The SABC says a power outage in and around the Johannesburg High Court precinct on 2 September appears to have knocked out local cellular coverage, degrading the live pictures it was able to send back to its studio from the Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala criminal trial.
Responding to questions from Africa Daily, SABC Head of communications Mmoni Ngubane said the outage resulted in reduced network coverage and impacting the quality of live pictures received at the studio.
“The SABC can confirm that a power outage in and around the court precinct on 2 September appears to have affected local cellular infrastructure, resulting in reduced network coverage and impacting the quality of live pictures received at the studio. All footage was recorded locally at broadcast quality, ensuring that high-quality material remained available for news packages, future use and archival purposes,” Ngubane said.
“SABC News responded by deploying larger external antennas on 3 September, significantly improving network performance and picture quality, with only minor transmission disruptions thereafter. While factors such as power availability and cellular network performance are outside the SABC’s control, our technical and editorial teams acted promptly to mitigate their impact and maintain reliable coverage and the highest possible broadcast standards,” she continued.
The response is the first account the public broadcaster has given of two days of degraded coverage that left viewers unable to see or hear substantial parts of a trial drawing sustained national attention.
It also settles a question this publication had put to SABC about where responsibility for the signal lies.
The broadcaster’s account places the point of failure in its own transmission chain, a live feed carried from the court precinct over commercial cellular networks, rather than in the Johannesburg High Court’s audio-visual infrastructure.
This publication asked specifically about the sound problems on the 3 September broadcast, where audio cut in and out repeatedly and at points made it impossible to hear Judge Cassim Moosa.
Ngubane’s response focuses throughout on picture quality and network performance, but does not explain the reported audio dropouts, confirm that they occurred, or indicate whether they have since been resolved.
The SABC also did not answer whether it intends to make the missing proceedings available to the public in any form.That question is sharpened rather than settled by the broadcaster’s own response.
SABC has confirmed that broadcast-quality footage of the proceedings exists, recorded locally at the court, and that it is being retained for news packages, future use and archiving.
The proceedings that viewers could neither watch nor hear on the day are therefore in the SABC’s possession in usable quality.
What the broadcaster has not said is whether any of that footage will be made public, allowing the public to access proceedings broadcast by a public broadcaster funded, in part, through television licence fees.
SABC also declined to say how many viewer complaints it received about the coverage, or through which channels, and did not answer whether it considers the quality of its coverage over the two days to have met the standard the public should expect from a broadcaster carrying live court proceedings.
Complaints during the 3 September broadcast were visible in real time in the YouTube live chat accompanying the stream, where multiple viewers independently raised the same two problems within minutes of each other, unusable audio and degraded picture.
For many South Africans without a seat in the courtroom, the SABC feed is the only way to follow the Matlala trial as it happens. The broadcaster’s explanation accounts for why the pictures failed. It does not yet account for the sound, and it leaves open what happens to the hours of proceedings the public was unable to follow.