Pule questions fitness of SABC board

05 March 2013 - 21:37 By Sapa
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Minister of Communications Dina Pule at the ICT Indaba. File photo.
Minister of Communications Dina Pule at the ICT Indaba. File photo.
Image: ELMOND JIYANE

Communications Minister Dina Pule on Tuesday asked Parliament to "urgently" review the fitness of the SABC board.

"The South African public deserves a public broadcaster that informs, educates and entertains them," Pule said in a statement.

"I have asked Parliament, as the institution that interviews the board members, to advise if they believe this board is helping the government to deliver on its mandate to give South Africans access to quality public broadcasting, which is their human right."

Pule met with the SABC board on Tuesday morning to discuss various governance issues at the public broadcaster.

"Following the meeting, she has written a letter to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications asking them to urgently look into the fitness of the SABC Board to remain in office," her office said in the statement.

She was most concerned about the latest breaches of corporate governance that were playing themselves out in public. It was after this meeting that she wrote to the portfolio committee.

Pule's comments followed after the public broadcaster on Monday said reports that former SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng had been reinstated were false.

"The report... is regrettable as neither the chairman nor the deputy chairman nor both have the power or authority to unilaterally change a board resolution," the SABC board said in a statement.

"No such provision exists in the Broadcasting Act of 1999, Companies Act of 2008, Articles of Association or draft Memorandum of Incorporation."

The New Age on Monday reported that SABC chairman Ben Ngubane confirmed to the newspaper that Motsoeneng was back in the position of acting COO.

At a meeting in Cape Town on February 25 the board resolved to release Motsoeneng of his responsibility as acting COO with immediate effect. It also decided that he would revert back to his previous position as group executive of stakeholder relations and provinces.

The board appointed Mike Siluma, a veteran journalist and head of radio news and current affairs, to the position.

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