STATEMENT OF THE MKMVA ON THE CONTINUING CORPORATE GOVERNANCE CRISIS AT THE SABC

A CALL TO PARLIAMENT TO DISSOLVE THE BOARD

It has come to the awareness of the MKMVA that the Portfolio Committee on Communications has announced its invitation to the SABC Board and Management to present the Annual Report of the previous year and to report on progress made to address the outstanding matters concerning the corporate governance crisis facing national public broadcaster.

MKMVA wishes to call on the PCC that as it deliberates over these matters concerning our national public broadcaster it must consider seriously the move to dissolve the entire Board of the SABC in light of the failure of this structure to provide leadership and integrity in the resolution of this ever deepening crisis afflicting the corporation.

We of MKMVA have made our own independent observations and investigation of the various factors of gross breaches in corporate governance by members of the Board of the SABC and we cannot agree more with its own Chairman Dr Ben Ngubane in his presentation to the PCC earlier that "the SABC Board has become dysfunctional" and it must be dissolved. The dissolution will allow for a new process to begin immediately allowing for the appointment of a new credible Board that will lead the SABC out of its current financial and corporate governance crisis.

On our part as MKMVA here are a few examples of the observations and investigations that we have established that have led us to this conclusion to call on the PCC and the State President to dissolve the SABC Board immediately and start a process to appoint a new Board.

Performance of the suspended GCEO

We need to highlight that the suspended GCEO had ensured that the SABC makes a profit in excess of R100 million during his tenure in the first quarter of his term and if this was not part of the turnaround of the SABC we would need to be clarified. The GCEO left a month before the completion of the second term and by then the SABC was in a good state. The SABC Board does not report or highlight this as part of the successes of the GCEO and this is pure hypocrisy and opportunism as there needs to be acknowledgement of the work done by the suspended GCEO.

Usurping of Power: 

We believe that in the past few weeks the shareholder and the public have been oblivious to a silent coup de tat that has taken place at the SABC under our noses. The current crisis has led to a situation where the legitimate heads of the corporation who were appointed by Parliament and the Shareholder to lead the organization have been silently undermined and effectively removed from authority. The person leading this unlawful taking over of the authority of the SABC is the Deputy Chairman Felleng Sekha.

MKMVA has reliably established that ever since the current crisis of corporate governance between the Board and its GCEO started, the authority of the legitimate Chairman of the SABC Board Dr Ben Ngubane to lead the Board on this matter has been usurped by Felleng Sekha and a group of Board members to advance their own agenda that purports to be the agenda of the Shareholder and fiduciary responsibility.

It will be recalled that as soon as the GCEO made the announcement in June 2010 that at the instruction of the legitimate Chairman of the Board Dr Ben Ngubane he had appointed Phil Molefe as the Head of News, a group of Board members met under the chairmanship of Felleng Sekha and issued a separate statement claiming that the appointment was null and void. This was the beginning of the public awareness of the corporate governance crisis afflicting the SABC.

In their statements Felleng Sekha and her group condemned the Chairman and the GCEO for appointing Phil Molefe and made it known that they were going to press charges of discipline against the GCEO. Today we know that this same group has since come out to ratify and endorse the appointment of Phil Molefe as Head of News.

Felleng Sekha has gone on record claiming that she has since smoked a peace pipe with the Chairman Dr Ben Ngubane. They have however proceeded to press disciplinary charges against the GCEO Solly Mokoetle for among other things the very same appointment of Phil Molefe that they have now ratified and endorsed that it was a correct decision to make.

What MKMVA has established concerning the disciplinary action against Solly Mokoetle is that the entire offensive to press disciplinary charges against him have been led consistently by the Deputy of the Board Felleng Sekha. It has come to our attention that:

From the very first meeting of the Board that mooted the resolution to initiate disciplinary action against Solly Mokoetle they were chaired and executed by the deputy Felleng Sekha and not the legitimate chairman Dr Ben Ngubane.

The formality letter that purported to invite Solly Mokoetle to explain to the Board the reasons why he should not be suspended was signed by Felleng Sekha.

At the subsequent Board meeting where the vote was made on the motion to suspend the GCEO the Chairman Dr Ben Ngubane voted against the decision and members of the Board openly supported Felleng Sekha to usurp the authority of the Chairman and issue the notice of suspension to the GCEO.

What is most shocking is that the authority of the Chairman has been usurped by the deputy in his presence and while he was not incapacitated to fulfill his duty. Needless to say this is in gross violation of the Articles of Association of the SABC, the document determining corporate governance and the roles and responsibilities of the Chairman and Deputy at the SABC.

The way the suspension of the GCEO was handled is a gross violation of the Articles of Association of the SABC and this nullifies the suspension of the GCEO by the board. We hereby call on the immediate reinstatement of the GCEO Solly Mokoetle in the interest of the public broadcaster.

The shareholder and the Board are now agreeing with us that Rob Nicholson is not fit and proper to lead the SABC as Acting GCEO. The Board further went to the extent of trying to recruit a former division chief Lulama Mokgoba who resigned to act as the GCEO. This shows how the SABC board is dysfunctional.

Conflict of Interest by SABC Board Members:

There are members of the SABC Board who are seriously conflicted and whom we believe their continued presence severely undermines the integrity of the Board and renders it dysfunctional as we have stated before to the media and the public.

This matter of the sidelining of the role of the legitimate Chairman of the SABC by the Deputy around this critical matter of the alleged disciplining of the GCEO would probably have passed unnoticed even to us had we not been alarmed by a cursory inquiry of the role of Felleng Sekha in the leadership race of the SABC in the immediate past leading to her appointment as Deputy Chairman that seem to suggest as serious conflict of interest on her part.

We hope the PCC will also help to clarify this fact to us and the public, whether did Ms Felleng Sekha disclose in her interview in Parliament as it has been revealed to us that she had previously submitted her CV to the Interim Board in application for the position of GCEO of the SABC in which she was not successful and Solly Mokoetle was finally the candidate appointed.

Furthermore Felleng Sekha resigned from the Board recently and had to be approached to return to the Board only for the suspension of the GCEO. It is puzzling that she has not withdrawn her resignation but she continues to comment and speak as a Board member. To this extent we still do not understand whether she is still a Board member or not as her commitment is questionable.

David Niddrie who was the self appointed scribe for all the many letters written to the GCEO only to turn around and charge the SABC R16 000 per letter for his trouble. We are still investigating the factors that led to the sudden departure of Mr. Niddrie from the SABC in the 1990's and whether he did make a full discloser to the PCC. We further acknowledge the resignation of David Niddrie from the SABC Board and this highlights what we have been saying that the board is divided and dysfunctional.

The next is Pippa Green, whom it is known that she too had applied and was interviewed by the Interim Board for the position of the Head of News to compete against amongst others Phil Molefe. It has come to our knowledge that when the panel was chosen by the new Board of which she was now a member to conduct the selection process for the appointment of the Head of News, Pippa Green did not recuse herself and instead went ahead to be a part of adjudicating over some of the people she had competed against before she was appointed as a Board member, this is an irregularity.

Then there are others who have sought to use their positions in the Board to benefit themselves, their friends and relatives or their business associates.

First among these we refer to Cedric Gina, who as Chairman of the Board Committee supposed to oversee the adoption of the Turnaround strategy has used his position to demand the appointment of his friend Justice Ndaba as a so-called HR turnaround expert.

Peter Harris whose business company Resolve currently conducts consulting business with the SABC while on the other hand benefits individually by charging for work done on behalf of the Board.

The factors above and others that we are still investigating have led MKMVA to the conclusion to call on the President and the PCC to immediately dissolve the SABC Board at its session on Wednesday 20th October 2010.

It is apparent that this current Board of the SABC will never be able to lead the corporation to come out of its current abyss. This Board has failed the nation and must go!

In particular we are very concerned that should the current leadership crisis persist, the corporation is facing certain failure to recover financially and pay back the loan of more than R1bln that has been provided by Nedbank and guaranteed by government. This will inevitably result in the untenable situation where the shareholder will be forced to sell off certain parts of the SABC to the private sector and thereby weakening the strength of this national public broadcaster.  It might be of interest to find out that some of the board members might be colluding with private interests to buy parts of the public broadcaster's assets when they are offloaded.

We call on Parliament and the President as the shareholder to move speedily to prevent any further worsening of the situation to that extent by acting now on our call to DISSOLVE THE BOARD OF THE SABC NOW!

Statement issued by Kebby Maphatsoe, National Chairperson of MKMVA, October 15 2010

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