Parliament has acceded to the SABC board’s request to present in a closed session its short-term strategy to overcome its financial challenges.
The public broadcaster appeared before the communications and digital portfolio committee on Wednesday to account on its 2022/23 annual report, its R3.2 billion bailout and the turnaround plan implemented since 2019.
Committee chairperson Boyce Maneli said the board wanted to take the committee into confidence on matters that have “commercial sensitive information”.
He said there was nothing untoward about it.
“Given the challenges in the SABC, this committee has said itself that everything else has to be done to give support to the SABC so that it does not collapse on our hands.
“You need a stronger SABC to deliver on its mandate, so one regards this request for members to give support they need to give to the SABC,” Maneli said.
SABC board chairperson Khathutshelo Mike Ramukumba said when they took over as the board in April they were confronted with issues related to the growing concern status and dwindling revenue streams of the public broadcaster.
Ramukumba said the situation triggered the need to intervene in the medium term to identify expenditure programmes.
“We would not ideally want to discuss this type of intervention even in an open platform where those in competition with us could use it to make it difficult to release the fruit of those interventions.”
He also said some of their short-term interventions entailed a policy review for doing things differently, and engaging the committee in a closed session would not expose their trade secrets and would not “compromise our ability to extract value from the short-term strategy to help the SABC stay afloat while dealing with a long-term strategy”.
DA MP Natasha Mazzone said the SABC was neither a state nor private broadcaster.
“The SABC does not belong to the government.
“The SABC belongs to the people of South Africa. The SABC is constitutionally mandated to broadcast, and South Africans have a right to know its dealings with the portfolio committee,” she said before invoking the oath of office MPs took to conduct oversight robustly and transparently.
“The DA will fully participate in the meeting.
“However, we do request the meeting be open to the public,” Mazzone said.
ANC MP Lesiba Molala said there was nothing wrong with agreeing to receive the presentation in a closed session.
His colleague Richard Mdakane said: “There is absolutely no harm for us to agree to the request made by the SABC board to brief the committee in a closed session.”
Maneli ruled that the session on presentation of the short-term strategy would be closed to the public.
“There is a general sense from members that the SABC is important. We have to ensure it is sustainable,” he said.
Maneli also noted that the DA had indicated that it would still participate in the meeting, and stated that it had previously acceded to a similar request.
“Having noted that point, it is quite clear we would want the SABC board to be given the chance to take the committee into confidence, and the committee after the meeting will take South African into its confidence on matters that have been discussed,” he said.
Cape Times