It has taken about a month for Dali Mpofu, the new SABC chief executive, to figure out how hot his 28th floor seat is, and stamp his authority on the corporation.
The times seem to be, as the Chinese might say, interesting ones at the SABC’s Auckland Park headquarters. Someone’s head seems always to be on a chopping block or already rolling.
This week, the head was that of Paul Setsetse, the corporation’s spokesperson. Setsetse was asked to ”take leave” after the SABC failed to report that Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka had been heckled at a Woman’s Day rally in KwaZulu-Natal.
The corporation first reported that the freelance cameraman missed the shot because he arrived late. When rival station e.tv showed the cameraman shooting the heckling incident, the SABC changed its tune and all but implied that Setsetse had acted unilaterally in putting out the late arrival version. The facts, it said, were that the cameraman had decided the heckling was insignificant and did not bother to inform his employers about it.
The Mlambo-Ngcuka affair provided a crash course in the challenges Mpofu faces in his new job. He will have to address perceptions that the SABC mollycoddles government bigwigs and generally acts as His Master’s Voice.
Linked to this are concerns about staffers’ editorial independence and ability to make the right editorial decisions, the relationship between the SABC and the corporation’s senior management, and the role of senior managers when things go pear-shaped.
In a lengthy interview, Mpofu told the Mail & Guardian he did not believe poor editorial decisions were the result of government pressure. There were, rather, a function of the juniorisation of newsrooms and, on occasions, incompetence that had to be dealt with in the same way as in any media business.
Mpofu’s five-year contract also requires him to assume the title of SABC ”editor-in-chief”, bestowed on his predecessor, Peter Matlare, by the SABC board. He sees no anomaly in this. ”I don’t think it is an advantage to have once been a journalist [to be editor-in-chief]. Only one of the last four SABC CEOs was an ex-journalist. The president of the country is the army’s commander-in-chief, but that doesn’t mean he has to check the hair-style of every soldier. It is a ceremonial role, but the buck stops with him.”
That said, Mpofu sees the SABC as a conduit for government perspectives. ”We have a duty to reflect the government’s views; we can’t apologise for this. What we cannot be is the government’s mouthpiece. If it wants that, it must hire its own. If we become a mouthpiece, we will be misleading the very public we say we are concerned about, and not fulfilling our role of entrenching democracy.”
Seeing Mpofu run between his office and the boardroom, one gets the sense of a man in a hurry. The decisiveness with which the heckling saga was handled perhaps speaks to his brief, erstwhile experience as an amateur boxer. There is a suggestion of ruthlessness behind the smile and boyish charm. ”If one of your goals is to be universally popular, you shouldn’t become the CEO of the SABC,” he said.
For Mpofu, being independent means being free of political and commercial pressures, either from the government or from advertisers. This at a time when the SABC has announced a R240-million after-tax profit, up from R1,7-million.
The SABC’s role has to be clarified, he says. ”The country has to decide whether the SABC should be programming to gain audiences and, therefore, more advertising revenue; whether it exists for the country’s cultural, social and economic development; or whether it should be the mixture of both.
”My view is that it should be about the broader development of the nation. It would not excite me if we made a R1-billion profit but were not reaching the people we need to reach.”
He does not pretend to know all there is to know about how to run a public broadcaster. Hence his recruitment of Rhodes University journalism academic Guy Berger and advocate Tlharesang Mkhwanazi, of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, to establish the truth of why SABC news did not flight the heckling story.
”There is no industry where you find a CEO who is a master of every-thing, as long as you have most of the requirements.”
He argues that his record as a student leader, executive at Altron — with 12 000 staff members and three times as big as the SABC — and as an advocate are adequate qualifications.
The SABC has acquired the repu-tation of being an unstable employer, where the resignation of numerous senior managers has created the impression of low morale.
Mpofu rejects suggestions that the resignations reflect a crisis. ”Though morale might be low, it is fixable — through training, skills development, career development and so on.
”Because of the public profile of the corporation, normal activities like staff turnover get exaggerated into a crisis. While we agree that institutional memory and expertise are important, every institution must be ready for fresh blood.”
Mpofu says he has already demonstrated that he will not interfere unduly with line functions.
”The fact that [his favourite TV show] The Practice has been discontinued, shows my tolerance,” he quipped.
But, as Berger puts it, the SABC’s real challenges are better standards of journalism, corporate governance and internal communication. Few will mind having to watch reruns of The Practice if Mpofu manages to sort out these problems.