Dr. Ben Ngubane, the chairperson of the SABC, lashed out at the media at a press conference admitting that the SABC's acting chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng doesn't have a matric certificate and that the SABC knew it and appointed him anyway, saying that the South African press is out to portray the SABC in a bad light which is destroying the broadcaster.
At the hastily convened press conference held at the SABC's Auckland Park headquarters and given TV coverage on the SABC's TV news bulletins, Ben Ngubane didn't address the SABC's lack of open communication and lack of timeous answers to media enquiries, but instead chose to attack the South Africa's press for the way in which the media is portraying the struggling broadcaster.
For weeks after news surfaced about a growing rift between the SABC's head of news, Phil Molefe who is currently on "special leave" and the SABC's CEO Lulama Mokhobo, the SABC - although asked - refused to give full answers about the issue.
The South African press however, as always, found people within the SABC who are knowledgeable about events and are talking about what the SABC officially don't want to talk about or is not willing to say quickly enough.
"As a chair of the SABC board, I’m deeply worried about what's happening in South Africa,'' Ben Ngubane said. "The media, who is supposed to work with us, is actually working against us, and breaking us down and creating divisions in our society,'' he said to only the Johannesburg press who were told and invited beforehand to the press conference.
The SABC issued no general press release after the press conference, as is good practice and customary, to press not located in Johannesburg and to those media institutions who could not attend. The SABC did not have Hlaudi Motsoeneng present at the press conference it convened of which the very subject was Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
Ben Ngubane said he was disappointed by the media's attitude of
constantly portraying the SABC as an incompetent and unworkable organisation. "'Ladies and gentlemen of the media, please think about this
country, and his people, but especially our youth."
''I don't understand why people in the media don't want the
truth," said Ben Ngubane.
