You might have to Google the name Nomsa Chabeli, as it will not jump out at you as an obvious choice for CEO of the SABC.
The board of the public broadcaster went for a corporate player instead of a political one this time around when it filled the top position at Auckland Park. Chabeli was until recently at MTN, having worked at MultiChoice before that.
She will soon find that corporate-speak and business acumen are less valuable than proficiency in “Comradese” — or whatever the language of the comrades is called. The SABC is stuck in a deep, dark hole, like most of the country’s state-owned entities (SOEs). It easily records R1bn losses, whereas companies such as Naspers effortlessly bring in $3bn (R56bn) a year.
Successive CEOs have failed to turn the broadcaster around and stop it bleeding money. One of the reasons is that the shareholder is not prepared to consider ways to improve the balance sheet.
When a shareholder cannot recapitalise a company, it has to sell some assets to correct the balance sheet. But the ANC is mortally afraid of letting go of anything it owns, no matter how strong the commercial imperative. The question then is how Chabeli can succeed in a job like the one she has signed up for in the politically charged climate leading up to the 2024 elections?
She can expect calls from Luthuli House, with party hacks leaning on her for favourable coverage. She will struggle with this, as there is a Chinese wall between her office and that of the head of news, Moshoeshoe Monare. He is a hard-core journo and will readily use the F-word if a politician tries to interfere with his editorial decisions.
The SABC has a relatively new board that will need to get used to the tap dance that must be performed to oversee the organisation and keep Pretoria happy. The previous SABC board broke a record when it became the first to actually finish its five-year term in almost forever.
Keeping an SOE job requires ditching all idealism about commercial and editorial independence. The CEO and members of the board must decide if they want to keep their jobs or make the SABC commercially successful. They cannot have both, something that has proved to be true at almost all SOEs.
Another question is what motivates people to be CEO of an SOE under an ANC government, when failure is guaranteed. My feeling is that such people know they will probably leave these jobs with a golden handshake. Otherwise they would need to be certifiably insane to take on such roles.
That the SOE model requires a huge rejig has been said ad nauseam. The reality is that ballsy political leadership from Pretoria will be required for the change that will make SOE commercial success possible.
Keeping an SOE job requires ditching all idealism about commercial and editorial independence
There are interesting similarities between approaches to the media taken by public and private owners. The ANC sees the media as a strategic message carrier. This is not new or unusual, as private media owners take the same view, and for this reason their motives for owning media assets will always be questioned.
While private owners may refrain from interfering in editorial matters, the ownership of these businesses can put journalists in a quandary, especially when they have to decide which stories to cover and which to ignore.
South Africa faces a plethora of difficulties, but not to the extent that the media cannot stay afloat. It is just one of many sectors struggling with legacy problems. For example, retail banks face digitisation challenges as much as the media does.
Chabeli must also contend with all the non-news aspects of the business, such as its archive and business-to-business potential. That is where the SABC gold lies — not in pontificating on whether it can extricate itself from political meddling.
The ANC will not let go of its political levers at the SABC, and the taxpayer will have to keep propping it up. Just this Friday the National Treasury announced a R47bn support package for Transnet, as part of the seemingly inexorable trend of government money being poured into the bottomless pit of the country’s SOEs.
• Mkokeli is lead partner at the public affairs entity Mkokeli Advisory.
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