Before the struggling South African public broadcaster sold its treasured archives to MultiChoice in a controversial channels deal, the SABC also apparently sold it to ANN7 (DStv 405) as Gupta executives laughed at the "stupid SABC" and said: "The people at the SABC can be bought for a meal and a drink; they are willing to give away their treasure trove of historical footage for peanuts".
The stunning claim is the latest of many to emerge from the buzzed about new book, Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV, by author Rajesh Sundaram, a former ANN7 giving an insider's perspective on the horrific working conditions during the set-up and eventual disastrous launch of the "Gupta news" channel on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform in August 2013.
While much has already been reported about the SABC's controversial deal with MultiChoice selling its archives to Naspers' pay-TV unit, it's now coming to light that the SABC actually also allegedly sold its archives for a fraction of what it's worth to the Gupta family accused in a litany of widespread State Capture allegations.
In his book, Rajesh Sundaram writes that that Laxmi Goel, an executive roped in by the Guptas to help with the setting up and launch of ANN7, during a meeting revealed "an elaborate plan to buy archival footage from the SABC".
"He told me how the Guptas had got a nod from the state broadcaster to buy this valuable archive. The SABC had plans to set up a 24/7 news channel of their own, but they were willing to sell their archives for a sweet deal to the Guptas".
"They have all their archives on mini DV tapes. Their library is not automated or digitised, and it takes them ages to find any footage. We will bring these tapes to our studio and digitise them. So from day one we will have a tapeless library with systems that will make it possible for us to pull out footage within a few seconds."
"We know the people at the SABC, so we will get footage at a very low rate. You will have to make sure that all the footage of historical importance at the SABC is included in the 100-hour bulk deal we plan to do with them," Laxmi Goel apparently told Rajesh Sundaram.
"But the SABC eventually did not allow the footage to be taken away from their office. Rahul Singh, a senior video librarian from India, was sent with mini digital video format tapes and asked to bring back 100 hours of footage from the thousands of tapes at the SABC archives".
"He spent about a month going to the SABC every day and sitting at a video editing bay there and transferring all the valuable historical footage the SABC had in its tape library. By the time he resigned and went back to India, he had collected 60 hours of priceless footage from the SABC library," writes Rajesh Sundaram.
"We are paying them a lump sum to get this footage. We have got a very sweet deal with them. The people at the SABC can be bought for a meal or a drink; they are willing to give away their treasure trove of historical footage footage for peanuts."
"They have a clause in the contract that says that we will have to also pay them a "per second" fee for every time we air the footage we have taken from them. But they are so stupid, how will they be able to tell what is their footage? How can they audit our use? We will get all their footage forever at just this one-time cost," Nazeem Howa said when the footage transfer were discussed later, writes Rajesh Sundaram.
He writes that Rahul was instructed "to take anyone he interacts with at the SABC for a drink or mean any time they wanted to when he was at the SABC transferring footage. He was told by Nazeem that this cost would be reimbursed to him".
"Get all of Nelson Mandela's footage, get footage of the atrocities on the blacks during the apartheid years; we can use it to show the young people of today how the whites treated their grandparents and parents. This footage is priceless, and I want you to take as much of it as possible back with you. Even if you get more than 100 hours, get that, we will pay them under the table, Atul Gupta told Rahul during our discussion."
"The archival footage at the SABC was indeed of a very high quality and in my view worth millions of rands," writes Rajesh Sundaram. "Nazeem, Laxmi and Atul repeatedly told me that the contract with the SABC for this sale favoured ANN7, was drafted by Gupta lawyers and that the price of the footage was 'peanuts' compared to its real value."
"Rahul digitised all the footage he got the very same day and catalogued and classified it on the video library system. This meant transferring the footage from tapes to servers. After the footage was tagged and put on the server, ANN7 was able to retrieve and air it in a matter of seconds, something that would take the SABC team hours or even days to do."
"I have not been able to figure out why the SABC signed this contract and handed valuable footage shot over decades to a company that had far superior archiving technology and would be a rival to its own proposed 24-hour news channel".
The SABC was asked in a media enquiry on Monday if the public broadcaster possibly has any comment or statement regarding what Rajesh Sundaram writes in his book Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV, about the SABC and the SABC's archive material that was given to ANN7.
The SABC didn't respond.
Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV is published by Jacana Media and is available in bookstores at R185.
