Sunday, December 23, 2018

The SABC reaches complete financial collapse as the CIPC threatens to shut down or place the insolvent South African public broadcaster under business rescue.


SABC spokesperson Neo Momodu says the South African public broadcaster blames Hlaudi Motsoeneng for the "complete financial and governance collapse" of the SABC as the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) now demands that the commercially insolvent SABC must explain why it's not trading recklessly under insolvent circumstances and that could see it being shut down or placed under business rescue.

The SABC's liabilities are exceeding its assets by R1.8 billion and the SABC has 20 working days to respond to the CIPC.

The SABC is busy putting together a response to the CIPC, but the CIPC could force the SABC to be placed under so-called "business rescue", or to even be shut down given the lack of government help.

President Cyril Ramaphosa and latest minister of communications, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, have done little to nothing to secure another bailout for the crippled SABC in the form of a government-guaranteed loan.

In the last days of the end of 2018, the jetset minister rather flew off to Vienna to attend an international conference instead of giving all her time and urgent attention to prevent the SABC from collapse before 2019's election year while mass retrenchments are looming at the broadcaster.

Only half of TV production companies and producers were paid in December some of what they're owed by the SABC as debts to producers supplying programming to the broadcaster keep mounting, while the SABC has had to beg the City of Johannesburg not to cut off its electricity which the SABC can no longer afford to pay in full.

From February 2019 the SABC will no longer be able to pay all SABC staff salaries, and from March 2019 no salaries, it told parliament.

The gutted SABC, destroyed by corruption and wasteful and irregular spending like the R27.7 million on the notorious and flopped Thank You SABC Concert that the SABC claimed it wasn't paying for - is limping along with an inquorate board of only four SABC board members.

On Sunday City Press reported that SABC spokesperson Neo Momodu said the SABC's financial implosion is blamed on irregular spending and bad previous management in the form of the famously matricless Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

The newspaper details a litany of forensic cases of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) into the shocking and shameless looting of SABC finances under the horrific reign of Hlaudi Motsoeneng as former COO and former CEO James Aguma.

"The SABC would like to make it clear that Hlaudi Motsoeneng was the central figure in the complete financial and governance collapse of the corporation which the current executive management is redressing".

The SABC blames Hlaudi Motsoeneng "for the massive damage he has caused" the SABC.