Chris Maroleng is to become the SABC's new permanent chief operating officer (COO) replacing the controversial and famously matricless Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
SABC insiders, including SABC management and SABC board sources told TVwithThinus that the former Africa editor at eMedia Investments' TV news channel eNCA (DStv 403) will be appointed as the SABC's new COO.
Chris Maroleng was an eNCA anchor and Africa editor until he left eNCA in July 2014.
At eNCA Chris Maroleng led the team which started eNews Africa in 2009 and built up the channel's Africa division, which included the setting up of news bureaux in Nairobi and Lagos, and was the anchor of the weekly show Africa 360 that was abruptly cancelled in April 2015.
Chris Maroleng left eNCA when eNCA started to gut its Africa division and downsized its news staff and operations as it dramatically slashed budgets and Africa coverage - something that eNCA hasn't recovered from three and a half years later.
Chris Maroleng then became MTN's group executive for corporate affairs until the end of December 2017.
Chris Maroleng who has a master’s degree in international relations, as well as a honours and BA degree in political studies and law from the University of Cape Town, is most famous with the South African public for his "don't touch me on my studio" altercation on live TV in April 2010.
Pandemonium ensued in the eNCA studio during Chris Maroleng's Africa 360 show, where he intervened and protected the political analyst Lebohang Pheko when the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) secretary general Andre Visagie went ballistic on air.
Sources tell TVwithThinus that Chris Maroleng will become the SABC's new permanent COO from February 2017, a position that's been vacant for months and that has been filled by Bessie Tugwana, a so-called "Hlaudi enforcer", who has been appointed and who has been serving in the role the past few months in an acting capacity.
While Hlaudi Motsoeneng was acting COO and permanent COO, the famously matricless executive plunged the SABC into a myriad of crises.
That ranged from financial to bad governance issues, as he made wrong and debilitating decisions that heaped not just negative headlines and scorn on the SABC but also negatively affected the broadcaster's staff morale, liquidity and operating bank balance, and viewership and listenership ratings.
