Various media organisations concerned about the future of public broadcasting in South Africa have expressed their dismay at parliament’s decision to press ahead with the SABC Bill without any of the public hearings that had been scheduled for next month.

According to a revised committee schedule, “parliament is going to finalise a flawed and constitutionally suspect SABC Bill without public hearings”, Michael Markovitz, head of the Gibs Media Leadership Think Tank at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, posted on X on Monday.

“The bill addresses none of SABC’s core issues and will create more problems in this unseemly haste to pass it before elections.”

His conclusion is based on a portfolio committee on communications notice from 25 January scheduling “discussion and update on the written submissions received on the SABC Bill”. But discussion on the bill, set down for 8 March, makes no reference to the submissions made by various concerned parties.

In November, the SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition and Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) wrote to the portfolio committee calling for the bill to be scrapped based on their belief that it “offers no clarity, new mechanism or purpose”.

“Rather, it represents a rehash of old ideas with regressive notions and a reversal of significant gains in the independence and credibility of the SABC.”

The portfolio committee responded by calling for written submissions on the SABC Bill. SOS, MMA and the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) collectively made a submission on 16 January in which they expressed deep concerns regarding the bill. The organisations pointed out “a series of catastrophic and unconstitutional flaws” with the bill and said it should be withdrawn.

‘Shocking’

“It is imperative for a bill involving the public broadcaster that serves millions of South Africans to grant interested parties adequate time to formulate considered and well-informed representations; and provide more effective and accurate recommendations,” they said.

SOS and MMA reiterated their main concern that the bill is being rushed through and that failure to grant adequate time to all interested parties to review the bill will thoroughly compromise the constitutionality of the consultative process.

SOS national coordinator Uyanda Siyotula told TechCentral on Tuesday that the cancellation of public hearings into the bill is “shocking”.

Read: Public trust in the SABC takes another knock

“It was unexpected and very last minute – we had already booked flights and accommodation. Initially we thought that the cancellation meant that the bill would be dealt with after the elections, but we were wrong. The intention is to proceed without the public hearings. This is shocking given that the bill was passed by cabinet and introduced in parliament without any form of public participation (on the second iteration of the bill). We sent a letter to parliament as soon as we learnt about the cancellation.” Read the letter here (PDF).

The submissions were not simply critical of the drafting of the SABC Bill.

“A majority of the organisational submissions stated that the bill should not be passed in its current form, while ourselves (SOS, MMA and Sanef), Icasa and e.tv specifically called for the SABC Bill to be withdrawn by the minister or rejected in its entirely by parliament,” Siyotula said.

“The bottom line here is that the committee is indicating, clearly, that it has decided to dispense with public hearings on the SABC Bill, despite 17 written submissions having been received, many of them from key sector bodies,” she said.

“We would like to see the same level of urgency [by the department of communications] for the SABC Bill being given to the draft white paper [on audio-visual services], now 13 years overdue. It’s critical that we grapple with how to ensure we still have a public interest content provider that is fit for the digital age.

Read: ‘Catastrophic’ SABC Bill must be withdrawn

“In our view, the only reason for the rush is the need to try to push the bill through before the elections. And that is a huge red flag, particularly given the concerning provisions in it. This is appalling parliamentary practice and flies in the face of every stated commitment to transparency, accountability and independent public broadcasting. It will not stand,” Siyotula said.