Ellen Zandile Tshabalala is now vehemently denying long-running industry gossip which finally made it into print in Sunday's Sunday Sun tabloid: that the recalcitrant chairperson who've been caught out lying about fake tertiary qualifications that she doesn't have, had been bedding president Jacob Zuma as a sex-on-the-side lover.
No other South African broadcaster's top brass is as constantly crass tabloid fodder as the people supposed to run the SABC, indicative of the way the country's TV and media industry perceives the wayward and scandalously out of control executives "running" the embattled public broadcaster.
On Sunday the Sunday Sun splashed sensational "revelations" which had been small talk in the TV biz for months, citing unnamed sources calling Ellen Zandile Tshabalala president Jacob Zuma's "nyatsi (or mistress) and his "pet by night".
The Sunday Sun's unnamed sources claimed that the affair between Ellen Zandile Tshabalala and president Jacob Zuma who already has several wives is "a well-known secret".
In a statement Ellen Zandile Tshabalala released on Monday evening through the SABC's PR office, calling the article "a violent attack" on her, saying that "it is also an onslaught on the public broadcaster that I chair".
"I want to put it categorically that this has no basis in fact, and it is meant to hurt, undermine me, the SABC, as well as the office of the presidency".
Ellen Zandile Tshabalala who has close ties with president Jacob Zuma blasts print media in her statement, saying the Sunday Sun story "characterises how the print media will stoop to such low levels to misinform and misrepresent facts".
However, Ellen Zandile Tshabalala in her statement says nothing about how the SABC misinform and misrepresent facts, blatantly censors the news and decided to not broadcast live last week's controversial Nkandla debate in parliament while other TV channels like eNCA (DStv 403) and ANN7 (DStv 405) did.
Ellen Zandile Tshabalala also says nothing about misinforming and misrepresenting herself and her bogus qualifications before parliament's portfolio committee on communications at the end of last year when she applied to be chairperson of the SABC with made up UNISA qualifications which the university says she doesn't have for courses the institution says she never completed.
In her statement Ellen Zandile Tshabalala says "it is clear that this has become a personal attack on me, and that there is another agenda that seeks to derail me from executing my duties as chairperson of the SABC".
