FERIAL HAFFAJEE, Johannesburg | Friday 8.00pm.
INDEPENDENT television producers believe that the South African Broadcasting Corporation secretly gave a multi-million-rand contract for breakfast television to a favoured firm while pretending to be taking submissions from its rivals.
The contract was awarded to Urban Brew, a production house which is co-owned by New Africa Investments Limited (Nail) — the corporation SABC’s former chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu recently joined as an executive director.
Rival production houses are particularly incensed by the suspicion that the SABC invited them in for a second round of interviews, on Thursday, August 6, knowing they were a charade. Television companies bidding for breakfast television spent tens of thousands of rand making their “pitches” for the contract.
SABC representative Enoch Sithole told the Mail & Guardian that there was no conflict of interest in Sisulu’s company being granted the contract. The contract was, however, negotiated while Sisulu was working half-time for the SABC and the other half for Nail.
Full story: Urban Brew ‘nails’ breakfast TV August 14 1998
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