Staff at South Africa’s national broadcaster plan to strike over dissatisfaction with the company’s restructuring plans.
SABC employees gathered outside of the public broadcaster’s headquarters in Johannesburg last week, before marching (in a covid safe manner) to the Union building to hand over a memorandum “of demands to President Cyril Ramaphosa, asking him to intervene in the organisation’s looming retrenchments.”
Redundancy and surplus letters have been issued to hundreds of staff. The number of planned job losses has nearly halved from 600 to 303 after discussion that have already taken place with staff and unions.
Responding to reports that the national broadcaster would close some of its African language stations, including Ikwekwezie FM, the broadcaster strongly denied that radio stations would close, telling radioinfo.africa in a statement:
The South African Broadcasting Corporation has noted with concern the media reports claiming that the SABC management is closing down its radio services, particularly the African Language Stations. Also, reports that African Languages news bulletins on free-to-air television channels are being discontinued, are completely false.
The SABC dealt with similar allegations in November 2020 and would like to reiterate that there is no truth in these allegations. The public broadcaster is fully cognisant that millions of South Africans rely on its radio network as the only and most easily accessible source of public service content. On the contrary, the radio stations’ proposed structures are promoting and supporting the current needs of audiences, such as digital accessibility.
The SABC is committed to its public mandate of informing, educating and entertaining citizens in all official languages. The Corporation has growth strategies in place aimed at ensuring that its radio stations remain the leading source of public service content.
Further industrial action is planned.
