PETER BRUCE: Memo to Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams — don’t be so stupid

I nearly choked on my breakfast on Sunday when I read the lead story in City Press. Apparently the new minister of communications, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, appointed just two weeks ago, is now at war with the perfectly solid and noncriminal board of the SA Broadcasting Corp (SABC), for doing its job and trying to save money by cutting its bloated wage bill.

I don’t know much about Ndabeni-Abrahams. She apparently stood with President Cyril Ramaphosa during his campaign to succeed Jacob Zuma as ANC leader in 2017. She is also married to a guy who has some clout in the ANC Youth League, a body Ramaphosa will be relying on for support in the years ahead. Like me, she was born in Mthatha, which should make her sensible and thoughtful.

But sadly it appears not.

The SABC board a few months ago began privately briefing political parties about the mess they had inherited from the time there of Zuma’s court jester, Hlaudi Motsoeneng. Audiences were dwindling, money had been lost or stolen. It is overstaffed and underproductive. Yet another state-owned entity in crisis, in other words.

They told all the parties that they would have to cut back on staff. All the political parties said they supported the board and thanked them for their briefings.

Then, when news of the scale of the cuts became known the political parties were nowhere to be seen. Instead they had been replaced by two-faced monsters bearing the same name of the parties the board had spoken to but who this time were fulminating against the cuts.

Naturally, this is to be expected of all parties, the ANC, the DA and the EFF. There is an election coming next year. No-one wants to make enemies at the public broadcaster.

Enter Ndabeni-Abrahams. When Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet at the end of November he undid the silly split Zuma had created by shuffling posts & communications into one department and communications (basically the SABC) into another. Stella was deputy to Faith Muthambi in the latter, which may be where she picked up some bad habits.

Anyway, the City Press story says Ndabeni-Abrahams is trying to stop the board carrying out its strategy, part of which is to retrench 981 permanent staff and 1,200 freelancers. She’s written an angry letter to the board, threatening to take the issue to the president.

And what the president does with it will define him. The SABC is an easy fix. The board is solid and its chair, Bongumusa Makhathini, is as good an operator as you’ll find. They were appointed by Zuma, not Ramaphosa. And Makhathini used to run a foundation for one of Zuma’s wives. But I know him and he’s a straight-up guy with an open mind. He has a solid corporate background and is behind the board’s strategy.

When Ndabeni-Abrahams brings the issue to Ramaphosa he needs to sit her down and tell her not to be so foolish. SA Inc is flirting with bankruptcy. SAA needs a bail-out and boy, Eskom, the big one, is so broke and damaged it will take a financial miracle to save it. If at all.

The world’s markets are watching and waiting to see how the government deals with SAA and Eskom. The last thing Ramaphosa needs now is a minister coming to him to special plead for the staff at the loss-making public broadcaster. Sure, the staff may not have caused the losses but some of them helped and supported Motsoeneng while he broke the organisation. The Communications Workers Union, one of the biggest at the broadcaster, sure did. Why would the minister protect them now? Why would Ramaphosa let her?

The fact is that if SA cannot cut 2,000 jobs to save a state institution then the ratings agencies (who decide, basically, what rate we pay on our debts, which are huge and growing by the hour) are going to stop listening to all the sober faces like Pravin Gordhan who plead with them for time before every new rating is announced.

There is nothing heroic, minister, in saving jobs if the employer is going to continue making a loss. This board has had a year to look at the mess it inherited. All you can do now is support them. Go over the board’s head, to the staff, as a shareholder, and I guarantee you your seat in the cabinet will be short-lived.

It’ll also mean you have to pick a fight with the National Treasury and a new finance minister in Tito Mboweni. You’re asking him for a R3bn guarantee and a R1.2bn loan. And you don’t want to make any job cuts? Have you perhaps not been listening to the finance minister lately? How quickly do you want to notch up an early and very public failure?

The SABC is big and ugly enough to be paying its own way. That is what the board is trying to do and from which you, politically, can only benefit. So don’t be so stupid.