It's been a grisly couple of weeks for the public broadcaster.
Even I have found it difficult not to sympathise - angry as I still am about what I went through over the past year, and vindicated as I am feeling right now after last week's Supreme Court of Appeal ruling in my favour.
Spare a thought for an SABC employee who hears that his employer is R1-billion in the red, and that the R3-billion government guarantee that has been asked for might not come.
In the wait-and-see game playing itself out, none of the top three executives has definite answers. The CEO, chief operating officer and chief financial officer are, after all, all acting.
And with President Jacob Zuma "still applying his mind" to the names that parliament recommended to him for the new board, the situation must be nothing short of miserable.Whatever the president's reasons for the delay, the uncertainty doesn't bode well. Add to that the discomfort of journalists at the SABC when they heard that a few days ago two of their bosses had been summoned to the Presidency.
In my court papers I cited a few instances of undue interference that I experienced, and whose origins can be traced back to people within the Presidency. The court accepted the veracity of my version of events, and the SABC never refuted their truthfulness.
The SCA said the political interference I had complained about was "inexcusable", adding: "The highest standards of journalism and of integrity in public administration can rightly be expected of the SABC."
The Presidency, the ministry of communications and the SABC all insist there was nothing untoward about this week's meeting. Perhaps. But even with the best intentions, or if the most mundane of issues were up for discussion, the Presidency and the SABC should have been a lot more circumspect. A healthy distance right now is good for everyone, more so for the integrity of SABC journalism.
And no, those at the SABC who blew the whistle on the meeting - including the freelancers - weren't wrong to do so and shouldn't be hunted down and punished.
The SABC cannot go back to the era we experienced as the so-called "SABC8", when former SABC dictator Hlaudi Motsoeneng and his cohorts, as the court put it, "behaved in a manner reminiscent of an era which we all would much rather forget", "smacking of high-handedness and a lack of consideration of the SABC's role as a national broadcaster".
Everyone has to play their role and be vigilant. It's never easy. It's never a popularity contest. There's often a heavy price to pay.
I still remember when, as the SABC8, we endorsed the idea of a parliamentary inquiry. We were condemned by some in the ANC, who charged that we were allowing ourselves to be used by "regime change" agents, including the opposition.
It was only after filing court papers and citing as respondents the speaker of parliament and the communications committee, among others, that the ANC assented to the idea.It was out of that process that the errant board of Mbulaheni Maguvhe collapsed spectacularly, and Motsoeneng, the tsar behind the madness, was shown the door.
The madness, though, looks far from over.
When Motsoeneng recently told journalists he was more powerful now, outside the SABC, I thought he was delusional - until my court appearance last month. I listened to the SABC lawyer essentially saying it's fine to stifle journalistic thought, silence critical voices in the newsroom and interfere in editorial decisions.
The question I asked myself was how an interim board that had publicly apologised for the wrongs of Motsoeneng et al would allow people to go to court to vigorously defend the very wrong decisions of the same Motsoeneng they had fired.
The SABC faces both an end and a new beginning. And as with any organisation finding itself in such an interregnum, this period offers both opportunity and hazard.
With the Treasury considering giving the SABC a government guarantee, I'm convinced that somewhere in South Africa groups of would-be looters are probably conniving already. So the Treasury would do well to ask how the corporation was bankrupted in the first place, whether there are processes in motion to bring the culprits to book, and what has been put in place to ensure accountability and avoid another expensive repeat.
Mvoko anchors Newsnight on eNCA and is a former SABC News contributing editor..