Members of parliament (MP) - members of the portfolio committee on communications - were clearly furious, completely stunned and outraged today after the SABC board appeared in parliament again to give the latest account of the beleaguered South African public broadcaster state of affairs.
After the shockingly bad appearance, the committee ordered the SABC board to return in mid-October with consolidated reports and answers.
Here's a selection of MUST READ quotes from MP's inside parliament on all the shocking information that came to light today:
''There is no way that we will ever approve an increase in the SABC budget if there is no organisation established as you have highlighted. 2012 is around the corner, and we're in 2011 and you haven't yet delivered the resolves. It's all in your hands. We're very clear, we are going to deliver what you have promised, but we owe it to our constituency that the money that we put to the SABC provides quality. They deserve better.''
''We live in a society where we're promising hundreds, and thousands and millions of jobs. Here you're saying you want to cut heads down at the SABC but still pay what are going to be substantial severance packages. Now you've got people who are going to be unemployed, and people getting these large severance packages. I understand that you need to cut cost in the SABC but I think there should be a better way than to now turn to government to ask for these huge severance packages.''
''I find the content cutting - up to R600 million I believe was the amount - quite disturbing. When you cut cost on content - with the greatest amount of respect - the content of the SABC was already pretty bad. To think now that the content is going to be cut even more...
''There is a very good reason people have DStv. And that's because the SABC is bad. If you put on the TV you watch Bruce Lee movies of 1983 - if you're lucky. The sport content isn't of a high enough standard and it's not fair that normal South Africans who can't afford DStv shouldn't watch the kind of sport we do. Content cutting disturbs me.''
''As long as the SABC doesn't accept that its in an intensive care unit (ICU), they won't get out of it!''
''Where is the department of communications? The department of communications was supposed to babysit the SABC; the SABC was troubled. The SABC was the stepchild in trouble.''
''If we look at the figures before us today, it tells us that whatever happened at the board level, or the executive management level, or wherever in the organisation - that the SABC was really a rudderless organisation and corporation.''
''I personally feel that we have been misled in the past. When we passed the SABC's turnaround strategy in the past, we really thought the figures would come out correctly. Now we realize it was unrealistic; unachievable. Now we're sitting in the same situation again.''
''There are unhappy people at the SABC at this very moment. We heard last week from the labour organisations and the personnel - at the SABC's there's great unhappiness. The SABC is the personnel. What is the SABC going to do immediately - as in immediately - to talk to the personnel? They are shaken. They are insecure. They don't know where they're going.''
''When you're in the process of turning around the organisation - honestly - you can't be hiring other people because the process is not finalised! The only critical positions we can allow the SABC to attend to are those three - the CEO, the CFO and the COO. The rest must be frozen! The SABC is firing claiming not to have money, but then higher people at larger scales.''
