SABC layoffs are not unjustified

The 2020 annual report for the South African Broadcasting Corporation contains, buried in its 172 pages, some astounding information, given the planned retrenchments there and the worker resistance to them.

Employee benefits at the SABC for the current book year total R2.357 billion. There are 2 979 people working there. Doing a crude calculation, this means that the average worker salary is R791 000 per year, or about R66 000 a month.

If that figure is not eyebrow-raising enough, consider the follow numbers, also contained in the 2020 report. Of the 2 979 people working for the SABC, just 429 (the “rest of staff”) are what might fairly be referred to as general workers. The remainder – 2 550 employees – are, effectively, in management or semi-management roles. A total of 1 652 are said to be at “supervisory levels”, while 898 are at various levels of “management”, from junior to top level.

Is it any wonder that the corporation is bleeding something like R500 million a year in losses – losses which will have to be made up by taxpayers, the majority of whom earn a lot less than R66 000 a month?

There is merit to the argument that a public broadcaster should not be run on business lines because it has a constitutional duty to inform all South Africans, right down to the lowest level. And it is true that despite some of the shenanigans of the era of the clown, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the SABC has, by and large, done a decent job.

Yet the SABC, like other failing state-owned enterprises, cannot be allowed to continue as sheltered employment for loyal ANC cadres. It has to at least show some semblance of fiscal responsibility.

The proposed staff cutbacks are by no means unfair – or unjustified, given the numbers in the SABC’s own report.

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