SABC acting chief executive officer Jimi Matthews has resigned from the public broadcaster with immediate effect, saying he can no longer be complicit in the way it is run.
"What is happening at the SABC is wrong and I can no longer be part of it," Matthews said in his resignation letter, in which he also tendered an apology to those who felt he had betrayed sound journalistic principle in recent months.
"For many months I have compromised the values that I hold dear under the mistaken belief that I could be more effective inside the SABC than outside," the veteran journalist said in a letter he posted on Twitter.
"In the process the prevailing, corrosive atmosphere has impacted negatively on my moral judgment and has made me complicit in many decisions which I am not proud of.
"I wish also to apologise to the many people who I’ve let down by remaining silent when my voice needed to be heard."
Matthews’s resignation comes days after he submitted a court affidavit in the long-running legal battle surrounding SABC chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
In it, he argued that the SABC could not afford to lose Motsoeneng’s "rare" skills should a high court ruling which invalidated his appointment in 2014 be allowed to stand.
Earlier last week, Matthews in an answering affidavit to the complaint brought to the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) over the SABC’s decision to no longer air footage of violent protest, defended it as being consistent with constitutional law.
He argued that the protests were criminal and that it was unnecessary to dispatch journalists as the events were already being captured by police photographers.
– African News Agency (ANA)
