South African Broadcasting Corporation CEO Dali Mpofu on Sunday rejected the ”insinuations” that there was a Cabinet plot against him.
This follows newspaper reports that he accused Thabo Mbeki’s Cabinet of plotting to oust him. Mpofu told Parliament he had received information that someone ”from high up” had given instructions that he be fired.
SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said Mpofu was responding to a question and the utterance did not refer to the whole Cabinet, but to an individual who happened to be a Cabinet member.
Kganyago said the Sunday Times headline ”Cabinet Plots against Me: SABC Boss”, did not represent a true nature of what transpired in Parliament and was not corroborated by the news article.
”[Mpofu] stands by what he said in Parliament and would only be in a position to reveal the identity of the individual concerned at the appropriate time and forum,” he said.
”[He] does not believe that the individual was acting on behalf of Cabinet or any other constitutional body.”
Kganyago added that the insinuation that the statement was referring to the whole Cabinet was false and was intended to ”create confusion” in people’s minds and ”divert attention from the real issues”.
There were also reports that both Mpofu and director of news Snuki Zikalala were on a collision course after Mpofu’s management team demanded that Zikalala be fired.
Successors for Zikalala’s and other posts had already been identified and ”some have even been approached”.
These included a prominent academic and a senior executive working for an independent radio station.
After President Thabo Mbeki’s defeat at the ANC’s Polokwane conference, the Congress of South African Trade Unions called for the axing of both Mpofu and Zikalala. – Sapa