SABC boss Dali Mpofu suspended news head Snuki Zikalala when he discovered the board was planning to appoint Zikalala to his position, the weekly Mail and Guardian reported on Friday.

The SABC board intended suspending Mpofu for insubordination and mismanagement and appointing Zikalala as acting CEO.

But Mpofu caught wind of their plans and suspended Zikalala to prevent this from happening, three unnamed sources told the weekly paper.

SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago told Sapa he had no knowledge of these rumours.

"The report is about what the SABC board were thinking to do, and I would not know anything about that," Kganyago said.

"There's not truth to that"

The Mail and Guardian did say that board chairperson Kanyi Mkonza declined to confirm the information it had gathered from inside sources.

"There's not truth to that," Mkonza said.

Zikalala also denied knowledge of this. "I don't know about that," he said. "I am relaxing and reading (Mark Gevisser's biography of Thabo Mbeki) A Dream Deferred."

Mkonza suspended Mpofu on Wednesday, saying he had failed to implement decisions of the board. This happened a day after Mpofu suspended Zikalala, the group executive of news and current affairs.

Meanwhile, the African National Congress parliamentary caucus said on Thursday that the National Assembly would debate a motion of no confidence in the SABC board on 22 May.

The internal politics at the public broadcaster have intensified since the election of new African National Congress leadership at Polokwane in December, with management and board members aligned to different factions within the ruling party.

Sapa