SABC meeting off ‘to save ANC face’

Linda Ensor

Linda Ensor is a contributor for Business Day.

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African National Congress (ANC) communications spokesman Khotso Khumalo said the meeting was not held because of the continuing discord between the SABC board and its management, but communications spokeswoman for the Democratic Alliance (DA), Dene Smuts, rejected this as a “transparent excuse”.

The real reason the meeting was not happening, she said, was that it would have been “too embarrassing” for the ANC to sit across the table from board members it had tried without success to unseat.

The ANC and its alliance partners are insistent that a new board be appointed after President Thabo Mbeki imposed his chosen supporters Christine Qunta, Andile Mbeki and Gloria Serobe on the committee’s list of candidates.

The ANC last week backtracked from its bid to get the National Assembly to adopt a communications committee resolution expressing no confidence in the SABC board. Instead, the assembly “noted” it.

Smuts said the presentation of the strategic plan, which was inherited from the old board, would have vindicated the view of SABC chairwoman Khanyisile Mkonza that the organisation under group CE Dali Mpofu ran the risk “of reaching a crisis operationally, financially and in terms of governance”.

Mkonza had Mpofu suspended, but Mpofu succeeded with a high court application to have this decision overturned.

Smuts said Parliament should have interrogated the SABC’s strategic plan and budget to determine the state of health of the organisation. “I don’t believe this meeting will ever happen. I would also say the new board is now safe from attempts at arbitrary removal.”

Although the meeting was not happening, Khumalo said Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri would deliver her budget vote speech in the National Assembly next week.

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