I’m sharing something I wrote three years ago about censorship at the South African Public Broadcaster (SABCNews) which was initially published on IPS in 2013 as I am thinking and reflecting on the bravery of SABC8 Journalist Suna Venter who died from Heart Break Syndrome. I didn’t know then that the state of emergency in our country would escalate to a point where one of own journalists would be harassed, stalked, assaulted, isolated, hounded and victimized to the point of death. I don’t think it’s fair that one person, a single individual has to die before we all can realize how pervasive the power structures in all state and or public institutions have become. It’s not fair to sacrifice people at the alter of your lust for power, money, influence or the vote. Yes, principles might not pay your bills but not having them will certainly kill the conscience of this country. Can you live with that?
In the Public Interest
In this blog for World Press Freedom Day 2013, journalist Jedi Ramalapa shares the pressures journalists often face from State institutions to censor their work, and the emotional toll this can have on both the journalist and the subject.
In the Public Interest
by Jedi Ramalapa
The South African Broadcasting Corporation or SABC broadcasts news and current affairs daily to more than 48 million South Africans, through 18 radio stations in all the 11 official languages and has three television channels which can be accessed even in the remotest parts of the country.
It is more powerful than any of the local South African broadcasters put together in swaying public opinion and, more importantly, with winning votes. Having control over the public broadcaster is having control of the country. Businesses and politicians understand this fact all too well. If it’s not on SABC, it can’t be completely true.
I was busy editing an interview with one of the Marikana widows, whose husband was killed along with 50 or so other mine workers on the 16th of August 2012. It was the kind of interview I had done a thousand times before, speaking to grieving relatives about their loved ones. It was in my opinion nothing out of the ordinary or controversial.
But this time and for the first time in an eight-and-a-half year public broadcasting career at the SABC they, the executive producers, asked to listen to the final cut of the interview which we planned to air later that day.
They listened as the widow spoke of her grief and her anger. “I blame the government, the police, the unions and Lonmin for what happened,” she said on tape.
Play that again, said the executive producers. They listened and said, “Cut out that part.”
“Which part,” I asked? Like a naïve little girl.
“That part where she says: ‘I blame the government, the unions, the police and Lonmin for what happened.’”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because there’s no one to blame, we don’t know who is responsible, and we just don’t want to have to deal with questions.”
What questions, I asked myself in disbelief thinking that even in her grief the widow had managed to be impartial in apportioning blame to everyone involved in the Marikana massacre; not many people were able to do that.
But I couldn’t fight it. I had woken this woman up at 6am to do the interview, which had taken me at least three days and a string of phone-calls to convince her to speak to me. We cried together during the interview- in which I tried to convince her that life was still worth living. She had trusted me with her heart. I was not going to let her down. So I did as I was told and cut out the offending parts like a surgeon saving a life.
The widow had been censored in the most subtle of ways, by omission and not only was I not prepared for it, I became an accomplice.
Even today I don’t know who to blame for that moment in my life, myself for doing the interview in the first place? Or for failing to defend her or my work when I was told to cut out certain parts? I don’t know.
But I am writing this to honour the Marikana widow who in a moment of great loss and pain managed to do what I and the public broadcaster failed to do, speak truth to power and remain impartial.
Jedi Ramalapa 