The fight over the restructuring of the SABC, as insignificant as it is in the bigger picture of SA’s unemployment and fiscal crisis, has the potential to go nuclear on President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It has split his cabinet and his political party, and the most important ANC allies — the SACP and Cosatu — have abandoned him and joined the other side.
It has created a platform on which a range of forces can unite against him and the economic restructuring agenda. So far these include the Ace Magashule faction and the remnants of the radical economic transformation brigade; the SACP and Cosatu; the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa); the EFF; and, of course, the staff of the SABC themselves, who have literally hijacked the airwaves to promote their own industrial action.
The SABC is the perfect proxy war for all of these groupings: it flies the anti-privatisation and anti-outsourcing flag. It promotes the narrative that the prevailing forces in the ANC are antirevolutionary and the ANC leadership are anti-African and disregard the value of indigenous languages.
It also strikes at the economic reform and restructuring agenda, and, ultimately, it damages and undermines Ramaphosa personally, as leader after leader — beginning with communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams — oppose the restructuring programme.
It is a more costly political fight to take on than it appears at face value. Ideally, Ramaphosa should be able to sidestep and observe from a distance. He has a communications minister and the SABC has an independent board appointed by parliament and a professional management. The restructuring plan emanated from its board and management on the mandate from the government that state-owned entities must reduce their reliance on the fiscus and seek sustainability.
But with the communications minister opposing the plan, the SABC board splitting into factions and ANC MPs being called on by Magashule to oppose the plan too, if Ramaphosa wants it done he will have to take up the fight.
For Magashule the blow-up at the SABC couldn’t have come at a better time. Within days of appearing in court on corruption charges he was suddenly at the centre of the story of the week. In a 40-minute live interview on the SABC that had to be seen to be believed for all the journalistic and ethical violations committed by his interviewers, Magashule assured SABC staff that ANC deployees on the SABC board and in parliament would toe his line.
That same night the portfolio committee on communications reached the same conclusion the ANC, SACP and Cosatu alliance secretariat meeting had arrived at a few days earlier, namely that there had been insufficient consultation with SABC employees, the SABC management and board were not appropriately independent to manage the dispute, and new solutions were needed.
This was despite hearing that the dispute had been under discussion using the procedures in the Labour Relations Act to deal with restructuring. The consultation had already gone on for 120 days and involved 16 engagements before the issuing of the section 189 letters last week. There are no other channels to negotiate restructuring processes, other than a naked political intervention, which is what is being angled for.
The SABC, particularly its news and current affairs function, is an enormously important institution for our democracy. Since the lockdown began it has been my news channel of choice. No other news organisation has the reach — it can be accessed in the villages of Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, or the faraway Northern Cape. Weaknesses not withstanding, the SABC does portray the real SA.
The argument from the board — the seven who have not joined the five defectors — is exactly this. The objective is to protect public broadcasting, not destroy it. Given the incredible salary growth that has occurred there over the past 15 years — salaries were 25% of operating expenditure in 2006 and are now consume 37% of the budget — there is undoubtedly room for restructuring.
The SABC is also a proxy issue for social actors on the other side of the spectrum. If Ramaphosa is unable to restructure the SABC, which involves a cut of only 400 jobs, the investor and business community will want to know if he can pull off any structural reforms.
The quick abandonment of the commitment to the principle of sustainable state-owned enterprises by ANC MPs, including a minister, is not surprising but is still a serious development. It is a principle central to the fiscal consolidation framework laid out in October on which our return to respectability as a country depends.
• Paton is editor-at-large.
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