Sacked SABC exec paints Hlaudi as boss from hell

THE SABC’s former head of TV, Verona Duwarkah, launched a scathing attack on Hlaudi Motsoeneng in a court battle she won against the public broadcaster.

In her affidavit filed in the Labour Court in Johannesburg, Duwarkah accused him of:

Squandering advertising revenue with “irrational” and unilateral schedule changes and making her screen sports events with no audiences;

Changing the presenter lineup at awards ceremonies at “vast additional costs”;

Instructing her to dismiss a senior manager on trumped-up charges; and

Ordering her to dish out dubious contracts to producers worth hundreds of millions that her content team had rejected.

When Duwarkah refused to implement Motsoeneng’s instructions, he stripped her of her powers by making her managers report directly to him.

She said Motsoeneng’s harassment had driven her to ask for an exit package on July 4. The SABC treated her request as a resignation letter and terminated her employment without compensation.

Duwarkah took her dismissal to the Labour Court, which handed down an order on September 15 instructing the SABC to reinstate her.

She spent less than a week in “special projects” before the SABC gave her a golden handshake in late September along with other senior executives.

Duwarkah’s affidavit paints a portrait of Motsoeneng as a capricious, dictatorial manager breaking procurement rules with no regard for the financial consequences.

“Motsoeneng started acting more erratically as time went on,” she said.

At the Metro FM Music Awards in January and the South African Music Awards in June, Motsoeneng “simply changed the lineup to accommodate various presenters as he deems fit”. This resulted in “vast additional costs”.

In a responding affidavit, SABC head of human resources Mohlolo Lephaka said Duwarkah had not followed grievance procedures, including making a submission to the board, and accused her of trying to “extort” a golden handshake.

He said she was trying to boost her application with malicious attacks on Motsoeneng, and described them as “irrelevant, untrue, unfounded and unsubstantiated”. They were designed to hide her own failure to perform.

Motsoeneng had investigated complaints against Duwarkah for “undue delays and bureaucracy” in evaluating TV programme proposals. He had established that R400-million of a R600-million budget for his local content initiative “had not yet been allocated”. Motsoeneng’s efforts to speed up evaluations were “met by strong resistance” from Duwarkah.

Her failure to “fulfil her duties” led to the confrontation with Motsoeneng that resulted in her asking for a settlement, Lephaka said.

Motsoeneng said this week he was “not going to deal with labour issues” or respond to Duwarkah’s allegations. He insisted that “things are wonderful at the SABC. We are not apologetic about transformation. The SABC will transform whether people like it or not.”

Duwarkah declined to comment.

Motsoeneng started acting more erratically as time went on