Questions about Afrikaans news blackout

The omission of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) Afrikaans news segment last weekend was intentional, according to seasoned broadcasting journalist Thinus Ferreira, reporting for Rapport.

This is despite the SABC claiming that the Afrikaans weekend news bulletins, meant to be broadcast on SABC 2, did not air because of a scheduling error.

“The South African Broadcasting Corporation wishes to address concerns arising from the non-broadcast of the Afrikaans television news bulletin this past weekend. This should not have happened,” it said.

However, insiders at the public broadcaster told Rapport that the SABC CEO Nomsa Chabeli was dishonest when she said it was due to a scheduling error.

They said the SABC top brass issued instructions at the beginning of March for the bulletins to be removed from the second weekend in April.

The SABC’s only mistake was pulling the weekend Afrikaans news bulletin during the first week of April.

One of the insiders said that the SABC’s head of TV, David Makubyane, and the head of the SABC 2 channel, Yonwaba Pangeni, were involved in the decision to remove the Afrikaans news segment from the broadcaster’s programming.

They said the decision was communicated at the beginning of March and that the instructions came from David Makubyane, adding that Nomsa Chabeli was aware of this.

Another explained that although Afrikaans news had been a golden goose for several years, the SABC now sees it as the stepchild that needs to fit in somewhere.

Following the weekend blunder, the SABC decided to put the Afrikaans news bulletins back on the schedule, even planning to move the weekday segments to an earlier timeslot, the Rapport was told.

About a year ago, the public broadcaster faced criticism for moving the Afrikaans TV news bulletins from SABC 2 to SABC 3 during the week in the late timeslot of 20:30, and weekend bulletins were placed on SABC 2 at 18:15.

It also cancelled the popular Afrikaans TV soap opera 7de Laan in 2023 after nearly 24 years on air and almost 6,000 episodes.

At the time of its cancellation, 7de Laan was the most-watched Afrikaans TV series and also among the most-watched TV shows overall in South Africa.

Despite the show’s popularity, the SABC said 7de Laan’s viewer figures no longer justified its commercial value.

A source told the Rapport that the Afrikaans news, like other Afrikaans programmes, gets shuffled around so frequently that viewer numbers drop, causing management to argue that it needs to be cancelled because of low viewership.

They said that the SABC could follow the same procedure as with the Sotho and Tswana news bulletins and plan to broadcast them less frequently from next year onwards.

The Rapport noted that viewership figures for the weekday Afrikaans news bulletin dropped from 700,000 last year to 295,000 viewers once it moved to the later 20:30 slot.

The weekend programme currently attracts 550,000 viewers.

The SABC announced that the Afrikaans TV news bulletin will continue as scheduled from Monday to Friday, and the weekend bulletin will continue in its designated timeslot.

The schedule is as follows:

• Afrikaans news broadcasts at 20:30 from Monday to Friday on SABC 3.
• Weekend Afrikaans bulletins at 18:00 on Saturdays and Sundays on SABC 2.

However, a veteran advertising executive told the Rapport that the Afrikaans news bulletin’s shuffled schedule and airing at different times on different stations are causing the SABC to lose significant advertising revenue.

SABC’s statement

MyBroadband contacted the SABC for comment, but it did not provide feedback by publication.

Last week, the broadcaster acknowledged the concern the error may have caused, particularly in Afrikaans-speaking communities, and issued an apology.

The SABC said it was treating the error with the “seriousness it deserves”, adding that its consequence management processes are already underway to address the internal oversight.

“We want to assure the public and our stakeholders that there is no plan or decision to discontinue or deprioritise Afrikaans news,” it said.

“Afrikaans remains an important part of our public broadcasting mandate, just as all South African languages are.”

The SABC added that it was committed to providing equitable access to news and information in all official South African languages.

Moreover, it is working to expand its content and on a broader scheduling strategy to strengthen its language offering, including Afrikaans.

“This process is part of our new financial year’s content strategy and will be communicated more fully in due course,” the SABC stated.