I appreciate Khaya Sithole’s otherwise thoughtful interest in the role of the SABC board (December 6, 2018). However, in the last two sentences at the end he makes three unfortunate errors. The sentences: “Krish Naidoo and John Matisonn indicate that they agree with the minister that a bail-out is sufficient to stave off retrenchments. But they have not explored how costs should be cut, which on its own makes one wonder about their understanding of their fiduciary duties.” First, in our first year we brought down the loss from R1bn to about R600m. How did we do that? For example, by cutting the cost of directors and senior executives above a certain level from R79.5m in 2016/2017 to R45m in 2017/2018. This has been explained to parliament in public on a number of occasions. We have not failed to explore that and many other measures. Second, he calls the board’s request for a government guarantee a “bail-out”. Surely he knows a guarantee must be paid back, and is therefore not a bail...
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