Judging by recent key appointments to the South African Broadcasting Corporation, it is inevitable that Peter Matlare’s successor will be drawn from within the ranks of the African National Congress.
Three people are said to be in the running: Nkenke Kekana, a former ANC MP and current head of regulatory affairs at Telkom; Mandla Langa, himself a former board member at the SABC and current head of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa); and Snuki Zikalala, a former ANC exile and now the SABC’s managing director for news and current affairs.
A significant body of opinion within the ANC sees the SABC not so much as an independent institution but as a strategic parastatal, with a crucial role to play in building the national consensus around transformation and economic development.
Given its influence as the primary source of information for 80% of the population, the ruling party will almost certainly seek a CEO who it believes can put the corporation to work for that purpose. As recently as his annual statement as party leader, President Thabo Mbeki reaffirmed and defended the party’s deployment policy as a tool of transformation.
History is a guide. Zwelakhe Sisulu, scion of one of the party ’s royal dynasties, was the SABC’s first post-apartheid CE. He was followed by the pliant reverend Hawu Mbatha, an inside appointment. Matlare, in contrast, was regarded as a professional, technocratic choice. He lasted just four years, and many sources within the ANC, SABC and the industry, say the party will return to a candidate of its own.
The three men touted for the top job each have very different approaches to broadcasting, and will give very different levels of comfort to those who hope to see the SABC report to Parliament rather than Luthuli House.
Langa, who was on the SABC board in the mid-1990s, is independently minded and hands-off in management style, with a good grasp of the technical and regulatory issues. But it will take some persuasion to get him to leave Icasa, where he has been making progress on a packed agenda. ”I don’t know anything about this at all. The first time I heard about it was in the media,” he said on Thursday.
Kekana would be a popular choice. His year at Telkom would have given him business experience and distanced him from Parliament, where he was Parliament’s communications committee chair. In this role, he was responsible for steering the selection of previous SABC boards. Kekana was on Thursday unavailable for comment.
Zikalala, who left the corporation in 2002 to work as a spokesperson for the labour department, is widely seen as a party hack. But he is ambitious, and with firm support on the board may throw his hat in the ring. He did not return calls and text messages sent to him this week.
Democratic Alliance spokesperson on broadcasting Dene Smuts pointed out that SABC board chairperson Eddie Funde has said the board will discuss the replacement with ”the shareholder” — the government. Smuts added: ”We must do everything we can to prevent a direct government appointment. Our fear now is that it will go from bad to worse. How long can it be before editorial professionals leave?”
It seems beyond dispute that Matlare and a number of other senior managers have quit the corporation because they struggled with the activist, ANC-dominated board appointed at the end of 2003.
Funde is a party functionary who chairs the ANC’s powerful lists committee and helps decide the future of candidates for elected office.
The previous deputy chairperson of the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, he grew up in the ANC, serving it in various posts from the Sixties until its unbanning.
In May last year Funde appointed Zikalala to the top news and current affairs job, some two years after Matlare had forced him out of it. An ANC CE would complete the triangle of essential influence.
Zikalala’s appointment was the first obvious sign of trouble for the the urbane but politically lightweight Matlare.
His resignation surprised few in the SABC or the industry.
”It was inevitable, just a question of the timing,” one source said.
Throughout last year Matlare came under fire from the board: he was roasted for the ”Great South Africans” show; criticised for failing to transform the SABC and accused of failing to reform procurement practices.
This week Zikalala made public his pique at being excluded from the commissioning of current affairs talk show The Roundtable, anchored by AM Live’s John Perlman, and Matlare was firmly rapped over the knuckles by the board once again.
A former senior manager explained Matlare’s departure by referring to demographics of top management at the three television channels: ”When he arrived, two of three SABC channels were headed by black people, when he left they were all headed by whites. Molefe Mokgatle headed SABC1; Thandi Ramathesele SABC2 and Theo Erasmus SABC3. They have been replaced by Alette Alberts and Trevor Smit.”
The board, far more interventionist and conservative than its predecessor, quickly became frustrated at what it perceived as Matlare’s non-compliance. It assumed an executive role, with members going on buying trips, intervening in commissioning decisions and insisting on a hand in day-to-day operations.
People who watched the board and senior managers in action at the Sithengi film and television market in Cape Town in November say it was clear then that the executive team was being sidelined. ”The board was clearly running the show, and the managers clearly stunned into silence,” one person said.
During the tenure of the previous board, chaired by Vincent Maphai, Matlare and the board shared a vision — however controversial — of how to turn the SABC into a commercially viable entity that remained responsible to its public service mandate. And they were united on the plan to make it happen.
A dramatic turnaround at SABC1, where Romeo Khumalo built a hip, edgy brand to draw young audiences and advertisers, to programming with strong public service component, was one result. And observers reckon it helped Matlare win the ratings war with e.tv that was beginning to erode revenues. But a frustrated Khumalo left in July last year for Vodacom, and other managers followed suit.
Now the board wants to see the identity he built for the channel around the ”Ya Mampela” tagline replaced by something more conservative.
The risk now is that a new stream of conservative, Africanist-content and politically pliant current affairs shows will reverse those gains, leaving the SABC struggling for the television audiences and advertisers to pay its bills.