This statement just in from the
*SOS Coalition on Hlaudi Motsoeneng's firing on Monday (12 June):
13 June 2017
SOS welcomes the news of the adverse findings against Mr. Hlaudi Motsoeneng, as well as his subsequent dismissal by the SABC Interim Board. Mr. Motsoeneng was charged with bringing the SABC into disrepute, as well as breaking the rules of his employment contract.
We believe that the Board’s decision is a long-awaited step in the right direction and is in line with its mandate from Parliament to fix the current crises at the SABC.
Furthermore, we are pleased with the decisions that the board has taken in rescinding some of Mr. Motsoeneng’s notorious directives, namely the scrapping of his ban on covering violent protest ban in line with ICASA’s ruling on the matter; rescinding the 90/10 local content decree with the board aligning the SABC’s local content quotas with ICASA’s current local content quota requirements and dumping the invalid editorial policies and reverting to the 2004 editorial code as per ICASA’s Complaints and Compliance Committee’s 2016 ruling.
We are also very pleased with the work the that the interim board has done thus far. We acknowledge that the interim board is faced with a monumental task of stabilizing the SABC in an incredibly short space of time.
We note, however, that though Parliament has a great track record of appointing very efficient interim boards, they often undo that by appointing often inadequate permanent boards.
Therefore, we’d like to take this opportunity to invite the rest of South Africa to take part in the nomination process for the 12 person board, so as to ensure greater public oversight in the running of the SABC for the next five years.
For more information on the permanent board nomination process, please contact:
Duduetsang Makuse (SOS Coordinator)
duduetsang@soscoalition.org.za / +2760 911 5889
Thandi Smith (SOS Chairperson)
thandis@mma.org.za /+2773 470 7306
*The SOS Coalition represents a broad spectrum of civil society stakeholders committed to the broadcasting of quality, diverse, citizen-orientated public-interest programming aligned to the goals of the South African Constitution.
The Coalition was instrumental in Hlaudi's dismissal.