Time to restore order at SABC

It is becoming increasingly obvious that, far from filling its regulated mandate of being the public broadcaster, the SABC has built a moat of near invincibility around itself. More than the now familiar pictures of a redeyed arrogant stare from chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng and the court cases and patently faux internal hearings his intransigence have engendered, plus the indifferent assumption of Minister of Communications Faith Muthambi that the portfolio she holds would not meddle with the internal affairs of the SABC, is a stance which bears no perceivable logic or substance.

And her insistence that, despite a veritable barrage of criticism, “we deliberately decided not to pursue an interventionary stance as the ministry” could, and perhaps should, be construed as a dereliction of duty.

Neither does the assertion by the minister that “the SABC board sign off the editorial policies, not the ministry of communications” inspire any real confidence that there are any checks or balances in place.

Certainly, calls from watchdog organisations like the Right2Know to bring some semblance of order back into the broadcast of information have been tuned out at the corporation’s Auckland Park headquarters, and similar calls for the immediate removal of Motsoeneng and the SABC board have fallen on deaf ears. This is patently not going to happen.

The growing, and it must be added, long-held belief that the public broadcaster is anything but a vehicle for the enlightenment of this country’s citizens and merely a mouthpiece for the ruling party, gains even more credibility as each platitude follows the next and revelations of the board’s apparent indifference to its audience – and, it must be added, its editorial staff – begin to surface.

It is high time for both the minister and the SABC to realise their duty to the country or admit the lunatics have taken over the asylum.