Johannesburg – Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams is under pressure from President Cyril Ramaphosa to break the impasse between the SABC and unions over the retrenchment of over 300 workers.
Staff members at the embattled corporation this week formed a motorcade outside Union Buildings in protest and dropped a memorandum at Ramaphosa’s office seeking his intervention in the protracted matter.
This led to the president deploying Ndabeni-Abrahams to extinguish the fires of discontent at the public broadcaster.
The minister and her labour and employment counterpart, Thulas Nxesi, convened an urgent meeting between the SABC management, board and the unions on Thursday.
Sunday World understands that the gathering got off to a dramatic start with the corporation’s chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini telling the minister she could not interfere with the running of the organisation and that there was a court decision to that effect.
“Stella lost it when Makhathini said the section 189 process was a closed case. Hell broke loose. She came out strongly against Makhathini, saying he can’t be arrogant to say the process is closed,” a source who attended the meeting said, adding that the minister also highlighted that there was strong opposition to job losses at the SABC.
The source said Ndabeni- Abrahams added that the government could not be retrenching people during the coronavirus global pandemic.
“Stella said in the meeting there was a memorandum and the president wants answers,” a board member said. In the memorandum, the unions – Communications Workers Union and Bemawu – told Ramaphosa the process to retrench workers was not conducted in good faith and denied the trade unions their fundamental role to represent workers fully.
The two unions called for the SABC board to be dissolved.
“The government cannot pretend to be unaware of the arrogance displayed by the board before parliament and in public. The board has failed in its fiduciary duties of playing an oversight role in making sure that the executive is accountable and respective to the Broadcasting Act,” they wrote.
“We believe that the president of the republic and our minister in the Department of Communications, Digital and Technologies, unlike the SABC board, will afford labour a hearing to present further information with supporting documents to prevent the looting in the public broadcaster.”
The office of the president acknowledged receipt of the memorandum and said that “the president will await the advice of the delegated minister [Ndabeni-Abrahams] on the current process”.
The ministry had also expressed “huge concern” to the unions about a national strike that was planned for Friday.
“The ministry also received a memorandum that was delivered by the Communication Workers Union to the Presidency requiring a response by 22 January. As you are aware, the world is in the middle of a pandemic and as such, a blackout by the national broadcaster would be disastrous.”
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