A firm response, perhaps too firm

October 31st, 2009

The Department of Communications responded firmly to the auditor-general’s report into the SABC.
The report showed that there appears to have been wild and uninhibited pilfering of the SABC coffers under former Group CEO Dali Mpofu and financial director Robin Nicholson (still, incidentally, the man with the keys to the safe). One’s immediate response was that at last someone was showing strong leadership at the department and taking a firm hand.

But the measures they proposed were a direct move to usurp the role of the new SABC board and take control into the Ministry.

The statement came from the Department, but purported to speak for the Minister of Communications, and used strong language. The “concerned” Minister would take “corrective measures”, they said, and “tighten the screws” on the SABC.

They said he would review the roles of executive and senior managers, human resource policies and implementation, benefits to management and staff and policies governing employees’ private business activities.

They also said he would request monthly management accounts from the SABC, ensure that all major decisions have the approval of the Group executive committee, the board of directors and, “where necessary”, the shareholder (the Minister himself). They would ensure there was general compliance with the Public Finance Management Act, require monthly reports to monitor implementation, and monitor the implementation of the local content quota.

Perhaps most striking of all, there would be “active and permanent shareholder participation in the various committees of the SABC board, ie the Risk, Audit and Internal Audit Committees”.

In other words, the Minister is intending to usurp the roles of the regulator, Icasa, and the Board of the SABC. He is going to reach down deep into the organisation, as far as sub-committees of the board, to involve himself in operational issues.

I do not believe that a Minister – even under apartheid, when the SABC was a state and party broadcaster - has ever exerted such direct control as to participate, actively and permanently, as a member of board sub-committees. It is as if the hospital administrator has donned a surgeon’s mask and gone into the operation theatre in the middle of the heart transplant and plunged his hands into the body, because he does not trust his doctors to do the job.

Would you go to that hospital for surgery?

Where his job should be to rebuild the SABC board to ensure it has the skills and strength to do these tasks, and to strengthen the regulator to ensure that plays its oversight role, and to step back and ensure everyone does what they are supposed to do, the Minister instead has decided to elbow aside the board and the regulator and do it himself.

It might look like firm, responsible and decisive management, but it isn’t. It is a return to government control of the public broadcaster.

Maybe this minister will use these powers in a limited way, keeping away from issues of content. Maybe he will do so benevolently to ensure the SABC gets back onto track. But the next Minister or the one after that, will not. They will use these power to pursue their own or their party’s political interests.
The regulator, Icasa, has been largely silent on the SABC affair and it has emerged that they haven’t even been doing the regular monitoring they are empowered and obligated to do. The regulator’s leadership has been, to put it politely, absent without leave. Rather than fix that, the Minister and Department are shoving them aside and seeking to do the job themselves.

It felt much the same when they Minister announced that he was acting to reduce cellphone costs by regulating the charges made for interconnection fees. Rather than equip and encourage the regulator to do the job, he chose to drive the process himself and reduce the regulator to an implementer.

One of the first tasks of the new SABC board will be to redefine its relationship with the Minister and Department. If they allow these measures to go ahead without argument, they will have ceded their powers and responsibilities from day one.

*This column first appeared in Business Day, 14 October 2009

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation, Radio, TV