SABC revelations make riveting viewing

Mbulaheni Maguvhe

Mbulaheni Maguvhe

Published Dec 17, 2016

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Cape Town - Death threats, doctored minutes of meetings, spooks loose in Auckland Park and the ever present spectre of the Gupta brothers: the “rot” in the public broadcaster has been revealed and the work starts to fix it.

The week-long parliamentary inquiry into the board of the SABC made for surprisingly good television as viewers glimpsed just how dysfunctional it had become.

From day one, the signs of trouble appeared when board chairman Mbulaheni Maguvhe led a walkout with other executives to delay the probe.

In his explosive testimony, journalist Lukhanyo Calata told the inquiry how it was an open secret that former chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng had the ear of President Jacob Zuma. When he didn’t get a R500 000 raise, he threatened to head to Pretoria.

“At times, it got so bad, that if one even argued about the time of the day, the outcome would invariably be what the ‘Hlaudi group’ wanted,” former board member Krish Naidoo said about Motsoeneng and his supporters.

And at times, simply trying to understand Motsoeneng could be difficult, as was shown in “that sound bite” which had the committee in stitches.

Calata explained how as a parliamentary reporter he had the unenviable task of covering Motsoeneng’s appearances in Parliament and to make sense of his speeches. One sound bite he was forced to run had Motsoeneng saying; ‘The New Age, as you know, they are new, like the new age’.”

On day four, we learnt members of the State Security Agency had been deployed to the head office to sniff out a rat - allegedly Itani Tseisi. The inquiry learnt spooks had been asked to investigate the former group executive of risk and governance for allegedly leaking information. He was cleared.

Then, there were the death threats. Suna Venter, one of the “SABC 8” journalists who earlier this year took their former employer to court, told the shocked committee how she had been shot at two months ago and had received threats.

United Democratic Movement MP Nqabayomzi Kwankwa shocked the committee when he read out the contents of a menacing SMS, sent to another unnamed journalist in the group. “Traitors protecting your white friends in Parliament who started this, telling lies about your comrades. You are warned, we don’t kill blacks but sit and watch the blood flow.”

The testimony revealed more tales of Gupta involvement. Sipho Masinga, the former chief technology officer, told of a meeting with the Gupta-owned TNA media group. During the meeting, he said, there was talk of rebranding SABC news, where the state broadcaster would provide resources and journalists to TNA , while it retained advertising revenue.

Journalist Vuyo Mvoko testified how the SABC had to pay to host New Age breakfasts on the Morning Live show at between R200 000 to R500 000 per breakfast. He believed this money was used to build TV channel ANN7.

Then there was that hiccup when former board member Rachel Kalidass, delivered her testimony. MPs noticed that the minutes read by Kalidass didn’t match what had been sent to the committee - it had been forced to issue a summons to get access to the documents.

Parliament’s lawyers are now checking the documents.

The inquiry may have finished for the year, but the DA will be poring through thousands of documents and transcripts over Christmas.

Tune into the unfolding soap opera when the inquiry resumes on January 10.

Weekend Argus

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