Ivor Powell and Jubie Matlou
The SABC’s entire top management will lose their jobs if the proposals of an independent consultancy into restructuring the beleaguered corporation are accepted.
In a confidential report completed two weeks ago, international consultancy Gemini slams the corporation’s group executive for a shortage of skills and a lack of leadership, and declares outright that the current executive lacks the capacity to implement restructuring strategies. The report is equally damning of the SABC’s recruiting practices, which it criticises for operating on principles of patronage and nepotism, rather than excellence.
The report will be submitted to the Cabinet in May for ratification before the SABC’s governing board implements what could amount to a radical transformation of the troubled corporation.
In terms of the proposed restructuring of the SABC, the corporation will be broken down into two sections – one a public service broadcaster and the other a public commercial broadcaster, both overseen by the SABC board.
This week that board made the first move in the transformational chess game when, rather than dismissing disgraced television chief Molefe Mokgatle and corporate communications head Thaninga Shope, the governing body decreed they should be demoted to middle management positions.
But they will not be the only ones if the report is accepted. According to the compilers of the report, mismanagement in the current SABC is endemic, and none of the incumbents in the group executive is spared.
One startling index to mismanagement in the corporation is offered in the extraordinary revelation that more than R350-million in television stock – programmes commissioned or bought by the SABC since 1997 but never used – will have to be written off ahead of restructuring.
Sources close to the process told the Mail & Guardian that, in many cases, contracts to produce these programmes had been awarded in the absence of required tender procedures. Many of these irregularities were uncovered in last year’s investigation into SABC commissioning practices by forensic auditors KPMG, where, among others, Mokgatle and Shope were implicated.
But the drafters of the Gemini report go further than KPMG in implicating not only Mokgatle and Shope, but also the group executive as a whole. Responsibility is also apportioned to the corporation’s financial division as well its chief operating officer and its chief executive officer – for failing to ensure that tabs were kept and procedures followed.
Nat Kekana, communications portfolio committee chair, said his committee could only intervene at policy level, and would leave restructuring matters to the board.
At present, of the SABC’s 19 broadcasting units (radio stations and television channels), only six are operating at a profit. The other 13 lost nearly R200-million in the current financial year, with television alone accounting for R130-million, despite the fact that SABC1 breaks the mould by running at a profit.
Perhaps the most surprising of all the figures cited is that the group executive operation alone cost the corporation R95- million.
The Gemini interim report – an analysis of the status quo at the SABC – is the first in a two-part exercise aimed at restructuring the moribund corporation into a hybrid of public service and commercial broadcasting units. Gemini was appointed after successfully restructuring French television channel RFI. French consultants have been part of the restructuring process in conjunction with their South African counterparts.
The second part of the report is due to be finalised by April 14, before a consolidated report is submitted to the Cabinet.
But the M&G has learned that the second phase of the report – which sets out the model according to which the SABC is to be restructured – will deliver the coup de grce to the current regime, which is still dominated by cronies and appointees of former chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu.
This is expected to be effected via a radical redrawing of the top management organogram, resulting in the entire group executive being assembled from scratch.
Of the seven envisaged positions in the executive, four will be entirely new appointments – one representative each for the public and commercial broadcasting arms of the new-look corporation; one representing the SABC’s shared service facilities, Henley and Airtime; and the last responsible for editorial content (sport, news and so on).
Meanwhile, the three top positions in the executive – those of chief executive, chief operating officer and chief financial officer – will also, and just as dramatically, be redefined in the restructuring shake-up.
While the present system sees this group of executives as employees of the corporation, as recast in the 1999 Broadcasting Act, they will be defined as executive directors of the SABC board. This means that, technically, instead of sitting ex officio (as SABC executives) in board meetings, the new top three will be, initially, members of the 15-member SABC board, mandated by that board to serve as executives.
That is the long version. The short version is that the positions, as redefined, do not currently exist and will have to be filled from scratch.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the resignation of Enoch Sithole, the SABC’s head of news, followed an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the African National Congress to halt the restructuring process. In a move that could be linked to internal back-stabbing as well as a relationship gone wrong, Sithole’s claims to South African citizenship are also being investigated by the Department of Home Affairs.
Sources in the ANC said that Sithole and his deputy, Snuki Zikhalala, first approached the ANC’s party headquarters at Luthuli House in January, seeking to have the restructuring process reversed and to have Solly Mokoetle, the SABC’s head of transformation, removed from the process.
When this approach met with no success, a later meeting with an extended ANC media caucus, including members of the communications portfolio committee, was held in Cape Town in February. At this meeting television news head Phil Molefe was also present to hear – in no uncertain terms, sources said – that transformation of the SABC was unambiguously in line with both the ANC’s and the government’s policies. The meeting also reaffirmed its support for Mokoetle’s initiatives.
Molefe and Zikhalala are believed to be considering their options and both have, reportedly, indicated that they could follow Sithole’s lead.
Shope refused to comment, saying she would be making a statement at a later date.
n The M&G stands by its report last week that the Department of Home Affairs is investigating Sithole’s citizenship credentials. The department denied the investigation at the weekend. However, the M&G’s sources in the department maintain there is an investigation and that Sithole has two identity numbers.