Jeremy Maggs, the veteran broadcaster and journalist, has stepped down as the acting editor-in-chief at eNCA, it was announced on Tuesday.
News24 quoted Maggs as saying: ‘This has not been an easy decision, but for the past few months the stressful nature of the job has caused me to re-evaluate both my position at the station and my life choices. I’ve been stressed and unwell for some time and I’ve made this decision in my own best interests and that of the station.’
Maggs would reportedly stay on as the anchor of the evening news programme, SA Tonight.
This isn’t the first high-profile change in the channel’s management team. In December last year, Kanthan Pillay was sacked as the head of news at eNCA. He had been criticised after tweeting that a former eNCA colleague who was leaving for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Samkele Maseko, was a ‘rat’ leaving for a ‘sinking ship’. Many on Twitter accused Pillay of racism for calling Maseko a ‘rat’. There were also alleged complaints about Pillay’s management style and that he had censored journalists. Pillay was also one of the founders of the Capitalist Party of South Africa which stood in the 2019 election.