The Inkatha Freedom Party is rather bemused with Sunday newspaper headline reports that "ANC bosses" have summoned SABC executives to Luthuli House.

This is hardly news!  It has been going on since the ANC took power in 1994.

What is news is that ANC "bosses" are said to have the gall to claim "political bias" when for more than a decade the SABC has slavishly pandered to the ANC Alliance's every whim day after day, year after year.  

A pre-election ANC rally in 2004 was given live television and radio coverage for more than an hour! Only a few weeks ago ANC leader, Mr Jacob Zuma, was given a live one-hour prime-time television broadcast. 

What on earth is the ANC Alliance complaining about?! 

Since 1994 the ANC in Parliament has hand-picked every SABC Board member and the ANC has had the final say in the appointment of all SABC executive officers. 

Now it would appear that the SABC has committed the crime of giving the new opposition party on the block, the Congress of the People, some air time!

Shock!  Horror!  The fact that a split in the ANC Alliance is somewhat newsworthy and something that even the SABC cannot gloss over, seems to have escaped the ANC cadre-control unit in Luthuli House.   

Editorial comment that the SABC board needs "new blood" is also somewhat fatuous considering the reality that the post-Polokwane ANC faction in Parliament - and particularly in Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Communications - are itching to dump the current Mbeki-appointed board so they can install a pro-Zuma ANC board!  Dumping the current board is just what they want!   

Until and when the selection of the SABC board is removed from the grasp of politicians (which the IFP has advocated time and again in Parliament) board members and SABC executives will, essentially, be appointed and controlled by the ruling party in power.  Political interference has been built into the system and ruthlessly exploited by the ANC Alliance.  Of course it is true that "alarm bells" (according to one Sunday newspaper) should be ringing with regard to political interference within the public broadcaster.

The IFP has been clanging this particular alarm bell for more than a decade. 

The IFP is continuously engaging the SABC over its pro-ANC biased coverage and the way in which it ensures that Opposition parties are not fairly represented on all of the public broadcaster's radio and television channels.
 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Suzanne Vos
083 303 0451