Today marks exactly five months since the previous SABC Board’s term ended on the 15th of October 2022. The public broadcaster has since been without a Board.
The names of twelve recommended candidates and an additional three names were approved in the National Assembly in December last year and sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa to appoint twelve candidates. Ramaphosa has sent a letter back to the Assembly to seek proper legal clarity on the additional names that were approved by the House.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) suggested that the committee should stick with the 12 recommended names and remove the additional three names that were approved by the Assembly in December last year.
But IFP member of the committee, Zandile Majozi, disagreed with African National Congress (ANC) member Nomsa Khubeka that the list of the 15 names did not specify which ones have to be prioritised.
Majozi says, “This meeting is now beginning to be very stressful. The reason why I am saying this [is because] we had put all the names according to priority. It’s not true that we have not done that. We have put all these names according to priority and we had lists from each and every party.”
“And if those three [additional] names were the top names and had performed the way the other twelve [names] had, they were going to be on top. The three names were only suggested on exception that if…” DA committee member, Diane Kohler Barnard also agreed that the three additional names should be dropped.
“We have all already agreed on this board. And that pool was not there to simply chop and change to give alternatives. That was if something drastic happens. And one of the twelve we had chosen and ranked could not take up their position. And if we wait another five months, maybe they all have different jobs and we’ll have to start the process from scratch.”
“But right now we have a board. Let us go ahead with the board and stop this shilly-shallying and questioning the decision we have taken over months [ago]. It cannot be. We must just proceed and send the list without the three attached to the President. That’s what we have determined. That’s what we have voted on,” she explains.
On Tuesday morning, Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Mondli Gungubele told the committee that the matter around the Board should be resolved as soon as possible.
There were concerns that the SABC is facing financial risks for operating without a Board. SABC Group executives were sent back twice by the public money watchdog, Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), for appearing to brief the committee without an accounting authority. The Communications sub-committee is now tasked to resolve the impasse.
Source: SABC
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