Stand up to the SABC
Catholics will feel snubbed by the decision by the SABC to renege on its promise, made in 2010, to broadcast the pope’s Christmas Eve Mass live every year. This is an issue around which Catholics must be called to unite.
Papal Mass at the Vatican, Christmas Eve, 2013
It is true that the broadcast of a papal Mass is not the most pressing issue the Church in South Africa faces. And yet, the cavalier way in which the SABC has decided to cancel the only significant Catholic event it covers in the year indicates an unacceptable hostility towards our Church by a publicly funded organ of the state.
Moreover, the cancellation of the papal Mass can be seen as a contravention of the SABC’s religious broadcasting policy, which is intended to ensure a fair and equitable representation of South Africa’s religious communities.
To tolerate the SABC’s disrespectful treatment is to accept the creeping marginalisation of the Catholic Church in South Africa’s public life.
While Catholics have a right to censure DStv over its refusal to accommodate a Catholic channel, in the form of EWTN, they would do so as subscribers to a commercial service.
DStv’s refusal — on the banal pretext that its array of evangelical channels adequately covers Christians’ needs — may be interpreted as an act of anti-Catholicism, and Catholics are quite entitled to cancel their subscriptions in protest.
There is no such recourse with the SABC. If we own a TV set, we are legally obliged to pay an annual licence fee to help finance the operations of the SABC. We cannot withhold it if the content or direction of the state broadcaster excludes or offends us.
In return, the SABC has an obligation to serve all citizens of South Africa — including the 7% of the population who belong to the Catholic faith. The SABC cannot, for example, invoke commercial reasons for cancelling the papal Christmas Mass when its mandate and purpose is to provide a public service.
Indeed, it seems absurd that the SABC should see reason not to broadcast a Christmas event led by the leader of the world’s largest religion.
Pope Francis has more than a billion followers worldwide. He attracts millions of young people to Masses and every week on Wednesday is seen by tens of thousands of people in the Vatican. He has one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world. Without a doubt, Pope Francis is at present the world’s most popular man, bigger than any pop star.
What arrogance leads the SABC’s programmers to believe that such a man should have no place in their schedule?
Such is the poor reputation of the SABC that there are Catholics who suspect political motivations behind the decision to rescind the undertaking to screen the papal Mass.
Others accuse the SABC, not without cause, of deliberately sidelining mainstream churches in favour of evangelical churches. If so, this would constitute a prejudice which might require a formal inquest.
Whether the cancellation of the papal Mass is guided by imprudent commercial considerations, political machinations, a failure to meet a state broadcaster’s mandate, rank incompetence and confusion, a religious agenda, or plain anti-Catholicism, South Africa’s faithful should not accept it quietly.
Catholics must in large numbers register their protest with the SABC, in letters and on social media.
Moreover, the language even tax-funded broadcasters understand is that of boycotts, or the threat thereof.
For example, should the Church call on all Catholics to boycott the products of advertisers—for instance those whose commercials are screened during the evening news— over a certain period of time, then this would vigorously communicate to the SABC that the Catholic community expects this unfortunate decision to be reversed and its needs to be met.
Such a campaign would require coordination and leadership to reach into all parishes and sodalities, and into every area of social communications. It would also need a register of products to be boycotted, and a voice to articulate to advertisers and the SABC to what purpose such a boycott is called.
Importantly, it would need to communicate to the SABC and others who seek to marginalise the Catholic Church, one fundamental message: We will not be pushed around!
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