SABC desperately needs a board for plans to be realised

The governance crisis at the SABC continues to deepen, with its group CEO, Madoda Mxakwe, telling parliament he is uncomfortable with being its accounting authority in the absence of a board of directors.

Mxakwe also told MPs that because the public broadcaster has been without a board since October 2022, it is being crippled, rendering it dysfunctional. 

The appointment of a new board has been marred by delays, first by parliament due to tardy vetting of candidates by the State Security Agency (SSA).

Later, in December, the National Assembly forwarded names of approved candidates to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

However, the president has so far not appointed the board and is apparently querying the process followed by the National Assembly and some candidates.

At the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that civil society body Media Monitoring Africa has taken Ramaphosa to the Constitutional Court on an urgent basis, asking it to compel him to appoint the board.

During a tense meeting with public finance watchdog Scopa, Mxakwe told MPs that on February 23, he received a letter from acting Treasury director-general Ismail Momoniat, delegating him to act as the SABC’s executive authority in terms of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) until the appointment process was concluded.

However, he told Scopa he was not happy about doing so.

“I did receive a letter ... in terms of designation as the accounting authority. Immediately when I received that letter, there was a paragraph that concerned me ... paragraph 4.

“That paragraph ... says 'taking note of the temporary nature of this appointment, you’re advised not to enter into any new or major financial commitments’. “The problem with that, chairman, is that all our business plans in terms of operations, sales and various aspects of the organisation are by nature commercial, and it means there would therefore be some financial commitments that need to be made,” Mxakwe said.

“We already have quite a lot of business plans that are geared towards revenue generation that the previous board tasked the management team with and those have not been approved and have affected our financial viability as an institution. If we were to approve every one of those, it means there would have to be some kind of financial commitment ... So considering all of that, we’ve been engaging the department to say can that paragraph be reviewed or completely removed because there is no way you can make decisions in our organisation without some … commitments.”

This prompted a discussion that lasted more than an hour, with MPs lamenting the governance crisis plaguing the SABC.

Responding to questions from Scopa chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa, Mxakwe indicated he was uncomfortable with acting as the board until paragraph 4 was removed or significantly reviewed. 

“To be very direct, I’m not the accounting authority because that has not been responded to in a manner that would have given the organisation the ability to move forward,” he said.

There are about 20 submissions or business plans, with financial implications, that need board approval, Mxakwe said. “The SABC is caught in a perfect storm. There are internal constraints, undoubtedly.”

“As the executive committee, we have approved those plans, but they do need approval of the board, so essentially all the plans that have been put in place cannot be implemented. It does render the whole institution dysfunctional,” Mxakwe said.

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