Sonwabo Eddie Funde, the man tipped to be the ultimate authority on what South Africans will see and hear for the next four years, was branded in a bitter 2001 court battle as a hatchet man for the communications ministry and department.
Funde tops the list of candidates for the new SABC board elected by the National Assembly communications committee last week, making him the likely chairperson. The list, confirmed by the full Assembly on Wednesday, still has to be ratified by President Thabo Mbeki before the new board takes office at the end of December.
Opposition parties have complained that the list, rammed through by the African National Congress majority, is not representative; is ”a joke”; or is ”ANC-BC” — the latter a reference to black consciousness.
The alarm has been raised about two aspects of Funde’s recent career. First, as an ANC member and functionary, he heads the committee that evaluates ANC MPs’ performance to decide whether they should be included on party lists for next year’s election.
This gave rise to a conflict-of-interest charge: that he was in a position of influence over the same MPs who had to decide his SABC board candidacy. The complaint has been dismissed by committee chairperson Kgaogelo Lekgoro (ANC).
A second charge has been that Funde, as a consultant to the Department of Communications, is too close to government to fulfil what is supposed to be an independent role at the public broadcaster. Funde’s CV states that he has been ”consulting on policy and regulation in the telecommunications industry for the Department of Communications” among others. Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and her department are directly responsible for the SABC.
Funde this week told the Mail & Guardian that this charge was incorrect, as his last work for the department had been in 2000. He said that as a player in the communications sector, he had to ”interact with industry and with policymakers”.
But Funde’s most controversial role has elicited hardly a mention. In 2001 he was the first respondent in a Pretoria High Court challenge brought by Nextcom, a losing bidder for the third cellphone network licence that was awarded to Cell C.
Nextcom sought to have the licence award overturned, claiming executive interference in what should have been an independent selection process. Judgement was widely expected to favour Nextcom, but Cell C settled at the last moment for a consideration reportedly between R60-million and R80-million.
But what was Funde’s role? He was deputy chairperson of the body adjudicating the licence application, the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra, now replaced by the Independent Communications Authority, or Icasa).
Satra, as a statutorily independent body, was supposed to be immune to influence by Matsepe-Casaburri and her department.
Nextcom’s case, however, included details of a sordid saga in which Nape Maepa, Satra’s then chairperson, was forced to recuse himself from the adjudication proceedings by Matsepe-Casaburri and presidential legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi.
The recusal followed a campaign of vilification — allegedly by, among others, Funde — in which it was held that Maepa had a conflict of interest because a former business partner was involved with one of the bidders. Maepa was ultimately cleared, but too late for the cell licence adjudication, which left the way open for Funde to chair the proceedings.
Evidence placed before the Pretoria High Court included that during Satra’s deliberations on February 19 and 20 2000, where it settled on Cell C as the preferred bidder, Funde had been ”in frequent telephonic contact” with Matsepe-Casaburri and her Director General, Andile Ngcaba.
And when an expert report commissioned by Satra cast serious doubt on Cell C’s financial plan, Funde wrote a confidential memorandum advising Matsepe-Casaburri that the report could have a ”material impact” on Satra’s choice of Cell C. Funde also defended the controversial presence of advocate Ismail Semenya, representing the minister, at Satra’s deliberations.
In short, Funde was accused at the time — alongside fellow Satra councillor Noluthando Gosa, who is also on the SABC board list — of having led the charge on behalf of the minister and her department in a process that improperly favoured Cell C.
Will he have the required independence to shield the SABC from undue interference from the government and, specifically, Matsepe-Casaburri and her department?
Funde this week said he preferred not to revisit the past. ”As far as I’m concerned that was, really, pure speculation … Those kinds of things, as far as the media is concerned, I suppose, will continue to the day I die …
”I don’t think that whenever someone wants to make a move it’s fair to dig up the past,” he said. ”It’s a thing I want to put in the past and forget.”