Radio 702 station manager Thabisile Mbete and Afternoon Drive Show presenter Joanne Joseph were entangled in a catfight that degenerated to the use of insults a few months before Joseph’s exit from the station.
The catfight, according to WhatsApp messages seen by Sunday World, unfolded on the 702 WhatsApp group in April, after the station was hit by two COVID-19 cases.
The WhatsApp messages show that Joseph lost it and appeared to have called Mbete a “bitch” after she delayed in responding to her enquiry about the officials who were said to have had contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
Joseph’s message reads: “This bitch is working on my last fucking nerve! I’m trying to calm down before I reply.” The message was sent after Mbete had told Joseph that affected employees were having problems getting tested because they had established through the national hotline that there was a turnaround of 72 hours to test at public hospitals and clinics.
But what appears to have rubbed Joseph the wrong way, according to the WhatsApp messages, was Mbete’s message in which she reminded Joseph that he matter was not about them, but the organisation.
“Let me know if there are any issues,” wrote Mbete on the 702 WhatsApp group.
Sunday World reported last week that Joseph and Aki Anastasiou did not leave the radio station at their own accord, but were chucked out by Mbete, in what she termed the “repositioning” of the station. The duo’s dramatic exit came about after Mbete had made several promises to Joseph that her job was safe from the station’s retrenchment drive, which was targeting at least 70 employees. Joseph and Anastasiou have had to employ the services of lawyers to challenge what initially seemed like dismissals rather than an outcome of a section 189 process.
Joseph’s contract was due to expire in June 2021. But Mbete later changed her mind and asked Joseph to leave her show. Anastasiou was initially asked to take a 40% salary cut. When he challenged the process as unlawful and unfair, he was told that he has nothing to worry about. But Mbete changed her mind again and served Anastasiou with a letter of retrenchment.
Following these developments, several listeners voiced their unhappiness and ordered Mbete to leave instead. Joseph and 702 later reached an agreement and she was offered a seven-month pay exit. Joseph told Sunday World she explained to Mbete that she was not the intended recipient of her message and that the station manager accepted her explanation.
Mbete said the comment in question was a complete miscommunication. In the WhatsApp group, Joseph’s remark comes exactly seven minutes after Mbete’s remark.
