More than 100 unionised South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) employees were expected to picket outside the broadcaster’s Johannesburg and Pretoria offices on Friday, said the Creative Workers’ Union of South Africa.
Union spokesperson Gallant Roberts said the lunchtime demonstration was a bid to remove the SABC board, which has been mired in controversy since its appointment by President Thabo Mbeki last year.
”The union’s gripe about the board is that it’s non-representative of workers and it’s not reflecting the social demographics,” he said.
The planned action would take place in Auckland Park and Hatfield between 11am and 2pm on Friday.
Roberts said further steps will be taken in the next couple of weeks. These include a petition opposing the board, which will be handed over to Mbeki, and a memorandum of understanding, which will be delivered to Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.
He said the planned action for Pretoria and Johannesburg is expected to ”spread out” to the other provinces at a later stage.
He said the union also wanted to distance itself from media reports that it supported any individual or organisation in their battles before the Johannesburg High Court and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
”The union categorically denies that it has signed any affidavit in support of any individual,” said Roberts.
The SABC group executive last month also called on the board to step down.
The executive had come to the conclusion that the board, as a collective, ”does not have the moral authority to continue to lead the SABC, and to continue to allow power to be abused”, SABC head of group strategy and risk Sipho Sithole said at the time.
”We, too, have lost all confidence in the collective, and therefore call upon the board to step down with immediate effect in the interest of the SABC, its staff and the public that we serve,” he said. — Sapa