The solution to the crisis facing the state broadcaster lies in addressing its own financial inefficiency and confronting years of mismanagement, not in requesting yet more aid from the state, nor retrenching hundreds of staff.

The escalating crisis playing out at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), specifically with regard to the imminent retrenchment of hundreds of members of staff and their pleas to the president to intervene, is reason enough for the SABC and the Minister of Communications to finally get their act together.

Last year, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) called for a debate of urgent national importance in the National Assembly of Parliament. We suggested that retrenchments should be the last step and could possibly be avoided if the public broadcaster fixed its finances. Our calls, together with those of many other political parties, appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

It is not rocket science and it does not require an accountant to follow the money to see that the SABC is sitting on its own solutions.

For example, the SABC spent nearly R1.2-million on 100 bulletproof vests for its journalists - a purchase that Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams defended when asked by...