SABC journalists fired: Fair or not?

According to Kruger, the ruling strengthens Solidarity’s case to be heard by the Labour Court tomorrow (with regards to the journalists fired by the SABC).

“We are taking [the SABC] to Labour Court and we will fight them with everything we have,” he said.

The effect of the agreement, which was made an order of the court, is that the SABC will, meanwhile, have to adhere to the Icasa (Independent Communications Authority of SA) ruling – lifting its censorship ban – until either the Helen Suzman Foundation launched a further application to review the legality of the SABC’s censorship policy or until another court, such as the Constitutional Court, had spoken the final word.

Some journalists were charged after sending a letter to Motsoeneng objecting to the direction the public broadcaster had taken. “The trade union will now also amend its appeals to court, also requesting that the decision to dismiss the journalists be set aside as a matter of urgency”.

The Helen Suzman Foundation had taken it to court amid the SABC’s decision this week to fire seven of its eight journalists who have spoken out against the revised editorial policy. “We’ll ask that. [the sanctions] can not proceed because the policy has not had an opportunity to be scrutinised by the court”.

They are joined by an eighth‚ suspended SABC staffer Vuyo Mvoko‚ who had not been informed by Tuesday whether his contract had been cancelled‚ reported Business Day.

“Although not privy to the merits and demerits of the cases, resignations and dismissals of employees are a reason for concern, especially in a country with high levels of unemployment”.

Gqubule, Krige and Venter were served suspension letters after they disagreed with an instruction during a diary conference not to cover the Right2Know campaign’s protest against censorship at the SABC. Van der Bijl said Solidarity would consult its legal team, and could lay a personal cost claim against the SABC’s chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng. This caused outrage from civil society and media organisations.

The SABC has told Icasa that it will abide by the authority’s ruling that it should reverse a policy to ban showing footage of “violent protests” on its news channels.