The ANC and its alliance partners have expressed solidarity with the SABC workers who embarked on a go-slow and refused to go on air in protest over looming job losses.
As the chaos unfolded at the public broadcaster's Auckland Park studios in Johannesburg yesterday, ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe told Sowetan that the SABC issues were discussed at the meeting of the alliance’s secretariat yesterday.
“The alliance secretariat expressed solidarity with the workers and vehement opposition to any weakening of the SABC and its public broadcasting mandate, and its subordination to commercial interest,” Pule said
Dozens of employees at the public broadcaster were served with letters of retrenchment yesterday in line with a plan to shed 400 jobs to reduce the SABC's salary bill. Those who were served with letters were also told that their positions had become redundant.
But news staff from both radio and TV and current affairs divisions called a meeting with management in Auckland Park, which was attended by SABC group executive for news and current affairs Phathiswa Magopeni and the corporation's COO, Ian Plaatjies.
The employees rejected the SABC's proposed new structure that rendered some of their positions redundant, saying they were not properly consulted. They expressed their disappointment about staff being served with letters before they were consulted, despite having gone the extra mile and compromising to ensure that the SABC stayed afloat in difficult times during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Magopeni told staff that no more retrenchment letters would be issued.
“What I have committed to is I cannot continue issuing new letters and also cannot say to those people if we are going to set up a new process to reconsult or open up the process and start again. Those letters have no standing because we cannot be issuing letters while committing to a new process,” Magopeni said in one of the video clips recorded at a highly charged meeting with staff.
Deputy communications minister Pinky Kekana's spokesperson Zandile Ngubeni said: “The department cannot comment pending engagements with the SABC on the processes currently unfolding.”
President of the Broadcasting, Electronic, Media and Allied Workers Union (Bemawu), Hannes du Buisson, said workers were shocked when the SABC started issuing retrenchment letters.
“There's even a person who collapsed after receiving the letter and went home. People were crying in the newsroom. Staff indicated that they will not go on air until management comes to address them and explain what was happening,” Du Buisson said.
He said the staff have now asked for the resignation of the executives for implementing rolling retrenchments without proper consultations.
The drama at the public broadcaster coincided with the release its 2019/2020 financial statements, which showed that it recorded losses amounting to R511m in the last financial year, with its annual income dropping by R800m.
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