A cross-section of opposition MPs were united in taking apart communications minister Faith Muthambi’s second budget vote speech on Wednesday.
Economic Freedom Fighters MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi called for dissolution of the department saying: “We have no faith in you, hon Faith Muthambi.”
In her speech, Muthambi admitted that South Africa would miss the 17 June 2015 deadline for the switch-off of analogue television agreed to with the International Telecommunication Union.
She said she is still to consult with cabinet on the switch-on date for digital broadcasts and conceded it would take up to two years to roll out set-top boxes to the poor.
The Inkatha Freedom Party’s Liezl Linda van der Merwe described Muthambi as a “monument to the disaster of cadre deployment”.
She also slammed the SABC for allegedly attempting to stop the broadcast of the Democratic Alliance’s recent federal congress, where Mmusi Maimane was elected as party leader.
She said, too, that it was “wasteful expenditure” that the SABC covered IFP events but did not broadcast these on the public broadcaster.
DA MP Gavin Davis was equally scathing in his criticism.
“We’ve had an SABC chief operations officer who has been shielded and promoted when the public protector said he should have been fired,” Davis said. “That he is here today, sitting in the gallery, is perhaps the greatest indictment of the minister’s performance.”
Davis slammed Muthambi over her handling of the crisis at the SABC.
He said the minister wanted to take South Africa back to the apartheid era when the SABC was a “tool in the hands of politicians instead of a resource belonging to the people of this country”.
Davis said that although Muthambi had placed stabilising the SABC as top of her agenda at last year’s budget vote speech, this had not happened.
“Three SABC board members have resigned, while three others have been forcibly and illegally removed. As a result, the SABC board does not have a chairperson, or a quorum to legally constitute meetings,” he said.
Deidre Carter of the Congress of the People agreed with Davis, saying that no one wanted to make themselves available for appointment to the SABC board because of its “toxic atmosphere”.
In her speech, Muthambi spoke of the need to transform the media, saying she would formulate a media transformation policy.
“We will also investigate the possibility of pooling government media assets with a view to support the creation of a black-owned media house in the country.” — © 2015 NewsCentral Media
