When the bar is (progressively) set so low

If they have the courage, the MPs probing the SABC can put it on the road to recovery, writes John Dludlu

WHILE going about my business of arranging free, decolonised food and drink for my homestead, I ran into an old colleague and friend; let’s call him JD (his real initials). Our paths first crossed more than 20 years ago when JD was a young, gifted sports writer for this newspaper and I worked for a business title in the same stable.

JD then left for the US where he picked up three university degrees and joined an international TV network. Armed with these qualifications, including fluent Russian, JD ran into a top-six leader of the ANC who was so impressed with his career advancement that he immediately asked JD to return to South Africa to make a contribution.

A meeting was arranged for JD with the führer of the SABC, Hlaudi Motsoeneng. At the meeting, JD showed the great leader his impressive qualifications. The saviour of the SABC, not a man for details, arranged a further meeting, which would mark the beginning of the end of JD’s return to South Africa. The long and the short of it was that JD was deemed overqualified, possibly unaffordable (coming from a dollar-based salary), et cetera.

The real problem, of course, was that JD was deemed a threat — too independent and competent to fit into the culture of mediocrity promoted by Motsoeneng and his enforcers.

JD, an eternal optimist who has returned to South Africa with the hope of contributing, tells this anecdote sadly. Motsoeneng, whose qualifications pale into insignificance in comparison with JD’s, is now at the centre of a parliamentary inquiry.

In theory at least, the inquiry by an ad hoc multiparty committee chaired by ANC MP Vincent Smith is investigating the fitness of the SABC board. The reality is that there’s no board to speak of; what started off as a board has ended up as a oneman show in the shape of chairman Mbulaheni Maguvhe, an academic who can’t tell the difference between his responsibilities and those of the directors or the shareholder.

Thanks to mass resignations the board hasn’t had a quorum in months, but shockingly, the committee heard this week, it has been making life-changing decisions as if it were functioning at full capacity.

Prior to its commencement this week, the inquiry had been frustrated by numerous challenges from the SABC and its chairman. His latest bid in the High Court in Cape Town to interdict the proceedings failed, and the court ordered him to personally foot the legal bill — something which he appeared not to be aware of, along with many other developments at the SABC.

This week Motsoeneng appeared to have reached the end of the road, as the court ruled in a separate case that he could not be appointed to any job at the SABC; not without first undergoing a proper disciplinary hearing.

There’s something tragic about the hearings in parliament. To hundreds of long-suffering SABC staffers, this is too little, too late. Evidence from the hearings, especially from the board and shareholder representative, confirms what’s long been suspected about the goings-on at Auckland Park.

The board, or those of its members who remained till a month ago, were clueless and allowed themselves to be manipulated by Motsoeneng and his backer in Pretoria. The minister of communications, Faith Muthambi, was beholden to him, and to other vested interests. The inquiry is supposed to be about the board’s fitness, but the board is only the proxy of one man and his shadow sponsor.

On behalf of vested interests, he’s alleged to have manipulated the board to help him purge his enemies (read, those executives with enough backbone to stand up to him — thank God there are many); turn the SABC into a Zuma-supporting state broadcaster; and try, unsuccessfully, to enforce sunshine journalism.

What pushback there has been came largely from the SABC 8, a group of principled journalists who stood up to Motsoeneng’s bully tactics when he sought to stop the screening of violent protests that would embarrass his sponsor ahead of the August 3 local government elections. The eight, who have to be lauded for their courage, gave graphic details of how they suffered at the hands of Motsoeneng during his reign of terror at the SABC as chief operating officer.

Through them and former executives, we now know that Motsoeneng not only tried to engineer favourable coverage for his sponsor, but that he also went out of his way to help SABC rivals like ANN7 and MultiChoice, and, perversely, then rewarded himself and his apologists with irregular salary increases and bonuses (or “sweeteners”, his preferred word).

The inquiry has many limitations. For a start, it has no forensic or accounting capacity to audit some of the sensational claims that have been made; nor does it have capacity to stop the costly ongoing litigation against the SABC.

Also, it’s only taken a sample of witness testimonies, mainly from articulate and educated professionals who aren’t easily intimidated by Motsoeneng and who are mostly no longer in the SABC’s employ. It’s unlikely to invite testimony from junior staff and mid-level managers who have suffered untold abuse at the hands of Motsoeneng’s regime.

Most of their traumatic stories are either before the law courts or waiting to be heard by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, as the unions appear to have also been captured by Motsoeneng.

To these staff, the inquiry is merely scratching the surface of what’s wrong with the SABC. It’s unlikely to give them answers as to why their pleas for help were ignored by the portfolio committee on communications, and why the same committee allowed Muthambi et al to get away with fantastic interpretations of the Broadcasting Act and legislation on financial management.

To hundreds of long-suffering SABC staffers, this is too little, too late

Worse, the SABC has often been at the receiving end of unfavourable legal judgments and negative reports by Chapter 9 institutions such as the auditor-general and the public protector.

There has been some grandstanding by MPs, but the inquiry has been relatively well run. The rare bipartisan support for its work is refreshing, although it’s unclear how far the ANC is willing to go in embarrassing its own.

However, if the ANC members pluck up enough courage, the committee may yet deliver an outcome that will begin to fix the SABC, end Motsoeneng’s destructive reign and bring his sponsor to account. If that happens, people like JD will hopefully be given an opportunity to serve under a competent leadership that constantly raises the bar, instead of lowering it.

Dludlu is a former editor of the Sowetan