SABC: DA supports SABC 8’s ConCourt bid for determination on Parliament’s failings

13 September 2016

The DA supports the Constitutional Court application by the 8 SABC journalists who were fired to have South Africa’s apex court make a final legal determination on Parliament’s failure to fulfil its mandate to duly exercise its oversight over the SABC pursuant to section 55(2) of the Constitution.

This comes after the “SABC 8” filed a supplementary affidavit to the Constitutional Court contending “The [parliamentary Communications] Portfolio Committee refused to engage in a proper investigation into the issues at the SABC and the SABC 8 [are] requesting the Constitutional Court to declare that the National Assembly [NA] and the portfolio committee breached their obligations in terms of section 55(2) of the Constitution to ensure that the SABC is accountable to the National Assembly and to maintain oversight over the SABC.”

The DA has, on several occasions, requested an Unusual Meeting of the Communications Committee in terms of NA Rule 223 to deal with the abuses of power and wholescale decline at the SABC under the baton of SABC COO, Hlaudi Motsoeoeng, and Communications Minister, Faith Muthambi, who are presently the subject of court action brought by the DA.

Our request was not treated with any measure of urgency by Parliament’s Chair of Chairs, Cedrik Frolik, in a letter dated 01 July 2016. In his letter Frolik commits “to the matters referred to [will] be dealt with as soon as the National Assembly reconvene after the local government elections.”  Yet a month and half later the parliamentary inquiry into the machinations at the SABC has not been established.

The Communications Committee has also refused to entertain the matter in any meaningful way, initially agreeing to an inquiry and soon after that reneging on their commitment to inquire into the state of affairs at the SABC. That, we contend, may indeed be a breach of Parliament’s obligations under section 55(2) of the Constitution.

This wouldn’t be the first such time that Parliament’s failings under this provision have been slated by the nation’s apex court. This is most notable in the Nkandla matter in February this year where Parliament was found to have unduly abdicated its constitutional responsibilities.

Unfortunately Parliament seems to have learned nothing and history looks set to repeat itself as Parliament once again makes itself complicit in its own erosion and that of the public broadcaster. 

Parliament simply cannot allow itself to be made complicit in this destruction of a state institution which it is constitutionally mandated to protect and shield from narrow political interests.

Issued by Phumzile Van Damme, DA Shadow Minister of Communications, 13 September 2016