The commission will hear testimony from SABC8 journalists Foeta Krige and Krivani Pillay. The journalists stood up to the public broadcaster against the censorship imposed by COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng and the capture of the newsroom. It will also hear testimony from Jonathan Thekiso, Mwaba Phiri and Lulama Mokhobo.

SABC head of news Phathiswa Magopeni told the state capture inquiry on Tuesday that she found a newsroom that was on "auto-pilot" when she was appointed to the position in March 2018.

"Getting into that environment I found decay, a serious state of decay. It was subdued, but you could sense that the kind of equilibrium companies would be hoping for is not the kind of equilibrium I found there," she said.

"There was something bubbling underneath. The newsroom was on auto-pilot."

Managers in the newsroom had no credibility among journalists.

Magopeni said the nature of the leadership there did not help journalists do what they  needed to do. "You had people who were supposed to lead the newsroom who were not trusted by journalists. They had no legitimacy or did not command the [necessary] authority to be trusted by journalists in the newsroom," Magopeni said.