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IT was business as usual for SABC employees yesterday when the national broadcaster's acting group chief executive Gabriel Mampone launched the organisation's news agency.

Mampone said the launch of the news agency was an obvious next step for the SABC to offer its content in a format packaged to meet the specific needs of its targeted client base.

"As Africa's leading news gathering and packaging organisation, SABC News has immediate access, on a daily basis, to a vast amount of exclusive footage both video and audio. "With a strong presence of SABC News teams across South Africa, the rest of the continent and internationally, we are in the fortunate position to be able to gather and deliver unique content about Africa and the world, with a strong African flavour and perspective," he said.

The SABC plans to have at least 20 bureaus across the world by 2010, and already maintains bureaus in Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Belgium, the UK and two in the US.

More bureaus are planned in Brazil, China, Jamaica this year, seven others by next year and five more by 2012.

This places the national broadcaster in a position to provide news content from all over the world.

Itani Tseisi, who is heading up this new initiative, says that the organisation already has two potential clients from Mauritius and the US.

He also said that the agency wanted to build relationships with community radio stations and television channels in South Africa to offer them content they would probably not have access to otherwise mainly because of financial constraints.

"We would obviously offer them content at a reasonable price. We might even give it to them for free," he said.

Other potential clients include film and documentary makers, media owners, advertising, marketing and PR agencies, production houses and corporate clients.

Mampone said that the launch of the SABC News Agency formalises a service which the broadcaster has been offering on a more ad-hoc basis in the past.

While the SABC would not go into the details surrounding its CEO Dali Mpofu and head of news Snuki Zikalala's suspensions, its board member Bheki Khumalo delivered a speech in an attempt to shake off some of the negative publicity the broadcaster has had in the past few months.

"We will shake of things that deter us. Our board will mend things and deliver a public broadcaster that everyone can be proud of."

Khumalo said that the organisation has made great strides in the past decade when it was riddled with racism, tribalism and sexism.

"We are again faced with uncertain and enormous challenges and we have to recommit ourselves to being a public service broadcaster that is independent, none bias, that carries news without fear or favour," he said.

Khumalo added that it did not matter whether the board ended up being dissolved or not, as the ANC has reportedly wanted to do, but that South Africans believed that what they see and hear from the SABC was as close to the truth as possible.

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