Mampone has been barricaded in his office since last week, with access being provided only to replace the batteries on his DSTV remote.

“It took five hours for it to dawn on him that he had been barricaded in,” a protest leader who cannot be named in the media despite the fact that he is a prominent media personality said. “He only realised it when he tried to leave his office to go to the Executive kitchen to microwave his lunch.”

Mampone has been blamed for many of the financial woes of the broadcaster, which is seeking a R10bn government bailout. He has declined to accept any blame, citing a decline in advertising sales as being the source of the crisis. Prior to his current role Mampone had been head of Advertising Sales, “an irony which seems to have escaped him” said the named source who cannot be named.

For the past year the public broadcaster has lurched from leadership crisis to leadership crisis. Former CEO Dali Mpofu was suspended, re-instated, suspended, re-instated and then re-instated for a second time as frantic human resources officials battled to keep up with a series of conflicting directives. It seems that he presently appears on the payroll as “Archive Librarian” in a compromise move.

Meanwhile a High court order this week overturned a previous Board decision to suspend Mpofu. It is unclear, however, which of several such decisions had been overturned and what affect this would have on Mampone’s future. When asked, SABC Spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said that Mampone would continue Acting as the broadcaster fell back on internal resources to keep its daily soap operas on air. It is widely expected that Mampone was due to temporarily take on the role of “Fanie” in the popular daily soap 7de Laan from next week.

“Right now we have two CEOs and no actors, so it makes sense to redeploy Mr Mampone into an Acting acting role,” Kganyago said.

Mampone could be reached for comment on his cellphone yesterday, but he had nothing interesting to say.

“Why should we all be getting so worked up about a virus that is making pigs ill? It’s all been exaggerated by the media who would like us to believe that it is spreading from pigs to humans,” Duarte fumed at a junior journalist who had stumbled across her in the ladies’ room at the Union Buildings. “By focusing on this alleged “outbreak”, they are attempting to fill their pages with nonsense, leaving no room for coverage of our President’s inauguration,” she continued.

Conducting their interview in front of the recently shined mirrors, Duarte confirmed to the journalist that she would be taking “whatever steps are necessary” to ensure that the media focus their energies on the inauguration instead of, what she called, the “alleged pandemic”.

Steps being debated by the NEC include declaring the virus a hoax; getting the health minister to recommend fruit juice as a cure; and inviting former President Thabo Mbeki to head up a special medical commission that will investigate, and then declare non-existent, the link between the virus and people dying from it.

“Our struggle is being undermined by counter-revolutionaries in the media who just want to peddle misinformation and sell newspapers,” she said, citing radio and television stations as being the worst culprits, but failing to explain why they would want to sell newspapers.

As she stormed out the ladies’ room Duarte had time for one more comment at the now-scrubbed journalist: “We’re not taking this lying down,” she intoned. “ANC President Jacob Zuma is about to become everyone’s President and nothing can stop him. Not even sick pigs.”