The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Board and Executive are expected back to brief the National Council of Provinces’ (NCOP) Select Committee on Public Enterprises and Communications on Wednesday morning.
This comes three days before the non-Executive board’s term comes to an end on Saturday.
The board is expected to brief the Select Committee on its turnaround strategy focusing mainly on the corporation’s financial sustainability and profitability.
It comes a day after outgoing Board Chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini and top executives appeared virtually before the Portfolio Committee on Communications on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, as the Auditor-General painted a bleak picture of how some entities have incurred fruitless and wasteful expenditure for the previous financial years.
The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Dianne Kohler-Barnard wanted clarity from the SABC on the massive salary hikes of Mosia, Vanara and Nxumalo.
Mosia scored the highest with a 20.31 % increase.
When he responded, CEO Madoda Mxakwe claimed that Mosia’s increase in his remuneration package was largely as a result of the transition to a new leave dispensation.
Handover report
On the board’s handover report, Makhathini says it will be given to the new board.
“There is an element that the chair wanted me to cover, maybe I can cover it now because the board’s term is nearing the end. In fact, our term ends on Saturday and we prepared a comprehensive handover plan that will then be shared with the incoming board as part of the induction.”
Committee Chairperson Boyce Maneli noted that the handover report has to be given to the incoming SABC Board. He also indicated that it may contain commercially sensitive information.
“We do accept that the SABC would indeed through the handover report have clarified this point that we are not the board indeed. It would have been an error for us to handover report to the new board, that’s not us. But we need to get the progress. But I want to make a ruling that in the course of questions and responses, that matter would also have been spoken to, to cover the HR issues, what could have been retrenchments, why the increases in other spaces and so they have spoken to that. But of course, we do know that in a handover report, there may be commercially sensitive matters. We hope that the board will have to be taken into confidence as they takeover, or I think we should accept that as the way forward.”
When Makhathini and eleven other non-Executive board members complete their term on Saturday 15 October, the SABC will only function under the executive board which is the CEO, CFO and COO until an interim or incoming board is appointed.
Salary increases
Unions at the SABC meet with the CCMA last month to finalise plans for a strike.
The unions, BEMAWU and CWU, rejected all three wage offer increases offered by the SABC and have opted to strike.
SABC workers unions met with the CCMA to finalise plans for a strike over salaries:
