Pretoria - The SABC’s controversial chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, will go down fighting and remains in office for the moment, despite a Western Cape High Court ruling on Friday that he be suspended pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing against him.
Motsoeneng told Eyewitness News in the wake of the ruling he had instructed his lawyers to appeal, but did not respond to requests for comment from Independent Newspapers.
While the DA, which had brought the urgent application for the suspension and disciplinary action against Motsoeneng, said it believed the judge had intended the suspension to take immediate effect, SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said he didn’t believe this was the case.
The SABC board would study the judgment and consider its response.
Judge Ashton Schippers, handing down judgment in the Western Cape High Court on Friday, ordered the SABC to charge Motsoeneng within 14 days for allegedly faking his qualifications, abusing his power in appointing Sully Motsweni in various capacities reporting to him and granting her salary increases, and his role in suspending and dismissing senior SABC staff, resulting in numerous labour disputes and settlement awards against the broadcaster.
The hearing was to be completed within 60 days. The DA application followed Motsoeneng’s appointment despite a damning report by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, which found he had purged staff who opposed his arbitrary rule, irregularly awarded salary hikes to the tune of R29-million, himself irregularly received salary hikes (of 63 percent in one instance) and that he had lied about having passed matric when he first applied for a job.
Madonsela said he should be disciplined, but instead he was appointed chief operating officer after having acted in this capacity.
In scathing comments on the arguments by Communications Minister Faith Muthambi and SABC board chairwoman Zandile Ellen Tshabalala in their responses, Judge Schippers said there were “no grounds, let alone rational grounds, for the board’s decision to reject the public protector’s findings and remedial action” and that the conduct of Muthambi and the board in doing so was “arbitrary and irrational and consequently, constitutionally unlawful”.
Muthambi’s office said she would respond once she had studied the ruling. Judge Schippers ordered Motsoeneng, Tshabalala and Muthambi to pay costs.
Tshabalala, meanwhile, is embroiled in her own battle for survival – also involving her alleged qualifications. She interdicted Parliament this week from conducting an enquiry until the nature of the enquiry had been clarified, after failing to produce proof of the qualifications she included in her CV.
DA spokesman on communications Gavin Davis said the party’s lawyers were of the view Motsoeneng should be suspended immediately and would consider further steps in light of the SABC’s contention that he would remain in office for the time being.
The judgment said because of his “virtually unlimited authority” and access to all the documentation relating to the charges, Motsoeneng “poses a real risk not only to the integrity of the investigation… but to the disciplinary enquiry itself”.
“It is untenable he should remain in office while disciplinary proceedings are brought against him.”
Cosatu welcomed the judgment, but said Motsoeneng shouldn’t “become the sole scapegoat for what are structural and systemic problems within the public broadcaster for which many others must share the blame”.
Pretoria News Weekend