by Thinus Ferreira
South African organisations are once again calling for the withdrawal of the fatally flawed SABC Bill.
The completely irrelevant and disastrous SABC Bill proposes the creation of a second SABC with a separate board appointed by a minister and is filled with other failure prescripts.
This SABC Bill has become a point of in-fighting between South Africa's minister of communications who is from the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party and ordered it withdrawn in November 2024.
Then there is Khusela Diko who is from the African National Congress (ANC) political party and is doggedly fighting that the SABC Bill should go ahead and be processed in her role as chairperson of parliament's portfolio committee on communications.
After having done so previously, the SOS Coalition, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), The South African Editors' Forum (Sanef), and the Campaign for Free Expression (CFE) are all once again calling for the withdrawal of the SABC Bill.
It's not just these civic organisations that have repeatedly said and explained why the SABC Bill is bad and not workable - so has the industry.
The organisations have written to the speaker of parliament, South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as parliament's portfolio committee on communications to explain and emphasise "the importance of the separation of powers doctrine and
respecting due process".
"After months of advocacy for the withdrawal of the SABC Bill, SOS, MMA, Sanef and CFE
welcomed the decision by Solly Malatsi, minister of communications and digital technologies, to withdrawn the bill," they say.
"However, we are now deeply disappointed by the prolonged
delay on the part of the speaker of parliament in gazetting the withdrawal of the SABC Bill and
ongoing unlawful, unconstitutional interference by the cabinet in the withdrawal of the Bill."
"Solly Malatsi followed due
process by formally notifying the speaker of the National Assembly in writing about his
withdrawal of the Bill. The speaker must gazette the withdrawal of the SABC Bill and has no authority to
overrule the minister's decision."
"We urge the speaker, the committee and the cabinet to respect the separation of powers
doctrine and proceed with the formal gazetting of the SABC Bill's withdrawal in line with the
Constitution and the rules of the National Assembly as any continued deliberation of the
SABC Bill by the committee and parliament in general would be unlawful."
