Parliament’s Communications Committee Chairperson, Boyce Maneli, says the reason why its meeting with the South African Broadcasting Commission (SABC) will be partially closed relates to its commercial interests.
Maneli says it is not the first time that the SABC had raised concern that their strategic commercial interests get compromised when publicly discussed.
Maneli made the closing remarks after the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies and some of its other entities appeared yesterday.
They presented their annual reports and financial statements for the 2022/2023 financial year.
The SABC is expected to appear before the committee this morning to present its annual report and financial statements in an open meeting.
Maneli says the partial closed meeting will allow the SABC and the committee to engage openly without compromising its competitiveness.
“As this committee, we have been engaging the SABC on the matter of them being sustainable and so on. This was raised even in 2020 if my memory serves me well, that some of the matters that they share in public, are commercially sensitive in nature which are about also their competitors. And these competitors may not be subjected to the same laws that the SABC is subjected to. As a result, before any implementation of those ideas, they are already gone and implemented elsewhere. And in 2020, they made that case and we needed to know those commercial interests as the committee.”
DA to raise concerns over SABC request
Meanwhile, DA member of the committee, Natasha Mazonne, told Maneli that she has written a letter to him and House Chairperson of Committee Chairs, Cedrick Frolick to raise her concern about a partial closure of the meeting.
Mazonne also told Maneli that his statement that the committee will make a decision at that time of closing the meeting is incorrect.
She says a decision has already been made that there will be a partially closed session as reflected on the daily parliamentary publication of committee meetings.
“Now, the SABC is constitutionally mandated to broadcast to the public of South Africa, and it’s largely funded by the people of South Africa and therefore, even commercially sensitive matters can’t be considered to be of a secret nature, not when it regards public funds and not when it involves the South African public. So, I do want to place on record chair, I am not going to get into dispute with you now. I am going to wait for your written correspondence. But I do want to place on record that the DA will attend all meetings tomorrow, because we have a constitutional mandate to represent those people who elected us to office.”
Accountability at SOEs
ANC member of Parliament’s Communications Committee, Tsholofelo Bodlani, says the committee and the department would be an accomplice if they allow state owned entities to waste millions of rands in fruitless expenditure, without holding them accountable.
Bodlani says there is poor governance across 90% of SOE’s under the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies.
Addressing Minister Mondli Gungubele who led the entities at the briefing, Bodlani says: “I then make a plea to the minister to say minister, there has to be a more aggressive consequence management process. We cannot allow a situation where entities come and are reporting losses, and the status quo remains and no heads roll. The absence of criminal charges within the entities and the department when we are reporting such big amounts for me is negligence. We become an accomplice.”
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