South Africa appeared eager to serve the factional interests of President Jacob Zuma and also seemed deeply compromised by the new board’s expressed desire to implement the SABC’s public service mandate. The media, especially the daily and weekly newspapers, have performed a sterling service for the country in publicising stories about state capture, corruption, abuse of power and questionable conduct of politicians and officials. She entered an appeal against the 17 October 2017 ground-breaking Gauteng (Pretoria) High Court judgement preventing her as minister from appointing and firing members of the SABC board. This judgement resulted in the board having court-sanctioned freedom to appoint its top executives, a right it had not enjoyed for more than a decade. The SOS Coalition also noted that the board and the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications were seeking closer cooperation with it on that mandate. Despite the inclusion in the board of several members with close ties to the ruling ANC party, it was seen to be operating in a united and independent manner. It removed from office the two top officials responsible for “the clique” and pursued through the courts the repayment of certain funds by them to help offset the R1 billion loss. It appointed four top executives and the appointment of the Group Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer were expected to follow. The board ceased to apply the editorial code adopted by the previous board, reverted to the code of 2004, and began a process of widespread public consultation to update itself in order to embrace the best principles of a free media. But the board was also grappling with a number of other issues which included: • The corporate behaviour of Multichoice, the main subscription TV service provider; • Questionable negotiations between the SABC and Multichoice over the former’s supply of its archive material to Multichoice; • A contract between Multichoice and the professionally deficient ANN7 TV news programme; and • An approach to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to reverse its regulation requiring the SABC to supply three of its free-to-air channels to Multichoice’s DSTV service free of charge. It argued that it was ultra vires the Electronic Communications Act which requires these channels to be carried “at commercially negotiated rates”. The financial consequences of bringing the So This is Democracy? 2017 91