Great to see Aguma go - but the SABC clean-out is far from complete:
SACP, Press release, 21 July 2017
James Aguma’s resignation this week as acting CEO of the SABC is welcome news for the corporation and for this country’s much-abused broadcasting audiences.
It is particularly welcome for the working class and poor majority, for many of whom the public broadcaster remains the only source of information and entertainment.
Aguma jumped before a conclusion was reached – in the middle of a disciplinary hearing that clearly was not going his way. It is also welcome news that Aguma will not simply walk away from the incalculable damage he has participated in driving at the SABC: the interim board still intends to pursue criminal charges against him, among them a charge for lying under oath at the disciplinary hearing of his close ally, one Hlaudi Motsoeneng. This is an act of perjury, equivalent to lying in court or before parliament.
While much of the damage Aguma formed part of driving at the SABC did to a once-healthy and publicly respected public institution appears to have been on the orders of Motsoeneng – himself recently sacked after virtually destroying the public broadcaster, but still exercising a toxic influence over the SABC through many misguided loyalists – Aguma managed to do some entirely on his own. In March this year the SACP noted Aguma’s personal responsibility (and possibly personal benefit?) for a contract for TV licence fee collections so ridiculously expensive that every cent collected was almost entirely paid out to the collectors.