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The revelation that the SABC news and current affairs division has been selling space to the ANC government at provincial and national level - particularly, on the programmes Morning Live, Interface and several radio shows - is cause for serious concern. Indeed, we do not yet know the extent of the problem. Were it to be discovered that, say, the BBC was selling space on its news and current affairs shows to the government of the day, it would no doubt bring down that administration and see the dismissal of those senior executives at the broadcaster responsible for that situation. Those responsible for this unethical abuse of public money must now account for their actions. We regard this matter as extremely serious, and thus I will be undertaking the following:

• I will be writing to the Auditor-General, to request an urgent and special investigation into this matter; such an investigation should look at the SABC's expenditure over the last five to ten years.
• I will be writing to the Chairperson of the portfolio committee to call before it the SABC CEO and the senior managers in charge of news and current affairs; and
• I shall be submitting a fall raft of parliamentary questions, to determine every incidence in which this has happened.

In the interim, the key question which the SABC needs to answer is the following: how much of taxpayer's money has been spent on advertising the ANC government. What is the figure?

This was public money, the public has a right to know.

It is one thing attempting to bring the SABC under the ANC's control through cadre deployment (the recently leaked SABC board memorandum on chairperson Ben Ngubane makes the allegation that he was receiving instructions directly from the Presidency), but that desire for control takes its true form when the public broadcaster willingly uses shows which are ostensibly objective, to further the agenda of the ruling party, at a price.

The SABC should be ashamed.

Instead, the response from SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago is as schizophrenic as it is unprincipled. Consider the following two quotes from Mr. Kganyago:

Yesterday in Cape Times:

"[Selling news space] happens in current affairs programmes like Morning Live and Interface, but news is news. We also have ones on radio."

Yesterday in an SABC statement:

"As a matter of fact and policy, SABC News does not charge for the coverage of News and Current Affairs."

Well, which is it?

This kind of doubletalk only digs a deeper hole (and, given the size of the hole the SABC was in even before this latest debacle, they must be at the bottom of a deep level mining shaft by now).

Here, then, are the facts:

• The DA can confirm, and has provided substantiating documentary evidence, that the SABC offered to give coverage to the Western Cape Provincial government on its flagship news programme, Interface, for R217 756, 8. The Western Cape Provincial Government declined the proposal on ethical grounds. We do not know how many other provinces agreed to the same request, but the SABC indicated that several had.
• The SABC has confirmed that other news and current affairs shows, on television and radio, have also sold space to the ANC government. We know definitely about one - Morning Live - but we do not know the conditions or cost to the taxpayer. The SABC has indicated that it also happens on radio. We do not know the shows, the conditions or the cost.

Importantly, all of this has a context: the SABC is in dire financial straits and has been for some time - as the SABC indicated in its meeting with the Western Cape. Repeatedly it has had to be bailed-out, at huge cost to the tax-payer (it was recently awarded a bailout of more than R1-billion by National Treasury). So it cannot manage the money it has already been allocated.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Minister of Communications revealed in May this year that ANC-run municipalities owed the SABC more than R5m for advertising, and at least R4,5m of that amount is more than three months overdue, including monies spent on positive spin inserts on SABC news programmes.

In other words, the financially bankrupt and the morally bankrupt have come together in a perfect storm of poor governance and unprincipled behaviour. And the combination is to the detriment of the public.

That the SABC is now sacrificing its journalistic integrity and further sabotaging its standing in the public eye is reprehensible and reveals the ANC's 2007 Polokwane Resolution - to ‘encourage the SABC to promote local content consistent with the values of the ANC?' - for what it really is.

Someone must be held to account. The A-G must investigate, the communications portfolio must interrogate and the SABC must provide answers. The DA will fight to make sure this happens.