ABSTRACT
My interest in this chapter is in unpacking the market neutrality assumptions within public service broadcasting while at the same time making sense of independence constructions by SABC staff. My intention is to enlighten the wider debate by exploring the impact of the commercialisation of the SABC on the ‘independence’ conceptions of its staff. My key argument is that commercialisation divided SABC staff into two camps. In one camp, interpretations of ‘independence’ were shaped by an anti-commercialisation ideological position that eschews the market and upholds Reithian public service values of universality of access and an appeal to audiences that should be free from market and political influence. In the second group, staff members believed that the market actually delivers a form of ‘independence’ from the state. For the purposes of this chapter I call the first camp the ‘traditionalists’ and the second camp the ‘pro-commercialisation’ camp. My emphasis on the internal workings and understanding of independence within the SABC is not to exonerate the impact of global matrices of power. Instead, if I am successful at it, I will have demonstrated how the imperial logic that anchors these matrices can be wrongly re-articulated at a local or institutional level as counter-hegemony and dichotomous, yet the matrices deepen thinking within imperial logic.
