South Africa News

SABC report unfairly rubbishes my name says Faith Muthambi

Former communications minister Faith Muthambi has rubbished the SABC’s report, calling it “hogwash”. Muthambi was responding to a report released on Monday by the commission led by Joe Thloloe, which implicated several staff members and government officials including herself and former SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

Muthambi was accused of bullying journalists and giving instructions to the editorial team, despite not being mandated to do so. The DA said it would be laying criminal charges against Muthambi for violating the Broadcasting Act. In her response, Muthambi said she was disappointed by the report and that she was not allowed to respond to the allegations.

“It is not good enough for the authors to point fingers at a cabinet minister and SABC board members and make reference to ‘enforced’ instructions from the top without evidence. Perhaps only a retired or tired person can do that.
It would have been just and honourable for the authors to contact me to hear my side of the story than to rubbish my name in this manner,” she said.

Faith Muthambi

Muthambi said Thloloe and Steven Tawana of MMM Attorneys fundamentally failed as long-practising journalist by publishing the report. She added that she was singled out with no evidence to prove interference.

“The authors draw parallels where there are none, between my political life which they show disdain at and investigations into the editorial independence of the SABC. Their hangover of former president [Jacob Zuma] clouded their judgment,” she said.

“They insinuate an unpalatable relationship which I seem to have had with the former COO, which in their minds led to this so-called interference which I seemed to have done at the SABC.

I am guilty of being at the same place, at the same time with the former COO [Hlaudi Motsoeneng] when I showed up to support the former president in court in Durban, which I don’t know where they get a mandate to investigate my personal life.

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Source: IOL