The chickens have come home to roost for the SABC's top stooges.

The chickens have come home to roost for the SABC's top stooges.

Dali Mpofu, the jingoistic chief executive and editor-in- chief, was so devastated by Jacob Zuma's trouncing of Thabo Mbeki for the presidency of the ANC that he told colleagues he is planning to resign.

Arch Mbeki propagandist Snuki Zikalala and sycophantic political reporters Sophie Mokoena and Miranda Strydom wailed out loud in the SABC's makeshift studios in Turfloop. Thandanani Dlamini, producer of Morning Live, joined them in the funereal weep-fest.

There is a lesson here: journalists should be fiercely independent and not allow themselves to be used as propagandists for any cause.

This is especially true of such an important entity as the SABC, which under the Mpofu-Zikalala regime betrayed its mandate as a public broadcaster to become a propaganda tool for Mbeki's government and ANC faction.

No surprise then that the SABC has become the turf for a bitter power struggle between Mbeki's government and a Zuma-led ANC.

This is typical of banana republics, where politicians try to control the media and public thought. But we are not a banana republic and the ANC is supposed to be more sophisticated than that.

We hope common sense will prevail and that politicians will leave journalism to journalists - and vice versa.