Sanef condemns ‘ill-timed’ SSA attempts to ‘vet’ SABC news boss

City Press reported on Sunday that the State Security Agency (SSA) has sought to subject Monare to another round of vetting two years after he assumed office as the group executive for news and current affairs at the public broadcaster.

Sanef's Reggy Moalusi said the move undermines the fundamental principles of media, editorial independence, and freedom of the press.

"It can't be that a head of news is targeted in this manner a month before the elections. We don’t understand why they want to vet him again; he has been vetted before. So, we call on the presidency and the board to act quickly so that we see a stop to this vetting and allow Moshoeshoe to focus on work that's critical for the SABC news department."

The news report comes a week after an audio leak from the governing party, the African National Congress, where Cyril Ramaphosa can be heard lamenting negative reporting in the media.

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In its statement on Monday, Sanef said that while the SABC may be deemed critical infrastructure, in terms of the Critical Infrastructure Act, the act focused on vetting security personnel and not journalists.

"While parliament did not accede to our requests during deliberations on the Bill that SABC journalists were to be specifically excluded, it is clear from the definition and aims of the Act that journalists are not included and that vetting is for security personnel only," the statement read.

In 2021, the same publication reported that the ANC accused the SABC of failing to cover some of its election activities in the lead-up to the local government polls.

At the time, the party’s then-head of elections, Fikile Mbalula,  blasted the public broadcaster for "clamping down" on ANC events.

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Moalusi said the association of the latest developments at the SABC to the governing party was concerning.

"As South Africans, we are saying when it will end that there is interference at the SABC's news department, with the work that they do, particularly from the governing party and other political parties during this time towards elections. Why can't the SABC be allowed to do its work like any other broadcaster?

"We can't normalise this and say because, during the municipal elections, the ANC was unhappy with a service delivery show that the SABC did. That's journalism, journalists go out and get stories from the ground and tell those stories, and that's what we expect the SABC will do."

The SABC has refused to comment on the reports.