutions, and that this integrity must be restored now that Mbeki's presidency is coming to an end.

Jam or cheese? The challenges of a national broadcaster in a multilingual context

In contrast to commercial broadcasters, national broadcasters are partly subsidised by taxpayers’ money and therefore have a mandate to serve their particular society within the context of the current political system. In democratic societies these mandates typically have to balance out the following challenges: • A limited number of available television channels and radio stations • Equity in terms of audience home language/language variety • Audience preferences and values • Audience ratings and the subsequent advertising income. The paper demonstrates that a public broadcaster can promote diversity and multilingualism AND be commercially successful. The multilingual soap operas produced for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) will be the case in point. Moreover, the case studies will show how commercially successful multilingual soap operas can give new status to marginalised languages.

Unifying and dividing processes in national media: The Janus face of South Africa

The article aims to open up a theoretical space where the nation building project's inherent contradictions can thrive, making it possible to see the construction of a new South Africa as a dialectical area of both converging and diverging processes. Using the national broadcaster South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the frequently used discourse of African renaissance as its central examples, the article argues that both processes of nation building and tendencies of globalisation must be seen as multidirectional processes to allow for a more consistent picture. Both the SABC and the current discourse of African renaissance are influenced by unifying and dividing processes.

Radio and Television Audiences in South Africa: 1994–2002

In this article the author tracks various media and their usage in South Africa from 1994 to 2002 to see how they reacted o the extended choices in radio and television. Wider exposure to the media, that is, private radio and television stations other than the South African Broadcasting corporation (SABC), was supposed to deepen democracy in the sense that it would give people the opportunity to hear and see differing opinions on air. In addition, for the first time disadvantaged communities had a voice in the media in the form of community radio. In the context of the massive and positive political, social and administrative changes in a wide range of sectors in South Africa, it was surprising to see the relative stability of choices made by mass media users, in terms of both content and type. Some theoretical and pragmatic comments on this phenomenon are given in the article.

Transforming state owned enterprises in the Global Age: Lessons from broadcasting and telecommunications in South Africa

The study documents and analyzes the restructuring and transformation of South African broadcasting and telecommunications sector, in the light of two parallel trends: •The globally-apparent challenges to the sector •The impact of the neo-liberal agenda on the part of the South African government towards the ‘structuring’ of state-owned enterprises. The ‘crises’ in public broadcasting and telecommunications sectors internationally are well documented. Globalisation, technological advances including digitalisation, convergence of both platforms and content, extreme financial constraint, and the attendant processes accompanying them are usually cited as the mainsprings of the predicament. In South Africa there is the added complication of political and social restructuring, following a change of government and the movement towards transformation from 1994. In the era of globalisation, the nation-state, far from becoming irrelevant, has become a key player in driving the project of neoliberalism, reform and restructuring. To meet the challenges of the global economy, ‘neo-liberal’ governments, including South Africa, have pursued a dual strategy of both rolling back the state, while being more centralised and directive. Typically, the state has restructured itself by concentrating on those departments most closely connected to the global economy, particularly those attached to Departments of finance and trade. At the second level, ‘state assets’ are reassessed in the light of their potential for self-sustenance, or even commercial profit. Public utilities, such as telecommunications and broadcasting, power supply and public transport, are particularly susceptible to ‘restructuring’, ‘commercialisation’ and ‘privatisation’. South African ‘State Owned Enterprises’ provide a salient case in point. The public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and the public telecommunications provider, Telkom, have been undergoing various moves towards both transformation and restructuring since 1993. Some of these changes are in line with similar movements in broadcasters and telecoms throughout the world, including adjustments to the management structures and more efficient approaches to business; while others are directed towards satisfying the social and economic imperatives of a changing society, specifically the almost revolutionary change in content and programming.