On Friday SABC' middle managers received an extra month's salary, while some received an additional R8 000 after tax.
The South African public broadcaster paid out around R42 million in bonuses to 3 007 SABC staff members and middle management.
The Broadcasting, Electronic, Media and Allied Workers' Union (Bemawu) president Hannes Buisson is quoted in reports that Bemawu is unhappy that SABC middle managers got a month's salary while other employees were paid R8 000.
The massive payout on the SABC's personnel bill comes at a time when the beleaguered South African Broadcasting Corporation steadily keeps losing audience share and keeps suffering reputational damage for the permanent appointment of the matricless Hlaudi Motsoeneng, bad content, scheduling controversies, and ongoing behind-the-scenes executive drama.
The SABC is meanwhile on track to post a dramatically lower annual profit this year.
The SABC will also once again have a qualified financial audit - which means that the SABC has yet again, for yet another year, been unable to properly account for its money.
The qualified financial audit will come as the public broadcaster battles disastrous management and poor governance issues, poor internal controls, and a famously matricless COO which the Public Protector says "should never have been appointed at the SABC".
With non-compliance and wasteful expenditure the SABC has received a qualified audit for the past three years in a row from the Auditor General (AG) and will receive a 4th qualified audit this year.
The SABC doesn't call the payouts "bonuses" but refers to it as "ex-gratia payments" as a "thank you" to SABC staff for hard work.
In 2009 after the SABC came to the brink of financial collapse and received a R1,4 billion government bail-out in the form of a Nedbank, government guaranteed loan, the SABC agreed to cut the SABC's staff.
Instead the SABC not only failed to bring down the staff levels in according with the targets set by the agreement with government, but has grown the staff numbers at the SABC.
The SABC meanwhile wants to raise SABC licence fees again.
It comes after the SABC lied over massive TV scheduling changes which it said was temporary but was definitely permanent and makes a lot of content for certain language groups inaccessible to millions of viewers across the country.
