The South African Communist Party (SACP) was insincere in its recent repeated calls against censorship and the leadership of South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) chief operations officer (COO) Hlaudi Motsoeneng,” Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane said on Thursday.

"To me, there has been a lot of hypocrisy here. I don’t buy, for one bit, what the SACP is saying. This thing has been going on for a long time and the journalists at the SABC have been speaking about this thing for a while. The SACP cannot be Johnny-come-latelies now and say this has not been their project," Maimane told reporters in Pretoria central.

"It has been a project of the alliance to capture the SABC for the purpose of giving better coverage to the ANC [African National Congress]. Our research shows that the ANC gets six times more coverage than any opposition party. It has become quite clear that the SABC has become captured to become a state broadcaster. The ANC must stop flip-flopping, lying to the people that they want an investigation. They must investigate themselves."

The SACP, together with the ruling African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, form the tripartite alliance.

Maimane also called for Motsoeneng to be suspended.

"He must now be suspended. He mustn’t learn his tricks of delaying, court action after court action from Jacob Zuma. There is a Public Protector finding against Hlaudi Motsoeneng. An independent inquiry must be brought into the SABC to investigate how much influence the people in the ANC have over Hlaudi Motsoeneng," said Maimane.

On Wednesday, the SACP picketed outside the SABC headquarters in Johannesburg, calling on the SABC board to step down and for the protection of suspended SABC workers.

Last month, the SACP also called on SABC bosses to "reverse their Draconian editorial policy, to refrain from changing policies without proper public consultation given that the SABC is a public broadcaster, and to respect workers’ rights".

At the same time, the SACP strongly criticised the "creation of a personality cult in the unlawfully appointed" Motsoeneng, saying it constituted a deeply worrying trend.

"The news this week that SABC economics editor Thandeka Gqubule, Radio Sonder Grense executive producer Foeta Krige, and senior journalist Suna Venter have been suspended for disagreeing with an instruction during a diary meeting not to cover a campaign protest against censorship at the public broadcaster is shocking to say the least," the SACP said in a statement.

"The suspensions follow a decision taken within the SABC, announced in May, that the broadcaster will no longer cover footage of violent protests in its news reporting.

"The suspensions clearly expose the Draconian character of the internal censorship that has been imposed at the SABC and manipulation of news from within," the SACP said.