{"id":147091,"date":"2016-12-11T10:33:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T08:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=147091"},"modified":"2016-12-11T10:33:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T08:33:43","slug":"how-motsoeneng-sold-the-sabc-for-a-massive-bonus-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/147091\/how-motsoeneng-sold-the-sabc-for-a-massive-bonus-report\/","title":{"rendered":"How Motsoeneng sold the SABC for a massive bonus – report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hlaudi Motsoeneng \u201csold the SABC for a R30 million bonus\u201d, according to an investigation by the City Press<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

SABC and MultiChoice staff \u2013 who worked on a channel and archive footage deal between the two companies \u2013 said the deal was all about\u00a0set-top box policy.<\/p>\n

MultiChoice would pay the SABC R553 million over five years for two new channels on DStv. Motsoeneng earned an alleged R33-million bonus for orchestrating the deal, stated the report.<\/p>\n

The report of the motives behind the deal emerged as part of parliament\u2019s inquiry into\u00a0the fitness of the SABC board to hold office, and an investigation\u00a0by the newspaper.<\/p>\n

Set-top box control<\/h3>\n

\u201c17\u00a0sources and experts within SABC and MultiChoice told City Press the deal was structured around the control of set-top boxes,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Clause 7 of the MultiChoice contract deals with\u00a0set-top box control, but the SABC would not provide details on what the deal meant for the country\u2019s broadcast landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis matter is before the Competition Commission and is being dealt with there,\u201d said\u00a0SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago. MultiChoice denied claims the deal was about control of set-top boxes.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the original deal was for a 24-hour SABC News channel on DStv. The plan was put on hold after its inception, but\u00a0Motsoeneng picked it up during his time as COO and \u201cunlawfully signed\u201d the contract.<\/p>\n

The deal also gave MultiChoice control of the SABC\u2019s archive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire contract \u2013 even payment in terms of the contract \u2013 was subject to MultiChoice\u2019s preferred set-top box control, which is unencrypted,\u201d stated the report.<\/p>\n

The deal stated that SABC content broadcast\u00a0on \u201cdigital TV\u201d will be available on unencrypted\u00a0set-top boxes.<\/p>\n

This went against the government\u2019s original plan to provide South Africans with \u201csmart boxes\u201d, which would be\u00a0encrypted.\u00a0The state\u2019s set-top box policy was then\u00a0changed by Communications Minister Faith Muthambi in 2014.<\/p>\n

Final\u00a0amendments to the MultiChoice deal state that\u00a0should the SABC\u00a0change its encryption policy,\u00a0MultiChoice can distribute what \u201cit had already broadcast\u201d of the SABC News and SABC Encore channels.<\/p>\n

The full report is available in the Sunday Times of 11 December 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hlaudi Motsoeneng \u201csold the SABC for a R30 million bonus\u201d, according to an investigation by the City Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":146703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-147091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-active"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147093,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147091\/revisions\/147093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}