Interview
with Mandla Langa, Comtask Chairperson, and Edward Baird, Director
of the Media Monitoring Project - SAfm
19 May 1998
Report on the launch of the new GCIS
PROGRAMME: AM Live
TIME: 07:50
ABBREVIATIONS: ML:
Mandla Langa: Head: Comtask, EB: Edward Baird, Director: Media Monitoring
Project, R: Reporter
R: Last night the Government
Communication and Information System was officially launched at
parliament in Cape Town. The GCIS is constitutionally bound to uphold
the rights of citizens to receive information about government.
The GCIS came into being after a lengthy investigation into government
communications by the Comtask team. Dumisane spoke to the Head of
Comtask, last night, the well-known writer, poet and columnist Mandla
Langa. Langa says this body will not become a mere propaganda tool
for the government.
ML: I think that a number of
checks and balances were already in place in the recommendations
that Comtask came out with which reform it to the GCIS. So part
of it was a further understanding of the difference between information
and propaganda and to steer the GCIS as much as possible from the
path of propaganda. So the measures are already in place to make
sure that it happens.
R: The critical thing here is
people’s right to information, and a lot of people in our country
can not read, can not speak English, don’t have television.
How will this GCIS get information to them?
ML: I think that we have actually
even gone, in the recommendations of Comtask, for the creation of
desires, they went beyond even the disabilities, because there are
disabilities which should be taken into account by government, for
instance there are people who are blind and there are people who
are disabled, who do not have access to places of information. I
think that you can only be able to sort out the problems that you
can sort out. I think that other problems such as those of disability
are problems that have to be tackled by the whole of government,
the society, they should not become the sole responsibility of the
GCIS. But having said that I think the GCIS has to bind in its structure
the possibility of enhancing literacy of our communities.
R: But to take this issue a
little bit further we are now joined by the director of the media
monitoring project, Mr Edward Baird. Well good morning Mr Baird,
what are your thoughts on the new GCIS? Are you confident that it
will rise above party political considerations?
B: Good morning. It’s difficult
to say really it hasn’t gone on board already, I mean they
passed the thing yesterday. But, I think it can work in parts, and
its gonna depend less on big things than on little things like how
they package their information. You know, if you look at the history
of it, it came out of SACS which was as we know, it was a propaganda
body really. And what they need to do is they need to provide information
that is more relevant that is more strategically targeted if you’d
like. And communities who really haven’t been getting that
kind of information before.
R: It’s difficult as some
of the plans sound really ambitious, we heard earlier from Mandla
Langa, who chaired the Comtask team, that he would like to do things
like raise literacy levels, and get information out to communities.
Do we really have the resources to do that?
B: Well, one of the things we
do have is community radio stations which are hungry for information,
that is an obvious starting point. We don’t have any longer
community media in the way we used to have in the eighties. The
literacy thing is very difficult obviously, but I think if they
work diligently and if they look long enough they will find channels
to get information to those people.
R: The System is headed by Mr
Joel Netshitenze. What are your thoughts about him as a man leading
this initiative?
B: I think he is a man ably
qualified, but our concern really is not so much with the intentions
for communities and that kinds of information, but the kind of central
planning strategising corporate image work they are going to do
at cabinet level which is going to lean I think towards a slightly
more propagandistic style of information and worry about media portrayals
of government.
R: Isn’t that always a
point of dispute, one man’s information is always going to
be another man’s propaganda?
B: Well, I think the media and
public are often going to take what the Government Information System
says with a pinch of salt, you know. We have gone through a long
period of not wanting to believe what the government has been saying
and I don’t think that is going to change overnight.
R: Thanks very much to the Director
of the Media Monitoring Project, Edward Baird.
Transcribed by Government Communication
and Information System
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