The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) has slammed the previous SABC management for its cruelty, saying its wrong for the South African public broadcaster to start firing staffers in order to downsize its massive salary bill before other cost-cutting options and that SABC staffers are "once again, at the receiving end of leadership abuse and negligence".
Sanef says "part of the dire financial situation the SABC finds itself in is due to the reckless management of the SABC epitomised by [former] COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng".
"This included his mismanagement of human resources. Also, Sanef notes the lack of oversight from parliament and the regulator during this dark period. Going forward it is critical that the capacity of htese governance and oversight structures are strengthened."
"Sanef notes that the cruelty of the situation is that workers, once again, are at the receiving end of leadership abuse and negligence. Sanef believes that only if all other cost-cutting options have been explored, should the SABC contemplate retrenchments."
Madoda Mxakwe, SABC CEO has warned staffers about the South African public broadcaster's "dire financial state" after the SABC started the process of job cuts and retrenchments to downsize the SABC's staff numbers.
A week after the SABC chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini played coy, didn't want to talk about SABC staff firings and wasn't willing to be upfront about the SABC that has been looking at drastically shedding another 800 jobs, Madoda Mxakwe finally told SABC staffers following a meeting on Thursday with trade unions, that the SABC's wage bill is unsustainable.
The SABC posted a loss of R622 million for the 2017/2018 financial year with the country's Auditor-General (AG), Kimi Makwetu, saying he can't determine whether the cash-strapped South African public broadcaster remains a going concern.
Longtime staffers and producers who have been with SABC News since the channel's start-up five years ago already got axed at the end of August although despite the SABC renewed its controversial multi-million rand channel carriage 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 says one of the SABC's biggest cost drivers is the salary bill and that although it is a R7.2 billion revenue generating company, it's saddled with a massive annual salary bill of R3.1 billion.
Sanef says that it "believes that the labour law must be closely followed with transparency and commitment to negotiate fairly with organised labour."
Sanef says "what is critical is that the SABC's public mandate is in no way compromised".
"SABC leadership needs to ensure that the SABC's news-gathering and content generation and management capacity is not cut. Sanef believes this capacity is essential for the SABC to play its key information, education and entertainment role."
"Further, we believe that the SABC's content capacity is core to ensuring its turn-around and long-term financial sustainability."
"Sanef calls on on the regulator, Icasa, to ensure that it monitors the SABC's adherence to its charter, licence conditions and local content regulations. The SABC's ability to deliver on its mandate must not be compromised.Non-core support staff and administration units should be cut if anything is to be cut."
