Last week SABC chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini was still coy and didn't want to talk about SABC staff firings in an interview on SABC2's Morning Live when anchor Leanne Manas asked him point-blank about workers being axed.
It comes after the SABC let go of the fixed-contract and freelance workers at the end of August who were working on the SABC News (DStv 404) channel and who were told on Friday to clear out their desks when their contracts were not renewed.
Longtime staffers and producers who have been with SABC News since the channel's start-up five years ago got axed although the SABC renewed its controversial multi-million rand channel carriage with Naspers' MultiChoice to continue carrying the news channel on DStv for the next few years.
Around 3 000 of the SABC's staff headcount are permanent employees, while the rest are fixed-term and freelance workers.
A staggering amount of the SABC's expenditure goes to just paying staffers, although just 60% are directly involved in programming. The SABC is supposed to spend the bulk of its money on creating and broadcasting content.
The SABC's current wage bill is R3.1 billion for an organisation operating at R7 billion.
The SABC is looking at drastically shedding another 800 jobs to try and reduce the staggering wage bill of the public broadcaster that the Auditor-General (AG), Kimi Makwetu, described as "commercially insolvent".
The SABC yet again posted another annual loss of R622 million for the financial year until the end of March 2018 with the AG saying he can't say whether the SABC remains a going concern.
"We have to cut costs. It doesn't matter how much money we get injected in. We've got to cut cost, Bongumusa Makhathini said last week. "If you look at our labour cost for example, and other costs, they're too high to sustain and to lead to a viable SABC".
On Thursday SABC CEO Madoda Mxakwe told trade unions in a meeting that the public broadcaster is indeed going to retrench workers in terms of section 189 of the Labour Relations Act, citing the public broadcaster's massive wage bill and precarious financial status.
Afterwards the SABC issued an internal memo to staffers telling them the public broadcaster is starting the retrenchment process, but not giving any further detail.
"This forms part of the cost-cutting measures, which include the assessment of key cost drivers, in order to make the organisation financially sustainable and fit for purpose," Madoda Mxakwe said in the email sent to staff.
"The next step is for the SABC to engage in joint consensus-seeking consultations with organised labour."
In another email to staffers the Broadcasting, Electronic, Media & Allied Workers' Union (Bemawu) with "extreme concern and absolute sadness" over the looming staff firings, said "We were informed that the salary bill is one of the highest costs, and the SABC is going to embark on this exercise to reduce staff".
