Zuma fiddles as SABC burns

President ponders fitness of individuals on proposed board Public broadcaster on autopilot; R1bn loss recorded

President Jacob Zuma has implied that some of the 12 people recommended to serve on the SABC board may not be fit and proper.

This is the reason he has not yet appointed a new board to oversee the running of the public broadcaster, which now finds itself without a board after the interim board’s term expired on Tuesday.

This is despite the fact that parliament had undertaken the same process before it interviewed candidates who had been shortlisted.

Zuma’s spokesman Bongani Ngqulunga said the president was in the process of undertaking standard checks on recommended candidates.

He said Zuma wanted to “satisfy” himself that those recommended were “fit and proper” to serve on the permanent board.

“It should be recalled that we have had instances in the past in which there were misrepresentations about qualifications and other matters,” Ngqulunga said yesterday.

“The Presidency is aware that the SABC currently does not have a board and is therefore treating the matter with [the] urgency [that] it deserves.”

Parliament’s chairman of the portfolio committee on communication Humphrey Maxegwana said he “didn’t know” what was causing the delay. “We’ve done the checks as the committee, not only on the 12 names that were recommended, but on the entire 36 shortlisted candidates, and some of them didn’t even make the interviews due to those checks,” he said.

Phumzile van Damme, the DA’s spokeswoman of communication, said Zuma had “more than three weeks” to consider the names recommended by parliament.

“Parliament has already done the checks... there’s no need for him to do that,” said Van Damme.

She said the work of the board was “especially important” following this week’s tabling of the SABC annual fi- nancial report which painted “a grim picture”.

The public broadcaster’s financial report, presented on Tuesday, showed that the SABC had recorded losses amounting to about R1-billion in the last financial year.

SOS Coalition national coordinator Duduetsang Makuse said: “This is potentially disastrous and not good news at all. It is a matter that needs to be addressed urgently.”

EFF spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said Zuma was not acting like someone “who treats the matter of bringing [the] SABC to stability as a matter of urgency”.

“This shows incompetency on his part which is nothing new. He had enough time and he chose to delay the process with his signature,” he said.