KHAYA SITHOLE: Rare event as SABC CEO completes his term
With the right legal protections, state enterprises can have leadership and governance stability
Two weeks ago, a rather rare event in the governance and management of public entities occurred when Madoda Mxakwe vacated his seat as the CEO of the SABC. Mxakwe’s exit at the end of his five-year contract at the SABC represented the first time in ages that a CEO at the SABC had completed his term. The public broadcaster has been bedevilled by governance and leadership crises that shared strong intersections with its position as a public entity and one that plays an important role in the information discourse in the country. The ANC government’s approach to managing the asset has been a story of continuously trying to treat the public broadcaster as a state broadcaster while simultaneously plunging it into a policy and funding drift.
The mistaken perception of the SABC as a state broadcaster can be traced back to how the National Party dealt with it and how the ANC tried to replicate this model even though it stated its commitment not to do so. In November 1992, secretary-gen...
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