Sechaba ka’Nkosi The SABC this month begins searching for someone to fill the country’s top media executive position – head of the public broadcaster’s beleaguered news department. The position is expected to be advertised soon, as well as the posts of CEO and chief financial officer. The news candidate is expected to harmonise what has become the country’s most faction-riddled newsroom and provide leadership that will make the public broadcaster a credible news source. This has profound implications for the jobs of controversial acting head of news Snuki Zikalala and television news head Phil Molefe. Acting CEO Cecilia Khuzwayo says: “We expect to get someone [as executive of the news division] from outside the SABC. That person will have to restore order in the newsroom and at the same time make strategic policy adjustments to fit in with our role.” Professor Guy Berger of the Rhodes University’s department of journalism and media studies says there are three main challenges for the new news head: managing the fragile relations between black and white staffers; administering technological challenges posed by the bi-media project; and interpreting reports from the McKenzie and Gemini consultancies on public and commercial broadcasting. “The SABC is under enormous pressure to become more credible in the new environment. But balancing that against the suggested fragmentation of the news to be market-driven and cost-effective is even more difficult that just ascending to the position. The person will have to try and forge a balance between a shared national identity and market expectations,” Berger says.
Both Zikalala and Molefe will be free to apply for the post, although insiders say it is unlikely they will get the job. It has been a hard and painful journey for the SABC to align itself with the changing political environment. A historically contested terrain since the days of National Party governments, the SABC news division has continually stumbled from one chief executive to another. Molefe, Zikalala and disgraced former news chief Enoch Sithole climbed to the top of the news division following the departures of several senior staffers appointed by former CEO Zwelakhe Sisulu. Sithole left the corporation in March after reports emerged questioning his academic qualifications and citizenship. A lack of differentiation among the roles of TV news head and news chief has been blamed largely for the current power struggles between Molefe and Zikalala. Media experts have blamed the board, Sisulu and his successor Hawu Mbatha for creating empires that would later prove very difficult to control. “The board makes critical appointments of people at the top,” said former news head Allister Sparks. “If they choose wrong people the entire operation goes down.”