SABC Woes: DA complains to parliamentary committee

Johannesburg (IT News Africa) — The South African opposition has written to the Chairperson of Parliament’s Communications Committee, Ismail Vadi, protesting Minister, Siphiwe Nyanda’s appointment of a twelve-member consultation team to help turn around the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Niekie van den Berg, Shadow Minister of Communications, is requesting that Vadi summon Minister Nyanda, as well as the Department’s Acting Director-General, Ms Gerda Grabe, when next the Portfolio Committee meets, to account for the decision to establish this task team so soon after the installation of an interim board, as well as to clarify how this body will be funded, and to whom it will be accountable.

“The DA will today (Thursday) write to the Chairperson of Parliament’s Communications Committee, Hon. Ismail Vadi, requesting that he summon Minister Nyanda, as well as the Department’s Acting Director-General, Ms Gerda Grabe, when next the Portfolio Committee meets, to account for the decision to establish this task team so soon after the installation of an interim board, as well as to clarify how this body will be funded, and to
whom it will be accountable,” van den Berg said.

“If it is confirmed that Nyanda has appointed a twelve-member consultation team to help turn around the SABC, this will be the strongest indication yet that the interim board selection process concluded three weeks ago was flawed. Appointing a turnaround team would have been unnecessary had the ANC MPs on Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications sought to appoint fully independent persons to the board, instead of individuals sympathetic to the ruling party’s political programme.”

This comes a few days after Parliament also submitted a request to the office of the Auditor-General, requesting that he look into allegations of “looting” and financial mismanagement at the SABC, which have been leveled by a number of current and former stakeholders in the public broadcaster, including organised labour and former members of the SABC Board. The A-G’s office agreed to conduct the investigation, and began its work in this regard barely a week ago.

“If the brief of the turnaround team is being reported accurately, then this is precisely what the interim board has been mandated to do. If the ANC were truly serious about turning the SABC into a politically independent and sustainable entity, then the members of this so-called “fix-it team” should have been put forward as candidates for the interim
board, which was also billed by the governing party as a “fix-it team”.

Instead the Minister has created an additional, parallel bureaucratic layer to work on cleaning up the public broadcaster – and this, less than six months before Parliament is due to appoint a 12-member permanent board to carry forward the work begun by the interim body,” van den berg added.

“The Democratic Alliance (DA) is committed to seeing the SABC out of its current crisis and seeing it established as an independent and sustainable public broadcaster; the intention of the ANC, however, is apparently to the contrary. Judging by its processes of dissolving the permanent board, installing an interim board, and now establishing an additional turnaround task team, political independence and financial prudence at the public broadcaster are clearly not priorities to the governing party.”

The SABC is beset by problems, which have culminated in SABC staff in the Communications Workers Union go on strike this week.

By Mthulisi Sibanda