SABC has only itself to blame - Mampone
 
The crisis that has resulted in the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) plunging into debt is largely of its own making, its acting chief executive, Gab Mampone, has admitted in a story published by the The Daily News on 9 June. Mampone blamed the SABC's financial problems on many factors, including over-staffing, the use of consultants and the high cost of buying overseas programme content.

He said that "two seasons ago" the SABC had a cash surplus of R1-million, but was now in debt to the tune of R781-million. "The organisation is facing difficult times financially and strategically," he said, "but they are fixable."

'The content costs also increase quite significantly' Mampone gave this assessment of the situation when interviewed on SAfm Radio's After Eight Debate on steps to be taken to resolve the SABC's financial crisis.He said he planned to gather support from all concerned, and to "make sure we work as a team, with the board, with staff, with everybody" to help the SABC reach its goals.

The broadcaster's decline started two years ago, he said. "Then we started on a path of driving certain objectives: to improve content production in South Africa, to make sure we created opportunities for various small businesses in the content industry." Coupled with this, he said, came an increase in the number of people employed by the SABC.

In 2005 the organisation had 3 500 employees, yet within two years that number had increased to 4 100. "That says in itself there was an uncontrolled increase in our staff complement." Mampone said the upsurge in consulting activities had, rightly or wrongly, also contributed to the financial problems. "The content costs also increase quite significantly, the cost of rights we bought all round the world had a heavy impact on our cash inflows." He said all major consulting work had now been stopped completely. "There are just small areas where we believe specialist intervention needs to be done."

He said a study done on behalf of the SABC had showed that the organisation had surplus staff "all over the place". "Our new operating model that we need to implement will clearly allow us to come up with an optimal structure that says wherever we have excess fat, that fat must be removed from the organisation."

Rashweat Mukundu
Programme Specialist: Media Monitoring and Research
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Secretariat
Private Bag 13386
21 Johann Albrecht Street
Windhoek
Tel: +264 61 232975
Mobile: + 264 81 367 5362

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