The+war+goes+on,+Mbeki+SABC+board+outrage,+Angela+Qintal,+Sindy



=The war goes on: Mbeki's SABC board outrages New Guard=


 * Angela Quintal, Sunday Independent, 23 December 2007**

President Thabo Mbeki has fired the first salvo in his campaign to prove that he is no lame-duck president - he has appointed a new SABC board, overriding objections from within the party he no longer rules and from its partners in the tripartite alliance.

He is back at the centre of the storm barely a day after the end of the ANC's Polokwane national conference at which he lost the party leadership battle to Jacob Zuma.

Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), said yesterday he was disappointed that Mbeki had appointed the SABC board despite calls for him to refer the nominations to parliament for consideration.

Vavi said Cosatu would insist that Mbeki's decision be reviewed and called for an urgent meeting of the tripartite alliance - the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) - now led by a new ANC guard at Luthuli House.

Vavi warned that Mbeki was setting himself against the dominant view of the members of the ANC who, he said, had rejected him as party leader for another term because they wanted change.

"This is not a good signal. He must respect the people. They voted for change, not the status quo."

Vavi described Mbeki's move as "unwise"' and "very unstrategic, just to prove that he is no lame duck".

He said the question of who should be appointed to the SABC board was among the issues that made Cosatu "uncomfortable" about there being "two centres of power" - Mbeki leading the state and Zuma the party.

The Young Communist League said it could not take the newly announced board seriously "given that it was meant to serve a particular political interest and agenda".

Several of the new board members are perceived to be close to Mbeki, including lawyer Christine Qunta, Bheki Khumalo, the former presidential spokesman, and Peter Vundla and Gloria Serobe, who are members of presidential working groups.

The league said the appointments were part of an attempt to legitimise interference by individuals in the ANC leadership who had undermined the country's parliamentary democracy. "[The Mbeki] board lacks public confidence and credibility given the comments made by the then ANC secretary-general, currently the ANC deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, that there was a factional political hand or interference in the nomination process," the league said.

It too called for the appointments to be reviewed and for the new ANC leadership's intervention.

But Gwede Mantashe, the newly elected ANC secretary-general, yesterday cautioned against sowing confusion, saying the composition of the SABC board had been dealt with by the previous ANC leadership and would not be reconsidered.

"The ANC is not rewriting the programme. We are not coming from Limpopo to reverse the decision."

Mbeki stopped short of using the SABC board appointments to humiliate ANC MPs aligned to the new party leader, Jacob Zuma, and members of the party's national executive committee.

Committee member Lumka Yengeni, and others allied to the SACP and Cosatu, were opposed to the re-appointment of Qunta and feared she might be given the chairmanship. But Mbeki decided yesterday not to push his luck and appointed Khanyi Mkhonza to replace Eddie Funde as chairman. Qunta is now Mkhonza's deputy.

Other newly appointed board members include Pansy Tlakula, Ashwin Trikamjee, Alison Gilwald, Andile Mbeki, Fadila Lagadien, Nadia Bulbulia and Desmond Golding. They will serve a five-year term from January 1.

The SABC was accused in the run up to the Polokwane conference of being the slavish mouthpiece of Mbeki and his allies. Opposition parties described it as the ANC's propaganda department.

The public broadcaster was roundly criticised for bias by Cosatu and the SACP, among others, for its coverage of the ANC conference and elections.

Some ANC Youth League members were reported to have stormed the SABC's offices in Polokwane and to have threatened Snuki Zikalala, the corporation's head of news.

Cosatu's Vavi signalled this week that, though unity was the buzz word after Polokwane, it would not be pursued at all costs. If there had been "mistakes" by the previous leadership, they would be corrected, he said.

He cited the SABC as an example.

"Unity does not mean that you just allow all those things that have happened to continue. The SABC for example … can't be allowed to be as biased as it has in recent weeks. We can't say that, for [the sake of] unity, that we will allow them to continue that," Vavi warned.

Members of the ANC who had voted for change would ask why it had not come about, he said.

The MPs whose preferences for the SABC board had been ignored by the previous powers at Luthuli House would not be undermined again, Vavi said.

Mbeki had held back on the appointment of an SABC board since August, when 12 nominations were recommended by the national assembly.

As in parliament, where the succession battle had a debilitating effect on proceedings, the ANC's study group on communication was divided on who should be appointed to the board.

The Mbeki and Zuma camps in the study group could not agree on the inclusion of Qunta, or on whether Frene Ginwala, who has been dropped from the party's national executive, should be recommended.

The sub-committee on communications of the ousted national executive told ANC MPs for whom to vote. MPs who objected to the sub-committee's "interference" were hauled into the chief whip's office and ordered to toe the line.


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4183213**

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