Jimmy mathews can not be glorified as a hero, He has proven that there are some of the leaders in the public entities who have low self esteem, He has failed at SABC because of his own weaknesses.
Mathews engineered his own demise, and is an epitome of a leader who lost confidence in himself. He began to think that controlling his subordinates and telling them what to do was impossible. He gave in to political influence and fell victim to his own demise. Truth be told, there will always be people who would try to influence editorial policy in the SABC but it would take Madonsela's guts to deal with such challanges. There will always be underground forces, as a seasoned journalist he knew it before hand but could not formulate the action plan to counter and lay down the law.
Mathews can blame circumstance and other people, but it is completely or largely his own fault. It is really nice to subscribe to the victim culture, where nothing is your fault because everything that was done to you was out of your control. Blame your politically connected subordinate for keeping you down or blame your inefficient weak dog for letting criminals break into your house. but remember good people that he was an active participant in his own failure.
"Certain individuals in the ruling party including people like Hlaudi were of the view that we should not be giving Julius and his crowd
coverage‚" He added: "I should have said ‘no that's ridiculous’ certainly‚ with the growing popularity
around the 2014 elections and if anything the EFF is out of all the political parties probably the masters of the media so we should have given them a lot more coverage… That is one of the decisions I was part of and from a
journalistic point of view is unjustified."-Mathews
Hlaudi and "certain individuals in the ruling party" would not be able to dictate without someone to dictate to. Mathews should have shown who is the boss, it comes with the territory. They rather fire you or bad mouth you for doing the right thing. By letting them dictate what must be aired he actually partake in the censorship and must accept the
result.
According to a research an upward bullying has some health impacts. In the questionnaire managers indicated a number of personal impacts, such as intention to leave or leaving the workplace, not wanting to go to work, or a loss of confidence. ( https:// bullyinworkplace.com/2012/08/03/when-bosses-are-bullied/)
One can deduce that Hlaudi Motsoneng made his boss’s
life miserable to a point where he called it quit. I believe bussines meetings were power struggles that hinge on games meant to humiliate one another.
Matthews never lived and led with
courage and conviction in the sabc. He was afraid to do the right thing, even when the right thing was not popular or easy. He should have made decisions based on his core
values, and show the world that
He can not be bought. His decision were influenced as an outcome because he never had courage to stand up and put his foot down. As a result the consequences are detrimental to everyone in the country.
Nonetheless, he must be commended for coming back to his senses and diging deep to his core values before it was too late. He has done the right thing by resigning, I hope the predecessor will not fall in the same pit!