Where on earth is eNCA (DStv 403) and SABC News (DStv 404), their teams of correspondents that should be on-the-ground in Mozambique (Zimbabwe and Malawi) and the rolling, comprehensive and high-news agenda TV news coverage it should be doing and that viewers rightfully expect in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai?
Why after the biggest natural disaster to hit Southern Africa and the Southern Hemisphere in two decades is it barely getting coverage on eNCA and SABC News, with somewhat more and better-done coverage on international TV news channels?
That is what viewers and TV news watchers are wondering about the shockingly inadequate, superficial, limited, short duration, low-agenda and wholly inept coverage of Cyclone Idai and its terrible aftermath seen on eMedia Investments' eNCA and the South African public broadcaster's SABC News channel.
Once again South African viewers and viewers watching elsewhere in Africa and the world are getting a screen-by-screen comparison of how embarrassingly and severely truncated, underwhelming, limited and incomplete the coverage on both eNCA and SABC News are, compared with other TV news channels when it comes to televised reporting of a big disaster.
Neither eNCA nor SABC News apparently has the will, resources, skill, capability and know-how to actually cover news, dispatch teams of their own correspondents and to properly report on something like an unfolding disaster in a closeby neighbouring country.
Meanwhile the coverage on BBC World News (DStv 400 / StarSat 256 / Cell C black 501 / Openview 121), Sky News (DStv 402), Al Jazeera (DStv 406 / StarSat 257 / Cell C black 503) and CGTN (DStv 409 / StarSat 266) - although not excellent - have been much more and much better than eNCA and SABC News.
Strikingly, CNN International (DStv 401) - for once - is also part of the eNCA and SABC News failure box this time.
CNN International - usually much better than this - has a lack of on-the-ground and rolling coverage of the horrific disaster in which up to a 1 000 people or more are feared dead with an area the size of Johannesburg in South Africa still flooded and underwater in Mozambique.
Where are the multiple, ongoing reports and first-person stories from reporters and correspondents in Beira? Where are the on-the-ground TV news interviews with victims and correspondents fanning out to show the extent of the devastation?
Why does eNCA and SABC News not have correspondents there and why is the story not the top story every hour with rolling special coverage?
Why do TV news viewers who want to get a (better) sense of what is actually happening in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe after the devastation of Cyclone Idai have to tune to BBC World News, Al Jazeera and other international TV channels to see and hear reporting, and first-hand reporting, of the devastation and what is happening?
Why is SABC News and eNCA doing prompter live-read and recorded voice-overs with 2-minute wire-services visuals reserved for foreign disaster stories happening a world away?
Why does SABC News and eNCA not have teams of reporters on the ground in Beira and across Mozambique? Both reporting the oncoming cyclone and knew days in advance it's approaching. What plans exactly were made to dispatch and have people there in time before the storm hit?
Why are international TV news channel correspondents once again telling Africa and the world about a big and harrowing African story as parents dig through the mud looking for their dead children; as women, children and babies are trapped in trees; and as rescuers scramble to try and save people trapped by floodwaters?
This is unacceptable. SABC News and eNCA claim that they're news services and news channels in Africa. Sadly they don't behave that way if you look at the TV news coverage they produce and put out during times where and when it really matters.
Sadly they're once again short on incisively, comprehensively and adequately telling and reporting on an African story - one happening very close to their Johannesburg news headquarters.
eNCA stands for "eNews Channel Africa". If it can't or doesn't want to do the "Africa" part, it should remove the "A" because its inclusion alludes and creates a perception that it will cover news from Africa which it doesn't really live up to.
The SABC chose to expand the footprint of its SABC News channel on DStv beyond South Africa into the rest of sub-Saharan Africa on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform.
That brings more viewers and exposure for the SABC and SABC News, but the bigger broadcasting footprint also means that the SABC has a bigger responsibility to actually really cover and do real news coverage from the geographical area besides South Africa where it is available in when there is big news happening.
eNCA has reporter Dasen Thathiah in Mozambique. Only him. Doing some stories. Of course as a single correspondent he can only do so much. SABC News has nobody and plays wire news agency clips as coverage.
Stories are run not top-of-the-hour, and neither is there rolling coverage and neither eNCA nor SABC News can, or seems interested in doing any type of comprehensive live coverage of the unfolding natural and humanitarian disaster happening right now.
The SABC's foreign editor Sophie Mokoena sits under studio lights in the SABC News studio to "unpack" the "damage caused by Cyclone Idai" in Mozambique while the SABC plays United Nations video clips of the devastation, while Ephert Musekiwa does phone-in's from Harare, Zimbabwe.
This is simply not good enough. South African TV news is failing their audience in doing what their news services purport to be.
Meanwhile the BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Beira, Al Jazeera's Fahmida Miller also in Beira, Sky News' Africa correspondent John Sparks also in Beira and other correspondents are telling the stories, moving around and interviewing people in Mozambique.
Why is the coverage of Cyclone Idai's aftermath in Mozambique not getting bigger by the hour on SABC News and eNCA? And where is CNN International this time with no on-the-ground reporting in Mozambique but doing reporting from Lagos, Nigeria? Really?
More than 400 000 people have been left homeless. At least 98 people have died in Zimbabwe, 56 in Malawi, and 217 in Mozambique, with thousands missing in all three countries.
The SABC and eNCA should send correspondents - plural - there. They should have been there days ago. They should stay there. They should tell the story(ies) and not leave it to wire news service footage to provide footage for cobbled-together clips to fill a throwaway-minute with a voice-over. It's disgusting.
All of the puff press releases from TV news channels who have a presence in Africa and their verbose statements about "telling the African story" falls completely flat and means nothing when it's time to actually really show and tell the "African story" - and then there's no real showing nor any real telling.
