Ask the people who were at the SABC when the executive leadership changed hands from Peter Matlare, who has sadly succumbed to Covid-19, to Dali Mpofu in the mid-2000s. Most cannot contain their laughter when they recall that era. Mpofu was a Luthuli House deployee who arrived to find an SABC that Matlare had professionalised, corporatised and run at a handsome profit. Matlare was a highly ethical and competent executive who was averse to political interference. He spent his time at the helm resisting a board that was bent on interfering in his work.
When that board finally won and Matlare called it quits, irritated at the constant interference, Mpofu was brought in. You could immediately see even from outside of the public broadcaster how Mpofu’s arrival coincided with the dropping of standards. He would feature daily in TV news bulletins, dressed in a white shirt and green tie, which became the official attire for his so-called “green revolution” campaign. Male journalists were even forced to wear these green ties when covering news stories.
I can never forget how he and the green tie featured daily in news bulletins. The camera would follow him everywhere. Reporters would interview him in the office; the next day they would be with him at this or other gathering. I always wondered if he found time to do his work in between these daily self-promotions. It was narcissism of the worst kind, and a gross abuse of news reporting tools and airtime that should have been directed towards real news events.
Things naturally went from bad to worse at the public broadcaster, which moved from one blundering board to another, with a fast revolving door for CEOs.
He wasted the corporation’s money on meaningless campaigns, including one dubbed “Siyanqoba” – a partnership with SA football to encourage South Africans to support Bafana Bafana. It is no surprise that by the time Mpofu left in 2009, the SABC was in ruins. He departed with a generous R14m handshake, but the SABC was more than R1bn in the red. He was accused by the board in 2008 of “overseeing massive financial mismanagement” while at the helm. He had apparently spent R144m between April 2006 and March 2008 without entering into requisite contracts, paid staff bonuses over and above their 13th cheques without following procedure, ignored board resolutions, and paid upfront for a lucrative contract with a telecommunications provider without following procedure. He, of course, denied these allegations, and challenged his multiple suspensions in court before he agreed to a financial settlement to leave.
Things naturally went from bad to worse at the public broadcaster, which moved from one blundering board to another, with a fast revolving door for CEOs. When government rescued the SABC with a R3.1bn bailout in 2019 it could not pay salaries, pay content providers, pay for even lights and water. It could not meet its key obligations. Mismanagement and political interference had cost it dearly.
Think about it, though. It took just three years from the time Mpofu was appointed in 2005 to when he was first suspended in 2008 for the rot to set in. In just three years he had undermined Matlare’s good work and had set the SABC on the path to its many subsequent failures. This is the tragic tale of almost all our state-owned entities under the watch of the ANC. The Guptas found the carcass rotting and finished it off like the scavengers they were.
Had the ANC had the foresight and the maturity to entrust our SOEs to men of Matlare’s calibre, Eskom would not be R490bn in the red; Transnet would not be going to court to cancel a rotten locomotive tender; Denel would be honouring its employees’ monthly salaries and making high-grade military equipment fit for export; SAA would be back in the skies after the brief Covid interruption.
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