by Thinus Ferreira
South Africa's cabinet has approved a bizarre SABC Bill which calls for the creation of a second SABC - a commercial entity complete with its own board appointed by the minister - while shockingly retaining the SABC TV Licence regime with no specifics about replacing it with a so-called household levy.
The SABC Bill approved by cabinet late last week for submission to parliament, is supposed to replace the Broadcasting Act of 1999 to help the embattled South African public broadcaster to more effectively compete and survive in today's fast-changing broadcasting and media landscape.
Instead, the bizarre bill appears cobbled together with non-sensical language, outdated and misguided ideas for a public broadcaster and effectively spinning off the SABC's existing but troubled commercial enterprises in a whole new company with its own board, not appointed by parliament but an "independent panel" and the minister of communications.
As bizarre is the retention of the SABC TV Licence regime in the bill.
With only 13% of TV households on the SABC's database still paying an annual TV Licence fee and with government repeatedly saying it plans to replace it with a household levy, the SABC Bill makes no mention of a household levy and instead retains the existing SABC TV Licence system.
Marked "secret" the SABC Bill calls for the creation of a second SABC - a "commercial company" as a subsidiary of the SABC, complete with its own "commercial board".
The SABC currently has commercial services in the form of radio stations and TV channels like 5FM and SABC3, but instead of these being money-spinners and making revenue to support the SABC's public service mandate, it's the public services like SABC1 and SABC2 forced to support and pay to keep SABC3 on the air.
The plan is to move the SABC's existing but struggling commercial services into its own entity where it will presumably suddenly perform and be managed better to create revenue for the SABC.
According to the bill, this second commercial SABC will "commission a significant amount of their programming from the independent sector" and "be operated in an efficient manner so as to maximise the revenues provided" to the SABC.
While the SABC Bill was supposed to cut down on the expenses of the SABC board, it envisions the creation of a second board for the commercial SABC.
Where the public nominates, parliament oversees and interviews and the president appoints the members of the SABC board, the second SABC's board of nine additional people will be appointed by a so-called "independent selection panel consisting of five people" who then appoint this second board "in consultation with the minister", effectively sidestepping the public and parliament.
TV Licence staying put
While the SABC's current funding model is broken, with the broadcaster having made another R1.13 billion annual loss and unable to fulfill its public mandate, the SABC Bill kicks the can down the road to urgently rectify the broadcaster's funding crisis.
Instead of a replacement for the SABC TV Licence and any detailed plan for a household levy, the bill retains the SABC TV Licence system for South Africa.
The SABC Bill states that the minister of communications, currently Mondli Gungubele, must only come up with a replacement funding model for the SABC in three year's time.
The government should "within three years after the commencement of this Act, develop a funding
model framework to ensure that the majority of the SABC's funding is sourced from the state-based funding mechanisms" the SABC Bill says.
However, "before establishing the funding model framework", the department of communications must first "develop a comprehensive and relevant feasibility study to inform a clear business case for the SABC's funding model in consultation with the minister of finance".
