Parliament’s Communications Committee blamed for delay in appointing new SABC Board

The Support Public Broadcasting Coalition (SOS) says Parliament’s Communications Committee should take full responsibility for the delay in appointing a new SABC Board.

This comes as the outgoing board has a day left before its term of office comes to an end on Saturday.

The public broadcaster will be without a board from Sunday creating a vacuum.

SOS says it raised concerns when there was already a delay by the committee to kick-start the public consultation process for a new board.

Thirty-four candidates have already been interviewed. The communications Sub-Committees could not deliberate on the candidates to choose the twelve most suitable ones, due to the delay in the vetting process by the State Security Agency (SSA).

The Committee said the SSA informed it that the vetting system is not working.

SOS Coalition national coordinator Uyanda Siyotula says, “The Committee is to blame in this particular instance because they knew five years ago that the current board will be leaving office on the 15 of October but they waited until the last minute to commence all processes pertaining to the appointment of the SABC Board. I mean the closing date for the public’s call for nominations was August, it was three months away from the end of the term of office for the current board and they even then they still delayed these processes, so we believe that the Committee is to blame. And these delays by the Committee have now led to the whole process being rushed and compromised. These are issues that we raised and to them when we wrote a letter to the Committee.”