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Following reports that the department of social development had paid R500 000 to the SABC to conduct an interview with minister Bathabile Dlamini, the SABC has now admitted to breaching its own editorial policy and will no longer be invoicing the department for the interview.
The interview in question took place on SABC 3’s popular day time talk show, Real Talk with Anele, on December 7 last year, and the two-hour long broadcast looked at everything from Dlamini’s family life to her role as the minister.
The department, however, has denied accusations that paying the public broadcaster was out of the norm.
Speaking on 702’s breakfast show with Bongani Bingwa on Thursday morning, Dlamini’s spokesperson, Lumka Oliphant, told Bingwa that she had taken the decision to “buy space” based on the budget she received to promote the department to various media outlets.
“As a department I get a communications budget like any other person in communications and we transfer that money to GCIS [Government Communication and Information Systems] because they have a media buying unit,” she said.
Oliphant confirmed that R149 000 was paid for the interview, and not R500 000 as was initially reported.
Bingwa clarified that the money was not in fact paid to the show’s host, Anele Mdoda, but to the SABC.
“It couldn’t be paid [to her], she is just a presenter doing a show,” Oliphant explained.
Oliphant further explained that the show was meant to profile the minister “because no matter how many times we say she doesn’t drink, people say she drinks”.
The show also featured Oliphant in it.
Mdoda told News24 that the furore had nothing to do with her or her on-air team.
“It is commissioned by the SABC. I am the presenter. I have nothing to do with them.”
She said it was implied that she had got paid, which she said is “rubbish”.
“For them to insinuate I took money [to do the interview] is ludicrous. I have no dealings with what happens with the Department of Social Development or the SABC. I get a directive of who they would like on the show and that is who we research.”
The SABC owned the show, which she said focuses on personalities and their personal and family lives.
In a statement today, the SABC board said that it did not charge for interviews and that it was “a breach of organisation practice”.
“We do not solicit sponsorships for programmes where it is part of a marketing campaign to communicate a departmental or client programmes or policies,” the SABC said.
The SABC said that in order to ensure that no such thing happens again, it will be publishing the new draft editorial policy for public comment and that they were “conducting an ongoing review to ensure that our policies are complied with throughout our organisation”.
