Ex-SABC exec Sully Motsweni in court for 'abusing work trips with family'

Sully Motsweni, a former SABC sports executive accused of fraud for allegedly deceiving the corporation to pay for her three sons to stay in a Cape Town hotel during a work trip, said it was never her intention to make the broadcaster foot the bill. 

Motsweni, who appeared at the Palm Ridge specialised commercial crime court in Ekurhuleni on Thursday, is accused of making the SABC suffer a R24,000 loss for her 2017 trip to the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town.

The state alleges her two sons from Johannesburg, under the guise they were athletes, were put in the same hotel in which she stayed, and her third son, a student in Cape Town, joined them and was booked an extra room at the cost of the SABC.

The corporation sponsored the marathon and had paid for all of Motsweni’s travelling costs.

She has been charged with 11 counts of fraud, which included other trips to SABC-sponsored events between 2014 and 2017, when she allegedly took friends and family members, and allegedly made the broadcaster cover the costs.

Motsweni took the stand for the first time on Thursday since her arrest in 2017.

“I know it is company policy that when you travel with a member [from] outside the SABC, you had to pay from your salary or credit card. This was not a family trip, and my family would not have benefited financially from this,” she said.

The state claims Motsweni made a misrepresentation and knew her sons were not athletes and were not going to participate in the marathon, “and that the said persons were not and would not add value to the SABC brand”.

Motsweni told the court, regarding the Cape Town trip, that former SABC CFO Thabile Sylvia Dlamini told her the envelope containing her receipts for the trip went missing as she was compiling the 2016/17 financial year reports. 

“The CFO asked me if I had copies of the [Cape Town] receipts because the envelope I produced went missing from her office. I told her that since I was suspended, I did not have access to my work emails,” Motsweni said. 

“She said they would have to take R18,000 or R24,000 from my salary in three monthly instalments, or take it from my credit card. I waited for them to deduct the money, but that did not happen. Instead, I was charged.”

Motsweni said her assistant let the travel agency know her son, who was studying at the University of Cape Town, would be occupying the room originally booked for a colleague she was meant to travel with, but who couldn’t make it. 

She said it was never her intention to use SABC money for her son, but he wanted to visit them and, whether the room was occupied or not, the hotel would have charged the SABC. Therefore, she decided her son should join them. 

“This was not a family trip and my family would not have benefited financially from it,” she said. 

The state is expected to cross-examine Motsweni on Friday.

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