On Broadcast Rights, Crime, Preparedness, of South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup

Grahamstown, South Africa, Highway Africa Conference, Sept 9, 2008. On Broadcast Rights, Crime, Preparedness, of South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Talking with Peter Kwele, Phil Molefi, Zolisa Masiza and Roland Williams

There is no alternative but for the SABC than to be ready. SABC and telcom should be ready with all the support and resources it has to it - Zolisa Masiza, Telkom, South Africa.

'For the first time in 2010 mobile phones will be used to broadcast the FIFA world cup. Mobile TV was not used during the 2006 WC in Germany. Policy directives have been issued by the South African government that require mobile operators to test mobile broadcast with relevant spectrum test space made available.' These are comments from Zolisa Masiza, former counselor with ICASA, the South African regulator but now with Telkom, South Africa's incumbent operator.

Phil Molefe, a manager at SABC says South Africa intends to showcase an African event. First, to establish the premise – South Africa is the stage and the entire continent of Africa is the theater. The country is providing the pitches but the continent is also a part of the event in 2010. The SABC has sought to develop strategic partnership with regional and continental broadcasting partners to make sure the event involves everyone in the continent. The Southern African Broadcasting Association (SABA) recently held an event in Mauritius and it intends to work with the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) to make sure every broadcaster is on board for the World Cup. In the process, the SABC has developed the 2010 World Cup African Legacy Project and it is using this as an opportunity to mobilize support on a number of issues but primarily to ensure that after the games have taken place, Africa can look to the benefits of the world cup. Phil mentioned that the World Cup is about:

1.Building the broadcasting resources on the continent – ensuring that 'not one country is the island of excellence in the sea of technological underdevelopment', ensuring that broadcasting resources are up to a minimum standard
2.Focusing on the Training opportunities and the skills development of broadcasters in the continent – it should be a legacy of the 2010 World Cup
3.Ensuring that there is awareness raising and effective education of people on the scourge of Hiv/aids
4.Conflict resolution – drawing experience from Cote d'Ivoire in 2006, torn into two halfs, northern parts (Bouake) held by rebels and southern parts by the government but seen as a single country during the last World Cup. Everyone agreed to set aside differences and become 'one' country throughout the duration.

In response to the recent Xenophobic attacks in South Africa, Phil Molefe mentions that they were roundly denounced. 'All of us as South Africans and Africans are deplored, that it should not happen again.' Further stating that xenophobia was an indication of a country that has been isolated from the rest of the continent and it thus, places responsibility on broadcasters so that people ignorant are assisted to begin to understand their history, culture, where they come from as a people, to know that geographic boundaries are things that came due to no fault of Africans.

Manager of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, Roland Williams' message to South Africans and Africa is that SA is more than it will ever be [prepared] to host one of the two largest events to happen any where in the world. Nothing else is larger than the World Cup except the Olympics. We will probably never experience the World Cup in South Africa again. The next time it comes to Africa, it would be somewhere else. Its a once in a life time opportunity. Fifa has been advertising to the world that South Africa is ready stating that a comparative study on where Germany was 2 years to hosting the last world cup, with where South Africa is now, the latter is miles ahead ranging from the signing of host agreement, to the state of readiness of stadia, infrastructure, broadcast, etc. The World cup was not given to South Africa as a token but rather that South Africa has earned its rights to host the event and has complied with the requirements of these rights.

Talking about crime, Roland Williams says that not one incident of crime in South Africa was recorded during the hosting of many major events in the country. It has hosted quite a number of global and international events, including the cricket and rugby world cups and not a single crime was reported associated with these events.

Mr. Peter Kwele, General Manager for Strategic marketing and communications but Acting Director for the 2010 World Cup at SABC approached the world from four perspectives:

1.Preparedness: in partnership with the host city, ensuring that the continent and the world are updated on the state of preparedness leading up to the world cup.
2.sustaining livelihood: that there is and must be, an economic spin off
3.showcasing the rest of Africa: through programming, content quality, commissioning of various program
4.green revolution initiative: strongly believing in the green revolution and leveraging the fact that the color green is widely used in more than 40 flags in Africa.

Responding to issues of infrastructure, Zolisa mentioned that the submarine fibre cable SEACOM has been rolled out in the east coast. But warned that 'we are as strong as our weakest links', referring to African operators. Generally postulating that all the questions raised at the session boils down to effective communication. 'Are we saying enough to everyone? Is telkom saying all it should to people and saying it can deliver what it should deliver?

The question I posed on broadcast rights were not responded to. I have no reasons for that. But most generally, they were formulated as follows:

“In a situation where the broadcast rights for the last CAF African Cup of Nations in Ghana was owned by a foreign entity and African broadcasters had challenges accessing rights to broadcast. There were situations where TV tickers indicated that rebroadcast of a certain TV is not permitted by other TV stations and other countries. (1) What measures are being taken to keep broadcast rights local? (2) And to ensure that Africans broadcasters receive rights to broadcast at fees that they can afford. (3) How transparent will the sales process to access rights be? By rights, I mean TV, Radio and Mobile.”

However, cornering Phil Molefe outside, I was able to glean that the issues of rights have not been completely resolved, that it should be discussed quite effectively, and should commence from now. The AUB should be discussing that. Phil referred to the fact that the CAF boss, Mr. Issa Hayatou was approached on TV rights for the 2008 CAF cup but rights were eventually sold to a French based company resulting in difficulties of African broadcasters to relay the tournament in Africa. There were initial threats that live matches could not even be relayed to even Ghanaians in Ghana! SABC is in talks with FIFA on rights issues.

As I think about the 2010 world cup as an African world cup, the recent happenings during the CAF 2008 African Nations Cup, would broadcast rights be the undoing of the continent? Perhaps we may have not completely learned from the Ghana experience enough to commence discussion well ahead of the 2010 World cup. Perhaps there should be a platform for discussions, online and realtime, or a conference convened to include broadcasters, the African union, or even regional economic commissions, operators, and civil society to address rights issues. It would do good to begin dialog, and to begin it now otherwise, Africa will host the event, but may not benefit from it. No allusions to colonialism.