Johannesburg - Former SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng has finally broken his silence about the crisis at the SABC after a stand-off between management and workers over job cuts.
The SABC has been embroiled in a dispute with the workers demanding that management and the board halt job cuts. The SABC said it wanted to retrench 400 staff in order to save costs.
But unions and political parties said other means must be found to cut costs and not to fire workers. Political parties said the situation was untenable and the government must intervene.
In an interview with The Star, Motsoeneng blamed the SABC board and management for the debacle. “How can you attempt to retrench 800 people, at a time like this? They don’t care about people. When I took over as CEO at the SABC there were already talks of retrenchments. I fought it off. In my time not one person was retrenched.
“When (Cyril) Ramaphosa came in, people became determined to remove me. They didn’t care about saving jobs, saving local content and making sure the artistic industry was sustainable. They wanted to deal with me because they say I was taking orders from Zuma. But look what is happening now? It’s bad,” he said.
Motsoeneng is believed to have been very close to former president Jacob Zuma and was heavily criticised for a ban on broadcasting violent protests, a move he still defends.
“The duty of the state broadcaster is not to go after violence. We had a responsibility to show the stories of all South Africans. Not just the positive parts or the negative parts only,” he said.
“My crime was transformation. There are evergreen contracts at the SABC. There are permanent contracts with white production companies. In my first month there I called for an audit into those things so we could change them. The production companies which also produce content for some newsrooms came against me.”
Motsoeneng has also blamed the ANC for the SABC debacle.
“There was political pressure to remove me and put in this new group. These people don’t know anything about broadcasting. Some of these board members don’t know what an OB (outside broadcast) van is.
“In my time at the SABC, there was no bailout. There’s a difference between a bailout and a bank guarantee. I left the SABC with R8 billion in the bank. What happened to that money?”
On Ramaphosa, Motsoeneng further said: “The new dawn was a mistake. We can all feel it now. He is not ANC. He was a Cosatu delegate at the conference where he ended up as secretary-general.”
He also questioned Ramaphosa’s “sudden commitment” to fighting corruption. “Where was he during Zuma’s tenure. Wasn’t he the head of government business?”
The Star has looked into Motsoeneng’s claims and found that at the time of his departure, the SABC had R8 billion in its coffers.
The Presidency’s spokesperson, Tyrone Seale, did not respond to questions by the time of publication.
The Star