The SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition and other activist media organisations have voiced their concern at the abrupt cancellation of public hearings on the SABC Bill in parliament.

Public hearings on the bill were scheduled for 22 to 23 February but were postponed just days before.

The SOS Coalition made a joint submission – with Media Monitoring Africa and the South African National Editors’ Forum – to the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications & digital technologies in January about “problematic provisions” in the bill and called for its withdrawal.

Three letters of support, as well as 17 submissions highlighting questionable aspects of the bill, including from the SABC itself, were submitted to parliament. Communications regulator Icasa and free-to-air broadcaster e.tv also called for its withdrawal.

The committee has since responded to a chorus of industry complaints by saying: “Given all the public submissions, the committee … decided to consult our legal service to provide some advice on whether the SABC Bill will still be viable to be processed in its current form, given some serious concerns on the current draft.”

Fatally flawed

But SOS national coordinator Uyanda Siyotula said it “remains unclear when this legal advice will be tabled before the committee”. The coalition considers the bill fatally flawed for at least two reasons:

Firstly, it is being hurried through parliament in a policy vacuum. A draft white paper on audio-visual services has not yet been finalised and the lack of an established policy framework raises concerns about the hasty advancement of the bill.
Secondly, the bill fails to address a crucial aspect for the public broadcaster – its funding. Instead of presenting a concrete funding model, the bill merely mentions the development of a funding framework within three years of its enactment. “This falls short of providing a sustainable funding model, given that the SABC needs immediate financial intervention,” the SOS Coalition said.

Editorial independence at the SABC has also taken a step backwards, as the proposed bill states that the broadcaster’s editor-in-chief will no longer be the executive responsible for news and current affairs, but rather the corporation’s CEO. This merging of editorial and management responsibilities is a significant concern and goes against the principles of editorial independence, according to SOS.

Read: Alarm at move to ‘push through’ SABC Bill

This situation is reminiscent of the time when Hlaudi Motsoeneng was in charge at the SABC, it warned.

During Motsoeneng’s tenure, editorial decisions were often made by management, leading, for example, to the censoring of news content related to protests over lack of service delivery during the 2016 local government election.

SOS and other media organisations believe that the SABC Bill will take the public broadcaster backwards and have insisted that it be withdrawn.

According to Business Day on Tuesday, the SABC has developed a five-year strategy to allow it to “go it alone”, without any support from government.

Citing board chairman Khathutshelo Ramukumba, who addressed parliament last week, the newspaper said the new strategy assumes that the SABC can generate enough income to inform the public— at a cost of about R2-billion/year —in all official languages. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media