By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Former South African Broadcasting Cooperation (SABC) board chairperson Ellen Zandile Tshabalala has died after long illness on Saturday.
Her family confirmed she died after a long illness due to kidney problems.
“It was a long illness, and it was the culmination of a disease she had called DVT [deep vein thrombosis], which led to complications later in life and Covid-19 compounded it and it led to kidney failure,” her family said.
Tshabalala made headlines while chairing the SABC board from 2013 to 2014.
She left the board under a cloud of controversy when a parliamentary inquiry found she had not obtained a B.Com degree from Unisa, a qualification she included when interviewed for the board chairperson position.
On her CV Tshabalala claimed that she had a Diploma in Labour Relations from UNISA and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from UNISA.
University of South Africa confirmed that even though Tshabalala had registered for a BCom degree in 1988, and again in 1996, she failed to obtain the qualification. According to Unisa records, she had also registered for a diploma in labour relations in 1995.
During the academic year, she passed two, failed two and did not write exams for two of the modules. In January 1996, she was allowed to rewrite the two she could not write the previous year. She obtained a mark of 13% for her human resources module and 35% for labour relations. Unisa then wrote to Tshabalala informing her that she had not qualified to redo the course.
Tshabalala faced two charges of misconduct in the inquiry: one for claiming she had obtained the two qualifications on her CV when she applied for the job as SABC chairperson, the other relating to an affidavit she submitted to Parliament stating that her qualifications had been stolen during a burglary at her home.
The committee found Tshabalala guilty of two counts of misconduct, which eventually led to her resignation.
She was 64.