Chair, I rise on behalf of the ANC to respond to this debate in the portfolio committee, which I must say I found tremendously amusing. It was very funny to see people who are usually conservative and staid trying to be militant and fighting to impress the gallery. They just do not succeed in those things. I want to tell you, hon members Kilian, Van den Berg and so on, that you should go to your other Cope members and get some lessons from them, because they are good with those things, they know how to be militant and how to speak to the gallery.
The procedure that we went through was in fact, if you actually followed it, a very enriching one. It took ages for us to go through everything; we found a list of candidates that we agreed upon, whom we wanted to interview, and many of them we agreed on as being very good candidates, and there are also some very good candidates who didn't make it, and obviously that is how the process works.
But you see, the joke of all of this - and this is why I say it's a joke - is that none of them, except our chairperson, referred to the criteria for the appointment of the board, because not a single speaker here that speaks against anyone could show, individually or as a collective, why the people that we appointed are not suitable. Not a single one of them. The only one who was mentioned is Prof Danny Titus, and he's been appointed to the SA Human Rights Commission, exactly because of the kind of respect we have for him, and because there wasn't space for him here. So, he's been given the space to do exactly those things.
On occasions like these, I think we should reflect, 15 years down the line, to see whether we are actually maturing as a democracy or not, because even in this process there are a lot of positive things to take out of it. I must tell you, however, that the opposition should actually start studying what it is to be an opposition. To be so immature - you're pretending to be the leader of such an immature group - and to handle this issue with such immaturity is really pathetic. Well, if we are obsessed with race, why is it that all the people that are not here, that you are fighting for are white? That's most of them, what you wanted were more whites here; don't tell me we're obsessed with race.
The fact of the matter is that we are in agreement, if you listen to the speeches, that we are facing a problem and a crisis with the SABC Board. It is one sick puppy at the moment: Firstly, we find, and I think we have agreement amongst probably most parties on this, that the model that exists at the moment, particularly in terms of the relationship between the board and the Minister or the board and Parliament is clearly one that is not correct, and that there should be a review of the model that we've got; and secondly, it has become very clear, and these are just allegations at this stage, that there are huge financial problems at the SABC. [Interjections.]
No, it's not under our management; it's under the management of the board. [Interjections.] Oh please, try to be intelligent when you talk, don't shout rubbish! [Laughter.] If that's the level of debate of your members, I wouldn't actually go very deep into their intelligence, if I were you.
Now, one would've thought that, if there was maturity, particularly ...