City Press reports that new Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams is at war with the SA Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) board and has threatened to report it to President Cyril Ramaphosa and Parliament.
Just two weeks into her new job, Ndabeni-Abrahams is battling the board over the retrenchments of 981 permanent staff and 1,200 freelancers at the public broadcaster, and charges that board members refused to allow her to first negotiate a bailout with Finance Minister Tito Mboweni before going ahead with the job cuts. The board received a blistering letter from the minister on Saturday morning, following a tense meeting at the SABC on Thursday where insiders say the minister demanded an end to the retrenchments. A board source who attended the meeting said: “The board has made it very clear that the financial crisis it inherited means that come February, March, there will be no money to pay anybody’s salaries.” In the letter, Ndabeni-Abrahams mentions a R3 billion government guarantee that the SABC applied for, and a R1.2 billion loan facility from Treasury. In the letter dated Friday, Ndabeni-Abrahams said she had been forced to cut ties with the board after a meeting on Thursday, and would “report this impasse to the president, Parliament and all relevant stakeholders”. She accused the board of being resolved to retrench workers, regardless of whether she was able to secure a bailout from Treasury.
- Read the full original report by Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams at City Press
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