The trade union Mwasa and the IFP party are both set for separate public marches and picketing at the SABC's Auckland Park headquarters this coming Friday and Wednesday.
For the first time in the party's history, the Inkatha Freedom Party will embark on a mass march against the SABC this Friday, 14 September. The march will start at 10:00 from the Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newton to the SABC's Auckland Park headquarters where the IFP will hand over a memorandum of demands to the broadcaster.
The IFP is extremely unhappy over what it calls unfair political news coverage. Meanwhile the SABC's head of news and current affairs, Phil Molefe, is still on "special leave" for five months already since April, with a scheduled disciplinary hearing which is constantly being postponed. Meanwhile the SABC is setting up its 24-hour news channel with funding from MultiChoice without its head of news. This year the SABC has shown major major ANC events as well as lectures on television but are not doing so for other political parties.
"For years the IFP has continuously engaged the SABC over its anti-IFP coverage and the way in which opposition parties are not fairly represented on all of the public broadcaster's radio and television channels. This year, for example, two of the IFP's three major events - its Freedom Day and Women's Day rally - did not receive TV coverage at all," says the IFP in a statement.
"This is coupled with anti-IFP programmes that have been aired, such as The Bang Bang Club. Now the IFP will take to the streets to demand fairness from the public broadcaster. South Africans must demand of their public broadcaster that they be treated with respect and not force-fed and manipulated with political propaganda. This will be the IFP's message when it embarks on a mass march on Friday," says the IFP.
Meanwhile the trade union, Mwasa plans to be picketing outside the SABC on Wednesday 19 September. Mwasa plans to also hand over a memorandum to the SABC, placing several demands for the public broadcaster to address.
"We demand an SABC that works," says Mwasa. "We cannot continue with this regression and crisis management. We believe we are being prevented from performing our role as workers, staff, a corporate citizen and as human beings in serving the country and its people through the medium of the SABC."
