Erasibo Consulting

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SABC CRISIS DEEPENS – PARLIAMENT MUST INVESTIGATE, BOARD CHAIR MUST RESIGN OR BE REMOVED

6 AUGUST 2010

The SOS Campaign representing trade unions (including Cosatu, Fedusa and Bemawu), NGOs (including Media Monitoring Africa, the Freedom of Expression Institute and Misa-SA), CBOs, industry related bodies (including SASFED), academics and freedom of expression activists notes with dismay the seemingly endless governance problems at the SABC.

From media reports it appears that the Chair of the Board, Dr Ben Ngubane and the CEO, Mr. Solly Mokoetle are again involved in decisions that flout good corporate governance practices and procedures. It appears that the CEO, Mr Solly Mokoetle, without Board approval, has authorised additional bonuses to staff. These discretionary bonuses related to the World Cup are reportedly costing the public broadcaster R4.5m – and this at a time of great financial strain for the broadcaster. Further, there seems to be some controversy around whether these payments were in fact in lieu of overtime.

The interim Board of the SABC arranged a R1.47bn government guarantee in 2009 to pay back the SABC’s debts and further to assist with the implementation of a much needed turn-around strategy. The understanding from National Treasury was that the starting point was that all unnecessary spending would be strictly curtailed. So even if the CEO did not require specific Board approval for the World Cup bonuses, the wisdom of the decision must surely be questioned.

The Coalition believes that the ongoing crises at our public broadcaster have become so serious that urgent intervention from Parliament is, sadly, once again required.

We believe the following interventions should be undertaken by the Board:

1)    First, the Board needs to pass a resolution of no-confidence in the Chair for non-compliance with Board procedures and decisions.
2)    Second, the Board needs to pass a resolution to send a formal letter to the Speaker of Parliament requesting the National Assembly to initiate an enquiry into the alleged misconduct of the Chair with a view to removing him from the Board on the grounds of misconduct in terms of the sections 15, and 15A of the Broadcasting Act.

If the Board is effectively paralysed and cannot act in the ways we suggest, then we call upon Parliament to act. Parliament must (as it is legally entitled, indeed required, to do in times of crisis involving the SABC) initiate its own enquiry into what appear to be serious violations of corporate governance processes involving the Chair of the SABC Board. If after due enquiry it is clear that such violations have taken place, then Parliament must act to remove the Chair. Parliament cannot afford to drag out these crises in the same way it did over the crises that plagued the previous SABC Board.

SOS notes that the Board has been in office for the last seven months and yet we have little to show for this.  No new vision for the SABC appears to have been crafted and the much-talked-about turnaround strategy is still not forthcoming.  Further, communication with the general public in terms of its numerous corporate governance breaches and crises has been grudgingly scarce. For the most part the public has been forced to rely on media leaks.

SOS reiterates once again the critical importance of the SABC fostering a culture of transparency and communication. As a public broadcaster, the SABC’s main stakeholder is the public. Hence the SABC needs to ensure that its decision-making and governance processes – and the details of the crises and how they are being handled – are effectively communicated to the nation.

Further, SOS is considering taking up the numerous corporate governance breaches with the Public Protector. It is critical to restore the credibility of the SABC and this may be one important way.

Finally, SOS notes the comments made in today’s Mail & Guardian newspaper that there are further crises around the appointment of the Head of News and that allegedly divisions have arisen in terms of the disciplining of the CEO, Solly Mokoetle. SOS believes that this further confirms the need for the proposals we have outlined above.

For more information please contact:

Kate Skinner – SOS Coordinator – 082-926-6404
William Bird – Executive Director Media Monitoring Africa – 082-887-1370
Siphiwe Segodi – Freedom of Expression Network – 072-655-4177
Matankana Mothapo – Spokesperson Communications Workers Union – 082-759-0900
Hannes du Buisson – President Broadcasting Electronic and Media Workers Union – 082-920-8669
Marc Schwinges – Communications SASFED – 083-901-2000
Ayesha Kadjee – Executive Director FXI – 083-500-7486

All South African citizens must act to stop this unnecessary and clandestine piece of legislation. Read the Civil Society statement on the Protection of Information Bill. You can read the Bill and a few responses after the Civil Society Statement below:

A responsive and accountable democracy that can meet the basic needs of our people is built upon transparency and the free flow of information. The gains of South Africans’ struggle for freedom are threatened by the Protection of Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill) currently before Parliament. We accept the need to replace apartheid- era secrecy legislation. However, this Bill extends the veil of secrecy in a manner reminiscent of that same apartheid past. This Bill fundamentally undermines the struggle for whistleblower protection and access to information. It is one of a number of proposed measures which could have the combined effect of fundamentally undermining the right to access information and the freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution.

Our concerns:

The Bill will create a society of secrets

• Any state agency, government department, even a parastatal and your local municipality, can classify public information as secret.
• Anything and everything can potentially be classified as secret at official discretion if it is in the ‘national interest’. Even ordinary information relating to service delivery can become secret.
• Commercial information can be made secret, making it very difficult to hold business and government to account for inefficiency and corruption.
• Anyone involved in the ‘unauthorised’ handling and disclosure of classified information can be prosecuted; not just the state official who leaks information as is the case in other democracies
• The disclosure even of some information which is not formally classified can land citizens in jail. This will lead to self- censorship and have a chilling effect on free speech.
• Whistleblowers and journalists could face more time in prison than officials who deliberately conceal public information that should be disclosed A complete veil is drawn over the workings of the intelligence services.
• It will prevent public scrutiny of our spies should they abuse their power or breach human rights.

Who will guard the guardians?

• Officials do not need to provide reason for making information secret.
• There is no independent oversight mechanism to prevent information in the public interest from being made secret.
• The Minister of Intelligence, whose business is secrecy, becomes the arbiter of what information across all of government must remain secret or may be disclosed to the public.
• Even the leaking of secret information in the public interest is criminalised.
• Unusually severe penalties of up to 25 years in prison will silence whistleblowers, civil society and journalists doing their job.
• All these factors will limit public scrutiny of business and government, whether through Parliament or journalists. Accountability will be curtailed and service delivery to the people will be undermined.

Our demands:

The Constitution demands accountable, open and responsive government, realised among other things through freedom of expression and access to information. Our elected representatives are bound by these Constitutional values and any legislation they pass must comply. We demand that the Protection of Information Bill – the Secrecy Bill – must reflect the following: ·

• Limit secrecy to core state bodies in the security sector such as the police, defence and intelligence agencies.
• Limit secrecy to strictly defined national security matters and no more. Officials must give reasons for making information secret.
• Exclude commercial information from this Bill
• Do not exempt the intelligence agencies from public scrutiny.
• Do not apply penalties for unauthorised disclosure to society at large, only those responsible for keeping secrets.
• An independent body appointed by Parliament, and not the Minister of Intelligence, should be the arbiter of decisions about what may be made secret.
• Do not criminalise the legitimate disclosure of secrets in the public interest.

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Sign on today!

The deadline for signatures is Friday, 13 August 2010..

Who signs on:

• Civil Society Organisations (South African based)
• International friends (organisations) who share our concerns
• Individuals (mobilise prominent women and men to support the statement)

How to sign on:

Send the name of your organisation and the details of a contact person to Hopolang Selebalo at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) who is co-ordinating the collection of signatures – hselebalo@issafrica.org.

Join the discussion:

Join the Information AccessNow e-mail discussion group to receive news (including of meetings) and inform others of activities you are involved in. Send an e-mail to Mark Weinberg at majimaji11@gmail.com. Subject: Subscribe: InfoAccessNow.

Spread the word:

Circulate the statement as widely as possible to organisations in all sectors.

Public Meeting:

A public meeting will be held on Wednesday 11 August 2010 (11h00) at the ISS offices in Woodstock, Cape Town (2nd Floor, The Armoury Building, 167 Sir Lowry Road) to discuss next steps. Please attend. Similar meetings are planned for Johannesburg and Durban.

Enquiries:

Mark Weinberg
AIDC
Tel: 021 447 5770
E-mail: mark@aidc.org.za

Protection of Information Bill State Security – South Africa

Idasa Reponse to Protecrtion of Information Bill – Hearings

Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence – MEMORANDUM ON THE PROTECTION OF INFORMATION BILL

On the 2nd December 2009 the South African cabinet approved the Local Government Turnaround strategy. A copy can be downloaded from here.

The strategy states that the root cause of much of the failure in municipalities is because of:

• Inappropriate national and provincial government policies, practices and onerous requirements;
• Socio-economic conditions prevailing in many municipalities that are not been adequately addressed through macro, micro-economic and industrial policies and plans of the State;
• Political parties that are undermining the integrity and functioning of municipal councils through intra and inter-party conflicts and inappropriate interference in councils and administration;
• A breakdown of values at a societal level that is breeding unethical behaviour, corruption, culture of non-payment, and lack of accountability;
• Communities that are engaging in destructive forms of protest including withholding of payment for local taxes and services;
• Those municipalities that are not geared for delivering basic services and are not responsive and accountable enough to residents; including to failure to involve communities in their own development;
• Absence of communications resources (people, technology, equipment processes) and no accountability for how and when municipalities communicate to communities

For the most part the strategy is impressive. However (unfortunately this is a common gap with public sector strategy documents ), there is zero allowance for the possibility that this turnaround may not meet the deadlines or intentions it sets.

The local government sphere is not homogenous, the department (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs) is going to need to be aggressive about the implementation of this turnaround strategy.

Last night the Riverlea community took to the streets protesting poor service delivery by local government. Riverlea is the latest community to vent its frustrations angrily about poor municipal service delivery.

Since the new national government administration has come in there has been a lot of change taking place in the local government space. A lot of reviewing, rethinking and restructuring has taken place.

The current Director General Elroy Africa delivered the presentation above yesterday at the Local Government Indaba. Its a frank, harsh presentation outlining the problem areas in local government, it’s great to see this type of presentation and suggestions it contains.

However I still think there is one thing missing what is the model that we are hoping to building local government into? Setting targets around which services should be delivered and improving the execution ability is good but without knowing what the game plan is, we could be spending a lot additional time and money to arrive at a similar state later, because everyone busies themselves with being busy.

In June 2009 the Minister of Local Government made this hard hitting statement:

“…I am taking the liberty of sharing this experience with this assembly to argue that if the North West is indicative, in any way, of what is happening in our municipalities in the other eight provinces then we need to declare a national state of emergency on local government in this country…This is a sector that is perceived to be incompetent, disorganised and riddled with corruption and maladministration….During several research surveys conducted regarding public perception on spheres of government, local government has always scored the lowest…..Even the latest research results points to that sad perception. For that matter, the results show that the public rating of municipalities is at an all-time low…”
Minister Sicelo Shiceka – SALGA NMA – 10 June 2009, East London

Apart from heavy hitting speeches there has been action, I thought I’d note one set of investigations that has already taken place:

Investigators submit preliminary report on Mkhondo municipality

3 September 2009

The team of investigators appointed by the Mpumalanga provincial government, in terms of section 106(1)(b) of the Local Government Municipal Systems Act, 2000 (act No.32 of 2000), to investigate allegations of maladministration, fraud, corruption, nepotism, poor service delivery, poor implementation of the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and lack of proper consultation in terms of resource distribution and infrastructure made against the Mkhondo local municipality has submitted its preliminary report to the provincial government.

The report has indicated the following findings:
On financial mismanagement, the investigation report has revealed that there has been mismanagement of moneys allocated for projects. There have also been municipal officials found to have been paid unduly. Such moneys must be recouped and implicated officials should face disciplinary hearing. Some officials and councillors have been found to have misused municipal credit cards. The use of credit cards has been discontinued by the Administrator. There was no policy to deal with credit cards.

The administrator will immediately set up a policy on use of council credit cards. Disciplinary hearings will be held against the implicated officials. In most municipalities the use of credit cards has been long stopped.

Fleet management

The preliminary report has also indicated that there was a lack of proper monitoring and accountability on municipal vehicles, which led to the misuse of government fleet and wastage of fuel. The administrator has started putting systems in place to minimise the abuse of council resources.

With regards to employment of personnel, the findings have indicated that there have been cases where individuals were employed illegally in breach of the employment procedures. These dubious appointments will be probed further and individuals found to have been wrongfully employed will be dealt with severely.

The municipality has started designing new policies and systems that will ensure that all employees and employees of the municipality are appointed in a transparent manner based on their skills and competencies. Nepotism is a punishable offence. Disciplinary action will commence immediately against all implicated individuals.

The administrator will be given four months to conclude all outstanding matters on the investigations, and MEC Norman Mokoena will oversee the process. The provincial government would like to thank the community for cooperating with the administrator and his team during the period the municipality has been put under administration.

Enquiries:
Mabutho Sithole
Cell: 082 398 3348

Simphiwe Kunene
Cell: 082 413 3931

Vusi Mashabane
Cell: 076 762 6510

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Mpumalanga Provincial Government
3 September 2009
Source: Mpumalanga Provincial Government (http://www.mpumalanga.gov.za/)

We need to start seeing municipal officials being fired or prosecuted, we need to see councillors held directly accountable. There is a lot of talk about this taking place, lets see it happen. Its the only way to get those in power at the municipal level to take their mandates more seriously.