The Minister of Communications, Ms Faith Muthambi,
Chairperson of the SABC Board and Board members,
Acting CEO, management and staff of the SABC,
Fellow Africans,

Good day to you all on this wonderful day.

Today, the public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), expands further into our continent, increasing the reach to 51 countries and not just the SADC region only.

This is a long overdue move for our public broadcaster and is a cause for celebration.

This development takes place during Africa Month and therefore one of the key milestones in our celebrations.

South Africa is an integral part of the African continent. Our hopes, dreams successes and challenges, are intertwined with those of the African continent. Our story is the story of the African continent.

It is thus important that we are going to start sharing our success stories with the continent more extensively. We are also happy that South Africans will also be now more exposed to what is happening in the continent.

South Africans have gone through a long period of isolation in the past decades of oppression and apartheid colonialism.
Our country was a pariah in the eyes of the world and could not participate in world or continental affairs.

The dawn of freedom ushered in democracy and the reintegration into Africa and the world. We also developed a remarkable Constitution that enshrines the freedom of the media and freedom of expression.

Today we are celebrating that freedom of using any platform to tell our stories and express ourselves. Freedom of expression is very important to the South African people as they fought tirelessly and relentlessly to obtain such freedoms.

Freedom of the media must include access to the media and information for our people. Through the SABC, we are moving ahead in realising that goal.

We have great expectations from this new channel.

SABC News 404 must be a mirror on which we see ourselves as the African people. It must tell the story of our day to day lives, the story of our hardworking people who wake up every morning and try to make something of their lives, and the story of the work that goes into making our country a better place each day, done by millions of people each day.

We also want to see the stories of success from the African continent so that we can learn from one another. There are successes in education in Zimbabwe, successes in information communication technologies in Rwanda, and indeed many other countries have a lot to share with us, and us with them.

The SABC News Channel 404 must therefore bridge the physical borders that divide us and bring us as African nations together. We want to know the music they play in each African country, the food and the culture. And surely they want to know the same about us. SABC News Channel 404 must provide that platform for better understanding and appreciation of the rich culture in the continent.

The importance of the channel is that stories will be told by Africans to Africans. As Africans we still face the disadvantage of having our stories being told by people whose perspective is foreign to the continent.

This must change. Africa has several good stories to tell, and these must be told.

Ours is a continent of hope.

We are one of the fastest growing regions in the world. Africa continues to grow despite the serious difficulties globally in the economic arena.  This augurs well for job creation and an improved quality of life.

Africa also has good programmes of promoting socio-economic development through various organs of the African Union (AU), and these are being implemented.

These are programmes aimed at promoting trade amongst ourselves within the continent and to promote regional integration.

We have an extensive infrastructure development programme championed by Heads of State and Government through the Presidential Infrastructure Championing Initiative. South Africa was given the task of championing the North-South road and rail corridor.

We want to continue building infrastructure such as roads, railways, bridges, dams and airports to make it easier to travel around the continent.

We are also working together as the African continent to promote peace, democracy as well as stability in Africa.

We are working together to support the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Central African Republic and other countries that are facing difficulties. We do this in the spirit of looking for African solutions to our problems.

When problems erupted again in Burundi we were and still are united again in saying we will not let Burundi regress.

We want to work together to find a solution in that country which has been a bastion of democracy. We are all saying Africa will not fail. Africa will succeed all the time.

The SABC must be ready to tell these stories of hard work as we build a better Africa and a better world.

Our public broadcaster should also capture the rich history of Africa through dialogue and debates. We want to hear progressive African intellectuals deliberating and analysing the situation in Africa in a constructive manner that builds a better Africa.

Already the SABC has begun to expand the coverage of the continent.

In recent months SABC News has highlighted the successful elections in Zambia, Lesotho and Nigeria. The SABC also covered the SADC Special Summit in Zimbabwe, and have this week brought the Pan African Parliament to the living rooms of our people.

People are  now exposed to the views of parliamentarians from various parts of the continent.

Do not take this coverage lightly. It opens up a whole new world that helps us to promote a better understanding of one another in this beautiful continent, and to take decisions from an informed position.

Let me emphasise that we are not saying that the SABC News Channel should ignore problems when they arise in the continent.

What we are saying is that the public broadcaster should balance whatever stories of mayhem with stories that also show that while there is disaster in one small corner in a country, the majority there live a normal life. It should be stories that tell the full African story and not the unbalanced negative scripts that have become the order of the day for years.

I would like to congratulate the SABC team on the success of the channel to date. Since its inception, the 24 hour news channel has reached out to an average of 29 million households every day. This expansion will further increase this figure.

Let me also point out that today’s launch of the SABC 24 hour News to the continent dovetails with the movement towards digital migration.

I have been assured that the process is well advanced and the migration process will begin to take shape in the next few months.

In March 2015 Cabinet approved the final amendments to the Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy which paved the way for the implementation of digital migration.

Cabinet further approved that government should provide free set-top-boxes to the five million households who cannot afford to buy the set top boxes.

The migration will release valuable spectrum which will allow for more television channels, and will also result in job creation in the communication and creative industry sectors and better quality broadcasting.

Ladies and gentlemen as said earlier, the launch comes at an opportune moment when the continent is celebrating Africa Month.

The SABC News Channel is thus an excellent way to celebrate Africa Month, with a channel that will help to reinforce Africa’s unity, commitment to peace, democracy and economic development.

The launch also takes place just a few weeks before the hosting of the African Union Summit in Sandton. The channel will open a window into the Summit for 51 countries.

We will also host the World Economic Forum on Africa meeting in a week’s time, bringing together heads of state and government and their representatives as well as global and African business to discuss opportunities in our country and the continent.

Again the newly expanded channel will be able to expose those opportunities to the world.

All of this demonstrates that the media is a powerful tool for development, peace, unity and progress.

We congratulate the SABC on this progressive route of promoting the telling of African stories by Africans, in an African perspective.

We wish you all the very best.

I thank you.