Aguma must be suspended after he lied to Parliament about the Hlaudi press briefing
17 May 2017
The DA calls on the SABC interim Board to immediately suspend James Aguma, as Acting GCEO of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and its permanent CFO for lying to Parliament.
Earlier today, the Deputy Chairperson of the SABC board, Mathatha Tsedu, revealed that Aguma admitted in an affidavit to giving permission to Hlaudi Motsoeneng to host his infamous press conference denigrating the SABC on 19 April 2017.
Yet, when I asked Aguma, on 26 April 2017 at a meeting of the Communications Portfolio committee, why he allowed Hlaudi to conduct the press conference, he claimed that he had no knowledge of it, that he was in fact in a meeting at the time and could therefore not prevent it.
Aguma's admission in an affidavit that he did, in fact, know about the press conference, and in fact gave his permission as Acting GCEO for it to go ahead, is proof that he lied to Parliament at the time, and may have also been lying to the SABC interim Board.