When we talk about any one of our state-owned enterprises that have struggled to emerge from the weight of the governance challenges of their most recent past, I often get lost in the amount of billions that these institutions need to be restructured or bailed out.
Set against a backdrop of a faltering economy for close to a decade - an entire generation - the numbers are astounding and point to just how many wrong turns the many boardrooms have made in a period where we’ve lost much of the swagger and confidence of a much earlier time.
In their fealty to their political principals, the different men and women that took control of state-owned institutions such as SABC ran them according to prescripts set outside their hallways. In their most "exalted" of service, the wellbeing of the institution and the thousands of staff employed were all but secondary.