My Father Died for This. Lukhanyo Calata
Prior to that night, I had not come across anything out of the ordinary for a journalist working in any other newsroom. But around ten o’clock that evening, an encounter I had with Jimi Matthews, who was then head of news, changed everything. It was just outside the entrance to the Marks Building in the parliamentary precinct where I had my first-ever instruction to censor the news at the SABC. I demonstrated to Duarte how Jimi had grabbed me by the scruff of my jacket and instructed me not to get him into shit and that I had to go and cut him positive soundbites of reactions from opposition parties following the president’s address.
My dilemma with this instruction was two-fold. Firstly, there were the obvious censorship issues; and, secondly, there were no positive soundbites to cut. 2014 was an election year. Politicians, particularly those from opposition parties, are shrewd enough to understand the value of those few minutes that we interview them live on air. They know that what they say is broadcast live to the nation, therefore none of them – particularly in an election year – would use those precious minutes to sing the then president Jacob Zuma’s praises. So, without fail, not one of them had anything remotely positive to say about the president’s address.
I told Duarte how my interaction with Jimi that night had troubled me, not only as a journalist working in a free and democratic South Africa, but also as the son of Fort Calata. It had upset me deeply that I had been asked to do something that had such strong ties to apartheid South Africa. In the apartheid years, particularly in the turbulent Eighties, the SABC was truly ‘his master’s voice’, a tool used to great effect by the brutal and murderous regime of PW Botha. How could Jimi of all people dare to ask me to do to my people the exact same things successive apartheid governments had done to them before? It was something I was not prepared to do.
Today, I look back at that moment with Jimi and feel so proud of my defiance, particularly for not betraying the dreams and aspirations of all South Africans. I should add that I never did cut those soundbites or any soundbites for that matter. Instead, I relayed Jimi’s instructions to the parliamentary editor, Vuyani Green. He too must have felt uneasy at these instructions, because he asked me to pass the message on to my colleague Bulelani Phillip, who was working on the reactions piece for the next morning. I refused to do that too.
I then grabbed my jacket, bag, car keys, and bid everyone a good night. I recounted other subsequent incidents to Duarte – such as the time I received the instruction that we (TV reporters in parliament) were no longer allowed to use an iconic and historically significant reel of footage, where members of parliament representing the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) disrupted a sitting of the National Assembly. Chanting ‘Pay back the money!’, they would not allow Zuma to address the National Assembly, saying he first needed to pay back several millions of rand, as per the findings and recommendations of then-Public Protector Thuli Madonsela.
In her report, titled ‘Secure in Comfort’, Madonsela had found that public money indeed was used illegally to build non-security-related structures, including a kraal, chicken-run, amphitheatre, and swimming pool at Zuma’s private home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.
To this day, I have no idea who in the SABC had issued the directive that the EFF footage be banned. I remember, though, that I flatly ignored the instruction and continued using the footage to overlay my piece, which looked back at the key moments of the 2014 parliamentary year.
A few minutes after sending the package through to Johannesburg for broadcast that December afternoon, I received a call from Nyana Molete, TV news editor. His first words to me were, ‘Calata, why do you want me to lose my job?’ – a question that greatly puzzled me because I did not wield such or any other power for that matter at the SABC. He then asked me to re-edit my piece and drop the footage of the EFF MPs chanting ‘Pay back the money!’ I declined. In the ensuing debate about journalistic principles and ethics, he asked me, ‘Calata, will you feed my children when they have to go to bed hungry?’ My response was that, although I would not like his children to go to bed hungry, I was not prepared to re-edit the piece. I claimed to have already left the office by then anyway. He said, in that case, the re-edit would be done in Johannesburg. I had no response to that, so I ended our telephone conversation.
A colleague, who was in the office with me at the time, overheard my conversation with Nyana. I suspect it was she who may have leaked my conversation with him to Andisiwe Makinana from City Press. Andisiwe called me barely half an hour later, asking me to confirm whether it was true that the SABC had banned the footage of EFF MPs chanting ‘Pay back the money!’ in the National Assembly. I confirmed to her that this was indeed the case.
The article appeared in the newspaper the following Sunday. Suffice to say, it didn’t go down well with the managers at the SABC. In the days that followed, both Isabelle and I were asked to explain in writing how this information got to the media.
About two weeks later, in January 2015, news management, in the person of parliamentary editor Vuyani Green, threatened us with immediate dismissal if we spoke out about internal SABC matters. This to me did not make sense at all, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand this logic. Our livelihoods were being threatened because high-ranking individuals in the SABC newsroom had taken unethical and, in some cases, unlawful decisions. Although they were meant to protect us journalists on the ground, they were the very ones selling us out.
These two incidents led to several more instances where some of my colleagues and I had to object to other unethical and unlawful instructions. Sometimes these were issued to us in the name of the ANC. I told Duarte that, as someone who was raised to believe that the ANC – the movement of my great-grandfather and father – could do no wrong, I had become terribly disillusioned by instructions from some editors to act in a manner that I knew was contrary to what I was raised to believe about the ANC.
Duarte on several occasions assured me that such instructions were never issued by the ANC and that those behind such actions were doing so of their own volition. She said media freedom and the independence of newsrooms, particularly those of the national broadcaster, were guaranteed not only by ANC policy but were in fact enshrined in our Constitution. Censorship was not.
Duarte then asked about our dismissals. Although there was nothing funny about this question, we managed to smile about it because we both knew what or whom we were about to talk about.
I proceeded to describe to her the disciplinary process or lack thereof in detail. I specifically highlighted to her how the SABC had in its haste to fire us flouted its own rules and regulations. Worse still was that the SABC had not only violated the country’s labour laws in the process, it had in essence violated our constitutional rights. I asked her how this had been allowed to happen in a democratic South Africa under the ANC’s watch. At this point, I could feel my anger and frustrations of the last few weeks bubbling to the surface. I was getting emotional. I hadn’t realised just how much the events of the recent past had affected me and the toll they had taken. But here I was, with a person of significant influence, who could potentially help me and my colleagues in our legal battle with the SABC. So I spoke from the heart and miraculously I didn’t cry. I still have no idea how I had managed to keep it together.
All the while, Duarte was desperately trying to keep up as she took notes of our conversation. At some point, she looked up from her notepad and asked what she and the organisation could do to assist me. I hesitated for a second or two, and responded that we needed help getting our jobs back. She immediately agreed to help. But there was a problem. She said she would probably only be able to assist Busisiwe Ntuli, Thandeka Gqubule, and me. The three of us were represented by our union, Bemawu (Broadcasting, Electronic, Media, and Allied Workers Union), in our labour dispute with the SABC.
Duarte said there was little she could do to help my other colleagues Suna Venter, Foeta Krige, Krivani Pillay, and Jacques Steenkamp, as they were represented by Solidariteit, an organisation which represents Afrikaner interests. She said it held ideologically different views to the ANC. I didn’t understand. And quite frankly, I didn’t want to understand and neither did it matter to me which organisation was representing whom. This had nothing to do with Solidariteit or any other organisation for that matter. I respectfully pointed out to her that I didn’t think it would reflect kindly on the ANC if it emerged that it had helped the three black journalists