The embattled SABC has been named as one of the big media companies to have signed settlement agreements with the Competition Commission concerning their cartel behaviour.
Apparently these media companies, which include DStv, Primedia and Media24, were found to have colluded to set advertising discount rates which favoured bigger advertising agencies over smaller agencies.
While the other companies may be in a position to pay these hefty settlements, we know that the SABC is in trouble financially.
In its last financial reports, it disclosed cash holdings of R131m. However, according to a recent report in City Press, the settlement on its own runs in the region of R170m, with R90m due immediately.
This is the same SABC which is reportedly under pressure from the ruling party to do a better job of covering its electioneering efforts ahead of the looming 2019 elections.
It goes to show that perhaps little has changed in the ANC’s attitude towards state-owned enterprises organisations (SOEs). For a firm which is battling as this SOE is, nothing should be allowed to distract it from running its affairs as professionally as possible, for the good of the public.
However, it is not the obvious troubles of the SABC or our generally embattled SOEs which I would like to discuss.
Nor is it the well-known issue of SOEs which became the playground of the ruling party, where cadre deployment decimated professionalism and independence, replacing it with patronage and corruption.
No, today, I would like to look at the thinking behind big firms like the media firms outed by the Competition Commission.
These are companies, like many big companies caught out by the Competition Commission, which feel the power they wield allows them to collude, fix prices and entrench an already skewed economic structure in our society.
It is fuelled by the stubborn idea that those who have achieved economic power, must entrench themselves at the trough of economic benefit at the expense of those who are smaller, less powerful and thus with little recourse against such collusion.
Thank God for the Competition Commission!
The audacity of these firms to give better discounts to larger media houses while giving smaller discounts to smaller firms, points to the insensitivity which is dominant in SA towards the unethical nature of dominance.
And for people who often think that we cannot eat ethics, as if everything is about eating, the economic impact is glaringly and overwhelmingly negative. If smaller companies, which need the discounts more, are the ones who receive less discount in a country which is battling stubborn low economic growth, what hope do we have to turn severe unemployment around?
If big firms, which should be developmental in their approach, not only fail to be developmental in approach, but become predatory, what hope do we have to improve economic development?
The culture of dominance which is prevalent in the political arena, is seemingly just as prevalent in the private sector.
However, that is not the end of it.
We find the demon of dominance even in our homes.
While perhaps few people may connect the dominance of colluding media firms with dominance in politics and dominance at home, this does not diminish the connection.
Come to think of it, even crime itself hinges on dominance, and dominance thrives in and entrenches itself in environments of fear and powerlessness. The recently aired video of singer Babes Wodumo being assaulted, allegedly by her so-called “man”, illustrates the horror of dominance at home.
We are all too often inundated with horror stories of women who are killed by abusive and domineering partners.
It all starts with a single slap across the face, to multiple slaps, to fists, knives and guns. It’s unacceptable!
While most of us will feel sick only when we witness such acts of domestic violence live, we often divorce these acts from the core idea of dominance. However, dominance and violence go hand-in-hand.
The violence of collusion is violence against the whole nation, against its economic aspirations, and against its social fabric.
In the same abominable fashion, domestic, or gender violence, or any sort of violence is violence against the very soul of the nation.
For a woman to be dominated and subjected to such violence not only belittles her very worth as a human being, but also our own!
South African society must now frown on dominance itself. And like those colluding bullies, Babes Wodumo’s “man” must face his just punishment in law...