eMedia CEO Khalik Sherrif has rejected reports that more than half of eNCA’s staff are set to lose their jobs, saying the 171 employees caught up in the news channel’s restructuring are everyone the law requires to be included in the process, not the number who will be retrenched.
“It was never that 171 people are going to lose their jobs. That was never the case. It is much less than that,” Sherrif told TechCentral.
In early August, the Sunday Times reported that notices signed by eNCA MD Norman Munzhelele had put 171 of the channel’s 309 employees in line for possible retrenchment: more than half the workforce.
“According to labour law, if you have four positions that you need to reduce to three, everybody needs to go into the process, even if only one gets retrenched. The 171 is simply everybody that goes into the process, in accordance with the law,” Sherrif said.
Section 189 of the Labour Relations Act requires an employer contemplating dismissals for operational reasons to consult employees “likely to be affected” and to select those let go using agreed, or fair and objective, criteria. The pool consulted can therefore be much larger than the number of jobs eventually cut.
Sherrif said he could not give details while the Section 189 process was under way, including how many people are likely to be retrenched. The process was almost done and would take only a few more weeks, he said. “When the process is finished, we will be happy to go through all of the facts and details with the media.”
Smaller newsroom
He also would not discuss the reasons for the restructuring, including whether AI had played a part, out of respect for the people involved.
On 12 October, television industry blogger Thinus Ferreira reported, citing an unnamed source, that bosses visiting e.tv in Cape Town with “AI business partners” had said in front of staff that “AI can replace everyone on the floor”.
Ferreira also reported what insiders called “silent retrenchments” outside the announced process, including in e.tv’s creative department in Cape Town. TechCentral has not been able to verify either claim.
According to the notices, as reported by the Sunday Times, eNCA wants to move to “a smaller, focused, multi-platform newsroom” across linear, online and digital platforms because “certain roles, function and/or structures can no longer be sustained in their current form”.
The notices pointed to changing audience habits, falling television viewership and duplicated work, and said no “final and immutable” decisions had been taken. Consultations were to end by the end of November, with any retrenchments taking effect from 1 December.
eMedia, which also owns broadcaster e.tv and free-to-air satellite platform Openview, had until now declined to discuss the process publicly. “As a matter of principle, eMedia does not comment publicly, through the media, on internal business operations,” spokeswoman Lynn Adams told the Sunday Times in August. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
