by Thinus Ferreira
Amidst growing concerns about the South African public broadcaster's ability to comprehensive and effectively cover the country's upcoming local general elections on 4 November, Nomsa Chabeli, SABC CEO, says the broadcaster will do the best it can.
The select committee on economic development and trade in South Africa's parliament put out a statement on the parliamentary website, citing "lack of funding will result in the SABC not being able to cover the elections, committee hears".
According to the committee, Nomsa Chabeli said that the public broadcaster "is now planning coverage within its affordability" and maintains that the SABC can cover the elections set for 4 November properly.
"The ability to afford the deployment is still there should the funding become available, but sitting here nearly three weeks before the start, we realise that the window is fast closing. But for us it is important to reinforce commitment to ensuring that we provide credible, impartial access to election coverage which is supported by these realistic plans."
The SABC asked National Treasury for R120 million in funding to do election coverage and got nothing from the South African government.
Nomsa Chabeli, a few months ago, warned that even if the SABC were to get the money, due to logistics and acquisition timeframes, the SABC would now no longer have enough time to spend the money to beef up the broadcaster's election coverage.
With the SABC not able to fully do what it is supposed to in terms of the breadth of local election coverage, which requires more granular coverage than for the general election, it means that more viewers might drift to commercial rivals like eMedia's eNCA (DStv 403) and Newzroom Afrika (DStv 405).
The problem is that these commercial TV news channels don't have the ability to cover the local elections very comprehensively either, and also that they have commercial interest: Coverage that is too far, too difficult or not deemed "worthy" won't get airtime and they don't have a mandate of "must cover" and can leave something if it's deemed too costly.
eMedia's eNCA is also going through a retrenchment process, letting go of staffers at the news channel that is impacting its news gathering scope.
