Ivor Powell
Top management at the SABC quietly set up a committee earlier this year dedicated to resisting the shake-up it expected from an independent consultancy’s investigation into how to salvage the corporation.
Human resources chief Cecilia Khuzwayo (who was appointed acting chief executive after the axing of former CE Reverend Hawu Mbatha), as well as her deputy Martin Slabber, were both appointed to a committee mandated earlier this year to develop counter-strategies in the face of investigations by the consultancy, Gemini.
Senior sources in the SABC said the committee was set up by Mbatha himself after Gemini moved in. The committee’s brief was to find alternatives to the radical changes envisaged by Gemini, and to derail the proposed transformation. Ironically, Khuzwayo will be in charge of implementing the transformation programme recommended by Gemini.
Other members of the ad hoc survival committee included chief operating officer Neil Harvey and the corporation’s head of bi-media news, Snuki Zikalala.
The Gemini report, submitted to the board at the beginning of May, registers powerful criticism of the SABC’s current leadership, which it describes as lacking the qualities needed to steer the commercialisation of the corporation. The report also proposes major structural changes that would leave the entire existing group executive out in the cold.
In line with a new executive organogram, the group executive’s 11 members would effectively lose their positions and influence and would have to reapply for newly defined jobs.
However, in the face of apparent dithering on the part of the board – and the appointment of Khuzwayo to the chief executive hot seat – fears are growing that the Gemini report could be watered down or ignored.
Despite having received the final version of the 400-page Gemini report at the beginning of May, board members will meet for initial discussions of its contents only next week. This flies in the face of earlier indications that the process of bringing the SABC under control was being addressed as a matter of urgency – with major changes planned against an October deadline, the time, traditionally, when major advertising contracts are concluded.
Board chair Dr Vincent Maphai has missed by more than a week a promise to SABC staff to make public the contents of the controversial report. The promise was made when Maphai addressed staff to deny revelations in the Mail & Guardian that Mbatha was due to be axed.
Meanwhile, other initiatives inside the corporation are also raising questions about its commitment to transformation. SABC sources confirmed that line managers have been approached by group executive members to put together alternative business plans and to effect cost-cutting budgetary changes to forestall the implementation of the Gemini proposals.
The M&G has also learned that, in addition to the announcement this week of an online 24-hour news service, Zikalala (who, together with TV news editor-in-chief Phil Molefe, is referred to in the corridors as ”the damagement”) has also instituted moves to expand his bi-media empire. This contradicts Gemini’s recommendation – in line with the decision of the BBC, which pioneered the double skilling of reporters in radio and television, to drop the experiment – that the bi-media initiative be scrapped.
Zikalala confirmed there were plans to open international bureaus in Washington and Brussels, but said the idea had not yet been approved by the board. Rumour has it that three additional bureaus are also proposed in African capitals – all of which contradicts recommendations from McKinsey consultants in 1997 to close foreign bureaus.
These moves come at a time when the SABC’s news department is reported to be taking financial strain. Zikalala denied rumours that the corporation was R8- million in the red, blaming problems on changes in bookkeeping.
SABC sources said the broadcaster had overspent on recent international events.
One such instance occurred in the visit this month of President Thabo Mbeki to the United States, where at the insistence of Zikalala two SABC reporters and a cameraman were dispatched to cover proceedings – despite the fact that the SABC already contracts correspondent Simon Marks’s Feature Story network to provide coverage of the American continent and parts of Europe.
In the event, only one of eight satellite feeds set up by SABC news in advance – at a cost of around R350 000 – was utilised by the SABC’s teams. The coverage itself was deemed so poor that, in defiance of Zikalala’s instructions to use only his own reporters, SABC radio’s SAfm broke ranks to link up with the sidelined but experienced Feature Story correspondents for their morning reports.
The M&G has also learned that, on the strength of complaints by the South African embassy in Washington, the Department of Foreign Affairs approached the SABC board to register its disappointment.