by Thinus Ferreira
The cast and crew of SABC2's prime-time soap Muvhango have once again not been paid, this time for October, with actors and workers behind-the-scenes who have stopped working and have started a "stay-away" until they've received their money from Duma Ndlovu's Word of Mouth Productions show.
Muvhango staff on the public broadcaster's Venda soap were told to put their debit orders on hold, with promises that they would be paid on Friday 4 November.
The Kwathole Conexion PR company repping Muvhango didn't respond to a media enquiry TVwithThinus made earlier this week about the unpaid cast.
Gugu Ntuli, SABC spokesperson, in response to a media query, says "The SABC can confirm that there was a delay in the October payment to the production house. The production house has been notified accordingly and the SABC apologises for any inconvenience caused".
In an internal memo from the SABC to Word of Mouth Productions also sent to staffers and actors, the broadcaster said "This memo serves to inform you, the producer, of a delay in the end of October payments. Please be advised that payments will be effected on Friday 4 November 2022."
"Kindly accept our sincerest apologies. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and we further note the level of stress that the late notification may cause".
Muvhango workers said they won't return to work on the new season before they haven't received payment.
Over the past month the SABC has been busy with a national content roadshow, visiting various provinces to try and drum up renew support from content producers to try and persuade them to work with the public broadcaster again and to pitch and bring projects to the SABC.
The SABC is trying to mend the South African production industry's broken trust in the broadcaster after a period of large and small independent producers have been left in the lurch after not getting paid by the SABC - sometimes for months - and producers who have had shows abruptly cancelled despite contracts.
Producers who no longer want to work with the SABC have tried to switch to doing projects for streamers like Netflix in South Africa, MultiChoice and the various M-Net packaged TV channels on DStv and prefer to no longer work with the SABC.
In December 2019 Muvhango also experienced a production shutdown for several days, also due to non-payment of the show's cast and crew for two months in October and November, which Word of Mouth Productions and the SABC blamed on each other.
