But Media Monitoring Africa’s (MMA) Thandi Smith has described Mbalula’s behaviour as unacceptable, saying he failed to follow due process.

“It shows a consistent push for the ruling party to interfere in the public broadcaster and we seeing this time and time again. We were at the brink of launching an urgent application at the Constitutional Court just a few days ago around these issues, that was just at a governance and accountability level.

“The minute you start seeing sort of interference  from political parties at an editorial level that becomes even more of a challenge and risk. As MMA we will be monitoring coverage, not only of the SABC, but of all news media throughout the election period and if we do pick up and any insists of bias coverage or unfair coverage, we will be following the correct compliant mechanisms.”

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