Losing our Faith

EVEN before its national general council proceedings this past weekend, there was concern within the ANC that Communications Minister Faith Muthambi was not adhering to policy.

And it was not only her incongruent actions with regard to the SABC.

Regarded as something of a rogue in the cabinet, Muthambi had particularly embarrassed the government over her department’s apparent inability to implement June’s vital switchover from analogue to digital TV – an event which had been in the offing for years.

This was an international deadline which South Africa, quite simply, couldn’t meet.

Further, Muthambi presided over what some observers might call a deal with the devil, in which pay-TV operator and private monopoly MultiChoice effectively secured the SABC’s archive for its paying viewers, and at a mere R100 million a year.

To this end, we will be most interested in the outcome of media group Caxton’s petition on this matter to the Competition Tribunal, as the deal has the telltale signs of a merger which, to the minds of many, ought to have been adjudicated by the country’s competition authorities.

These and other matters, including the continued dominance of disgraced SABC chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, mean that the minister is something of an albatross.

There was open distaste for her and her actions at the national general council gathering, and although that meeting related specifically to ANC matters, we, like many within the ruling party and the opposition, believe Muthambi must go.

For the ANC, it is also about her failing to meet the party’s own required levels of accountability.

Although Muthambi is a cabinet minister, the ANC believes it should be consulted on major policy matters, such as the SABC, digital migration, the sale of the archive, and so on.

And, indeed, we can understand that.

Muthambi is, after all, a deployed cadre at the highest level.

There are many questions. Is the minister bowing to capital? Is she a protagonist of Motsoeneng for reasons that are not entirely clear?