WINNNIE MANDELA will appear in the Witwatersrand Supreme Court today after yesterday’s postponement of her application for leave to appeal against the judgment in the diamonds from Angola, Foster Webb air charter case.
The case was postponed because Modise Khoza, the advocate defending Mandela in this case, was in Durban.
Mandela is applying for leave to appeal after last week’s judgment ordering her to pay more than R53 674 to the air charter company, plus interest and legal costs – a total of more than R100 000. The costs arise from a flight to Angola allegedly booked by Mandela in June 1993.
In the event that Khoza is unavailable today, advocate Bill Sceales will stand in for him. Judge Myburgh insisted that the case not be postponed beyond today as he is going overseas. Mandela was not in court yesterday.
SAfm troubled by lost listeners
Latest listenership statistics reveal that the SABC’s radio flagship, SAfm, is in even deeper trouble than was feared, reports Marion
SAFM’S audience has shrunk to the size of Radio Venda’s, according to SABC sources, despite the fact that 8,8 percent of South Africans speak English as a first language, as against 1,9 percent who speak Venda.
The latest statistics reveal a drop in SAfm listeners over the last year from 393 000 to 231 000.
These damning figures have pushed the embattled management and staff of SAfm against the wall as they try to devise ways to interest new listeners in their programmes and entrench the station’s position before the advent of independent broadcasting presents SAfm with real competition.
An SAfm source said many management meetings were stormy and managers could not decide whether they should target a “rainbow- coloured” audience or the “decision-makers in the new South African society”. He described internal battles as a “soap opera, with loyalties shifting and people stabbing each other in the
Another source said radio chief Govin Reddy was feeling threatened by proposals that the respected SAfm actuality programmes AM Live and PM Live, as well as Radio News, may be removed from his portfolio and handed to current head of news, Barney Mthombothi. Mthombothi would then report directly to SABC chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu. At the moment, Mthombothi is responsible for Radio News but reports to Reddy.
Mthombothi has emphatically denied there is any power struggle over the portfolio of news programmes – the glamourous part of radio journalism. Television news chief Jill Chisholm reports directly to Sisulu.
A source close to Sisulu has indicated discussions in SAfm are related to a wider discussion in the SABC about the values of the corporation. Top managers are discussing the need to strike a balance between commercial viability and the public broadcasting mandate.
This same source also indicated Sisulu was becoming disillusioned with a group of “white liberals” who had been put into key management positions shortly after the 1994 elections and who have not necessarily proved themselves as managers. SAfm employees have referred to a division in the corporation between “Africanists” and “progressives”, although many say this is an exaggeration of the real situation.
Most managers in the troubled station don’t want to talk about SAfm’s decline. And the slide in listenership is particularly worrying to the news and current affairs staff, given that SAfm is widely seen as both more professional and responsive to the news than any other English-speaking radio station.
Charles Leonard, head of SAfm’s current affairs programmes, remains enthusiastic, however. When asked how he felt about the radio station’s problems, he paid tribute to his staff and said he had been “invigorated” by the experience.