Chairperson, hon colleagues, it seems that the Guptas have not only taken over our air force bases but are poised to play a role in South Africa's hot air war, but more of that later.
A leadership change in government's communication service last year has allowed the expertise of the core functions of the department to take centre stage. Most of its publications are competently designed and produced. Its services to the media on behalf of government and the Cabinet are much improved, but it is hampered by Cabinet Ministers who seldom arrive on time for press conferences. The Government Communication Information System, GCIS, also shares a fault that is all too common on websites - laziness in keeping their information current.
Last year I accused this department's leadership of empire-building on steroids, of setting up a publishing operation to rival what it sees as the unsympathetic commercial media sector; and it believed that National Treasury was a bottomless pit of taxpayers' money. Luckily, fiscal sense was dispensed from Treasury as some of the GCIS programmes have been pruned. Print orders of its publication have basically been halved as it has been forced to take a more realistic view of the numbers of readers in its market. For example, the ambition to print the monthly magazine, Vukuzenzele, as a fortnightly has been shelved and the print run clipped to 20,4 million copies annually.
While this publication has value in informing citizens around the country of government activities, GCIS has no way of proving that Vukuzenzele is read and that copies are not mouldering in some warehouse. Certainly, on the portfolio committee's visits to post offices and Thusong Service Centres around the country last year, few, if any, copies were found.
Keeping printers in business and spending in the budget allocation are not the measure of an effective communication strategy. An independent audit of circulation and readership is the only way to be confident that the message is reaching its intended market. This negligence in proving readership sets the GCIS apart from the professional publishers who are rigorously pressured by their clients to prove that the right message is reaching the target market and that it is properly understood. The GCIS makes no attempt to prove that its publications and some of those it supports with advertising are actually read by the intended audience.
Last year, I asked every government department how much money it spent on advertising and sponsorships with the Gupta-owned newspaper, The New Age. It came to a staggering R64,1 million. Up to 76% of The New Age's advertising for the six weeks from mid-November to the end of January last year came from government. Why government departments need to advertise when most of the Public Service is on holiday is puzzling. In the commercial publishing world, only retailers advertise at Christmas time.
My colleagues in the ANC will howl that this amount is peanuts compared to what government spends elsewhere on advertising. This is true, but as usual, the ANC doesn't get the point. The point is that every credible publisher that has to compete in the open market for its advertising revenue has to prove to its clients that their publications are using the right vehicle to deliver their message to a specific audience that delivers the required results. This is why the Audit Bureau of Circulations certification is essential to publications whose survival depends on clients who demand delivery.
The New Age declines to have its circulation independently verified by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, ABC. Earlier this year, in response to the DA's onslaught on their government ad spend on The New Age, it released some figures of dubious quality through its own audit process. This is inadequate and is unlikely to impress the Auditor-General whom the DA has asked to investigate whether government ad spend with this newspaper is wasteful. But never fear, because the GCIS has cracked The New Age circulation puzzle.
Last year it responded to my question on whether an independent analysis was done to determine the circulation and readership of the newspaper. It replied, and I quote:
GCIS conducts regular media sampling through its provincial offices and complements this with verification of print orders and audited circulation where available. The GCIS verified The New Age market entry deliverables as follows: 100 to 120 000 published copies per day; 24 to 32 pages daily; editorial content drawn from nine provinces, distributed through three print regions; and electronic editions available through e- paper, iPad app, Facebook, Twitter and the online edition.
I'm still quoting:
On the basis of the above analysis, The New Age was recommended as a suitable publication for government departments to use in conjunction with other mainstream and community media, particularly in support of provincial and local outreach initiatives.
As an aside, I thought that Vukuzenzele was used by government to spread its message to the areas not reached by commercial media, but I digress. I am still quoting from the GCIS's parliamentary answer:
No independent studies of advertisements are conducted to test the efficacy of advertising messages post campaign, due to the prohibitive cost of establishing an ongoing national research panel, which is sufficiently sensitive to providing feedback by publication. And it rambles on some more.
I was intrigued that GCIS was satisfied with an audit of The New Age. So, I followed up this year with a question, asking how their audit was done. This is the reply, and I quote:
GCIS conducted a visit to The New Age premises and inspected the original print order confirmations from The New Age's subcontracted printers. Circulation is the number of newspapers that are printed and distributed each day, and can be extrapolated from the print order data. The print order reconciliations are audited by Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler, KPMG, The New Age newspaper's auditors, as part of their due diligence process in testing internal audit protocols and finalising their findings on The New Age financial results.
If this opinion did not involve the spending of millions of taxpayers' money, it would be laughable. Verifying the print run is only the first step in the circulation audit of a publication. All that GCIS did was to determine that The New Age's printers weren't ripping them off.
The GCIS does absolutely nothing to determine whether the newspaper is requested by the right readers who buy it or are given it for free. It does nothing to discover whether undelivered or unsold copies are returned unsold or unread. The GCIS's audit of The New Age would qualify for amateur hour if it were not a farce performed by public servants paid by taxpayers.
Again, the DA calls on the Auditor-General to declare that departmental spending on advertising in The New Age is fruitless and wasteful and forbids it in the coming year. It is essential to make this ruling because the GCIS encourages departments to channel their ad spend through it because it can negotiate bulk rates with all publications. This principle has merit, but it has to be done professionally and meticulously to ensure that the target market is effectively reached, and that there is no wastage.
The GCIS and its Media Development and Diversity Agency have stated their intent to re-engineer - they use the word diversify - the print media industry. They wanted the portfolio committee to believe that it is the department's patriotic duty to ensure that new, emerging media such as The New Age are given government advertising support so they can gain a firm footing against what it sees as an entrenched, old-guard ANC-hostile media industry. [Interjections.]
We believe that government's support in establishing community media that serves the local interest and linguistic needs of marginalised communities and entrenches the diversity of use, is commendable. But the billionaire Guptas don't qualify for taxpayers' money to help them get established. If they believe that they're meeting a market need in South Africa, let them invest their own money to establish themselves, like every other South African publisher has had to do. If they're unwilling to do this with their own money, it can only be because they are more than willing to be paid by taxpayers, to be part of and profit from the ANC's election propaganda machine.
Let us be under no illusions that the GCIS, along with the Gupta-friendly South African Broadcasting Corporation, SABC, will be used to bombard the nation with a rosy view of South Africa. The ANC's perceived dominant role is securing our constitutional democracy before next year's election.
The role of the governing party's imbongi will become increasingly apparent during the coming year. This was evident in the strategic overview of the GCIS's Media Development and Diversity Agency, which declared that, and I quote:
The much-awaited policy and elective Mangaung 53rd Conference of the ANC as the ruling party confirmed continuity in the leadership of government. This suggests that very little, if any, policy changes are likely to affect the work of the Media Development and Diversity Agency, MDDA. A change in government and the current leadership could result in a change in policy approaches which could hamper the effective achievement of the organisation's mission.
On the surface, this statement may seem self-evident. My ANC colleagues in the portfolio committee howled that there was nothing wrong with a public servant expressing relief that there had not been a change of leadership in the governing party. I contend that for the purpose of exercising their duties, political leadership battles are irrelevant to public servants. Their job is to fulfil the mandate of the government. Let me emphasise, the government of the day, and not to be concerned with the internal battles of the governing party. [Applause.]