The role of broadcasters and regulatory frameworks in promoting social cohesion and moral regeneration

1. The role of broadcasters and regulatory frameworks in promoting social cohesion and moral regeneration glenn ujebemasokoane Director Cultural Development - DAC

2. THE PURPOSE OF REGULATION To develop, promote and and protect aesthetically and ideogically relevant content that underpins national identity, culture and character; To create vibrant, dynamic, creative and economically productive local content industries.

3. SOCIAL COHESION • One of the buzz words of modern day policy pronouncements which should achieve: • The quality and diversity of broadcasting content; • The development of the South African music and television industries across all genres and programme categories; • The development of the South African music and television industries with regard to the empowerment of previously disadvantaged individuals as producers, audiences and consumers.

4. NATIONAL CONSCIOUSSNESS Human rights and human dignity must underpin national consciousness - thus the predominance of meaningful and aesthetically relevant local content is necessary to the protection of national cultural heritage, attitudes, norms, representation and values that are uniquely African/African South African AND embedded in UBUNTU – the cornerstone of Morale Regeneration

5. REGULATORY AND POLICY FRAMEWORKS The question is, can policy really regulate and promote social cohesion and moral regeneration in broadcasting outside the context of ideological and aesthetic commitment of decolonization of the mind of South African citizenry and the quest for investing in a new egetalirian democratic culture< cultural policy>?

6. THE BIG BROTHER SYNDROME • Big Brother is watching over us by allowing us to Watch Big Brother – We pride ourselves by enjoying and encouraging reactionary voyeurism devouring the pride of our African youth having un-protected sex in the name of reality television • The Last Poets once cautioned – ‘Niggers Love Sex – They Just Love Sex’ and now we have it live and direct on TV with our impressionable under age children – There goes our democracy and freedoms of media and choice and you cannot blame it on our constitutionality but on our morality

7. WE HAVE BEEN LIED TO • AimeCesaire once said ‘ When I turn on my Radio and hear that Hitler is dead, I say we’ve been lied to, Hitler is not dead’ • Steve Biko decried the same sentiment and even went further and said ‘Hitler is not dead but is alive and found Pretoria’ • On reflection of the last 17 years the freeing of the airwaves and the Triple Enquiry, the creation of ICASA and the broadcasting quota reviews – can we realistically exorcise the hegemony of dominant media on our media landscape especially on the Public Service Broadcasting space?

8. THE SOUTH AFRICAN SHELVE SPACE • Social Cohesion and Moral Regeneration does not fall from the sky – We must INVEST and develop our content shelve space • In a globalized world of audio-visual products, strategic intervention for national cultural development is critical. International experience indicates that socially cohesive countries have advanced trans-national participation digital infra-structure, and high level local content creative industries driven by unambiguous progressive cultural policy

9. AFRICAN RENAISSANCE • The overall future of South Africa’s broadcasting policy and regulatory frameworks aimed at promoting social cohesion and moral regeneration should equally be connected to the agenda of African renewal of social and economic development for therein lies the opportunities for African cross border cultural co-production

10. IF WE MUST DIE If We Must Die" If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! Source: Claude McKay, “If We Must Die,” in Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922).