Communications minister Ayanda Dlodlo says she doesn't understand why SABC sold its archives to MultiChoice and that the controversial deal makes no sense.

South Africa's new communications minister Ayanda Dlodlo says she is shocked that the SABC allegedly sold the public broadcaster's archives to pay-TV operator MultiChoice in Hlaudi Motsoeneng's controversial deal, that she doesn't understand how it could happen and that it makes no sense.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ayanda Dlodlo says "I'm not even sure what the relationship is" between MultiChoice and the SABC.

She's talking about the highly contentious and controversial deal the SABC's former chief operating officer (COO) Hlaudi Motsoeneng signed in which the SABC provides the SABC News (DStv 404) and shoddily-run SABC Encore (DStv 156) channel with old rerun library series to DStv.

"From where I sit, the archives of the SABC are the arhives of the South African nation. My gut response is that I cannot understand how we could hand over the archives of a national asset to a private entity which is also your chief competitor," said Ayanda Dlodlo.

"On the face of it I don't see how it makes sense. I really don't."

Asked if she's going to undo the MultiChoice SABC deal, Ayanda Dlodlo says "I would first have to see what the terms and conditions of that are."

Asked if Ayanda Dlodlo is going to withdraw the controversial Broadcasting Amendment Bill, she said "I don't know. I haven't gone through the bill. I've been asking for a copy and I'm still waiting."

Minister of communications Faith Muthambi launches into a shocking tirade against South African media, slams them for 'mission to paint this government as corrupt'.

The minister of communications, Faith Muthambi, launched into a shocking tirade on Friday in parliament, unleashing a scathing attack on South Africa's media and journalists, accusing them of an agenda against the ANC government and hyping up a corrupt and helpless government.

Delivering her communications budget speech in parliament on Friday, Faith Muthambi unleashed a barrage of criticism against South Africa's media, slamming them for an agenda against the ANC government and accusing the media that "racist tendencies also play a role" in reporting.

"To sell, media houses' main mission is to paint this government as corrupt, helpless and inept," Faith Muthambi told members of parliament, saying that South African media "would rather focus on scandalising government, even if that means not getting all the facts right".

"It could also be argued that racist tendencies also play a role in stigmatising this black government led by the ANC," she said.

"It has now become common cause that the independence and professionalism of many journalists is now measured on how ruthless their reporting can be about this ANC-led government," said Faith Muthambi.

In her new Broadcasting Amendment Bill Faith Muthambi wants to reduce the number of SABC non-executive board members from 12 to just 9 and take away the National Assembly's role of selecting, interviewing and recommending the appointment of the SABC board.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) political party's Phumzile van Damme said Faith Muthambi was running a propaganda department and wants to return South Africa to apartheid and state control of media.

"The white regime appointed the board members of the SABC and determined its editorial policy. Sound familiar minister?"

"The drafters of the Constitution intended this never to happen again. Because the ANC is under pressure at the polls the government now seeks to exert full control over South Africa's public broadcasting and print media".

Right2Know Campaign: 'Woefully incompetent' Hlaudi Motsoeneng placing SABC at risk of running aground; 'those in charge at SABC no friends of press freedom'.

The Right2Know Campaign says the SABC's "woefully incompetent" Hlaudi Motsoeneng is placing the South African public broadcaster at risk of running aground, criticising the SABC for its low-quality programming and warning that the proposed new Broadcasting Amendment Bill threatens to destroy what is left of the independence of the SABC.

In a statement on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May, the South African civil society group that supports freedom of expression and citizens and the media's access to information cautions that "the recently introduced Broadcasting Amendment Bill threatens to undermine the independence of the SABC, giving the minister of communications greater power over the SABC board".

The Right2Know Campaign slams the SABC's controversial and famously matricless chief operating officer (COO) Hlaudi Motsoeneng, saying his "every ham-fisted move" is putting the once proud SABC at risk.

"Those in charge at the SABC have revealed themselves to be no friends of press freedom, with the broadcaster' conceited yet woefully incompetent and scandal prone COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, demanding 70% of stories aired to be positive."

"With his every ham-fisted move, our once proud SABC that was a flagship of transformation is more at risk of running aground and reverting to a state mouthpiece."

"Political interference, maladministration and self-censorship have had a crippling effect and have meant that the SABC is increasingly unable to deliver high quality programming and news that reflects a plurality of views, is fair, accurate and independent of government and commercial interests."

The Right2Know Campaign says South Africa's media "needs more diversity" and that "the country's massive inequalities are replicated in media consumption."

"While the middle class have a rich media experience and access to a wide range of local and international media on a variety of ever-improving platforms, those in poor rural parts of the country may have to make do with just a local language SABC radio station at best."

"The migration to digital TV has the potential to transform South Africa's media because many more TV channels available could add to diversity of content and ownership."

"However Icasa (the regulator) wants to give two-thirds (66%) of the channels to the private sector. The SABC has been given a quarter of the channels (25%)."

"The SABC does not have the resources to produce all these extra public interest channels and is likely to run them as profitable partnerships with the private sector. ICASA's proposed privatisation of the airwaves will see only 5% of stations being community non-profit."

"Commercial stations will compete for existing advertising funds. There will be less advertising to go around so we can expect to see many re-runs, old shows and low budget American productions," says the Right2Know Campaign.

40th BIRTHDAY: South African television marks its 40th anniversary today since the first nationwide TV broadcast of the SABC on 5 January 1976.

You're reading it here first.

Television in South Africa turns 40 years old today with the SABC TV service that marks its 40th anniversary since the very first nationwide broadcast on 5 January 1976 when Dorianne Berry and Heinrich Marnitz welcomed viewers to the "opening night" of TV in the country.

The past four decades saw the SABC's television offering going through various channel permutations with the South African public broadcaster currently providing 5 TV channels in the form of SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and then two channels – SABC News and the archive rerun channel SABC Encore – produced exclusively for MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform.

The past 4 decades in South Africa also saw the launch of pay-TV with pay-TV broadcaster M-Net (that will be turning 30 years old in October), together with MultiChoice's DStv and StarTimes Media SA's StarSat as satellite pay-TV offerings.

Services like Platco Digital's OpenView HD free-to-air satellite service in addition to a growing plethora of video-on-demand (VoD) services like Naspers' ShowMax, Times Media’s struggling VIDI, MTN’s VU and PCCW Global's ONTAPtv.com are enhancing consumer choice in South Africa’s growing videosphere. 

Meanwhile the global streaming giant Netflix that told me that it will be launching in South Africa before the end of this year.

The 40^th anniversary milestone comes as the SABC that introduced television in South Africa continues to lurch from crisis to crisis four decades later.

Currently the largely rudderless South African Broadcasting Corporation sits with a suspended CEO off the job just 4 months after being appointed to a position that was vacant for a year and a half, a chief operating officer (COO) mired in protracted court cases and who wants journalists "licensed", a gutted SABC board, a reported loss of R403 million for the latest financial year, and with a looming controversial Broadcasting Amendment Bill set to change the SABC from a public broadcaster to a state broadcaster under the control of the minister of communications and the president.

The SABC isn't today celebrating the 40^th anniversary since its first national TV broadcast was done from Auckland Park – complete with studio curtains and in colour – but the milestone is highly significant as the South Africa's television industry is hovering on the verge of the biggest sea change since the introduction of what dr. Albert Hertzog, the then minister for posts and telegraphs, called "the devil's own box".

In 2016 the long-delayed commercial switch from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting will simply have to start in South Africa after the country missed the internationally agreed to deadline for the switch-off of analogue TV signals by June 2015.

Government incompetence over years, a lack of leadership with the process over the past decade, as well as a wayward department of communications are blamed for the shambolic DTT quagmire.

SA's digital TV challenges

While DTT will ring in the biggest sistemic change for South Africa’s television industry since the medium started in 1976 and will bring ordinary South African TV viewers access to many more TV channels from e.tv and M-Net in addition to the SABC's 5 existing channels, big problems and challenges await in South African television's 40th anniversary year.

While millions of poor South African TV viewers qualify to get a government-subsidised set-top box (STB) – a compulsory decoder necessary to receive and watch digital television – these TV households without a SABC TV licence and who can't pay for an annual licence are already being denied a STB.

This will see thousands of TV households cut off in a TV market where viewers can't get enough of their beloved local South Africa weekday soap operas, impacting things like TV ratings, audience measurement and advertising.

As channels and new broadcasters under DTT are rolled out it will also lead to the biggest demand for TV content since the start of TV in South Africa in four decades ago.

Lost in the squabble over STB contracts and tenders, numerous digital migration standards and regulation amendments, as well as industry infighting and broadcaster litigation, has been the discussion about the actual TV content – what it will be, the financial cost to produce and acquire it, and where it will come from to fill new schedules.

While broadcasters like the SABC, e.tv and M-Net will each transmit more channels leading to further fragmentation of the existing TV audience, advertisers, agencies and ad buyers will battle with having to slice their existing ad spend to try and capture ever thinning audiences spread out over more channels.

Meanwhile local broadcasters will have to pay for foreign content and produce more local content for new TV channels to try and entice South African viewers to switch to DTT – burning through content that will have to be good enough to make viewers feel they need to switch in order to make the digital migration process successful, although these channels will not initially have a lot of viewers to make its existence commercially feasible.

Digital television will ironically require a huge capital investment for South Africa's broadcasters in their own new TV content that won't be initially seen by a lot of viewers.

Broadcasters will also have to continue to pay for "dual illumination": broadcasting a DTT version of their existing and new TV channels' signals but also continuing to transmit in parallel, the analogue signals of existing TV channels for a period of a few years until these analogue signals can be switched off.

This switch-off can only take place when the bulk of millions of TV households have eventually bought or received a set-top box and switched over … in a country where roughly two-thirds of all TV households don't even have or pay for a SABC TV licence.

Shocking Broadcasting Amendment Bill from Faith Muthambi an 'illegal take-over of the SABC' as minister plans to turn SABC from a public to state broadcaster.

A Broadcasting Amendment Bill secretly being pushed through parliament by the ruling ANC government has been created to turn the SABC back into the Apartheid era state broadcaster it was before 1994.

The shocking Broadcasting Amendment Bill will change the Broadcasting Act, giving absolute control to South Africa's minister of communications to hire and fire SABC board members and the chairperson and will reduce the number of SABC board members.

The change will make the South African Broadcasting Corporation even more insulated and unaccountable to parliament or to the people of South Africa and instead only accountable and controlled by the South African president through proxy of the communication minister.

The shocking plan to hijack the SABC and to turn it into a state broadcaster comes from the controversial minister of communications, Faith Muthambi who has already overreached by directly intervening and firing SABC board members and now wants to place the SABC back under total state control which it was during Apartheid when it was a blatant National Party mouthpiece.

If approved and signed into law, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill will give the minister of communications in South Africa, in this case the highly unpopular Faith Muthambi, sole and total control over who to appoint, and when to fire, SABC board members.

It is exactly what she has been doing this year using the thinly-veiled disguise  and excuse of decimating the board saying she's doing so under the Companies Act because the SABC is a "state-owned entity".

The unstable SABC has been lurching from crisis to crisis with acrimonious in-fighting and instability on SABC board level as well as within its top-executive ranks, with the SABC and the government struggling to fill top-executive positions, SABC board member positions still vacant for months, as well as the position of the SABC chairperson.

Instead of a democratic process, Faith Muthambi wants to unilaterally take over the process since it's become too difficult to constantly replenish empty SABC board and SABC executive positions when people quit, are fired and leave in shame when they're exposed as having lied about qualifications like the disgraced former SABC chairperson Ellen Tshabalala.

The Broadcasting Amendment Bill,if passed will drastically reduce the SABC board members from 12 to just 9.

The Broadcasting Amendment Bill also seeks to reduce the quorum for voting on decisions from 9 to 7.

The president of the country, through the minister of communications will now appoint the few SABC board members that there will be instead of parliament.

The Broadcasting Amendment Bill also seeks to give the president and minister of communications the right to appoint an "interim SABC board" at will.

The Bill also specifies a new easier and much more unaccountable way for the re-appointment, firing and resignation of SABC board members.

Oversight of the SABC as a public broadcaster is reduced and taken away and the SABC is turned into a state broadcaster under control of the ruling president and that person's serving minister of communications.

The public pressure group for public broadcasting, the SOS Coalition says it will go to the Constitutional Court to challenge the shocking Broadcasting Amendment Bill.

"We are appalled that the minister of communications would seek, so brazenly, to transform our national public broadcaster into a state broadcaster beholden to the government of the day," says Sekoetlane Phamodi, SOS Coalition spokesperson told TVwithThinus.

"The SOS Coalition will take all necessary and available steps to oppose and challenge this move by the minister. The SABC belongs to the people of this country and, accordingly, it's board must be appointed by their public representatives in parliament in an open and public process."

Kate Skinner, independent broadcasting expert and Wits lecturer told TVwithThinus that "these amendments remove parliament and the public from the appointment process".

"This takes us full circle back to Apartheid. Here the public had no role in SABC appointments - the Broadcasting Act of 1976 stipulated that the president alone should appoint SABC board members."

"This is a betrayal of the ABC's post-apartheid vision for public - not state - broadcasting," says Kate Skinner.

"There is no room for this Broadcasting Amendment Bill in our democracy. It must be removed".

In a statement the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party says the Broadcasting Amendment Bill "is quite simply bad news for South Africa's democracy".

"It will see the last vestige of independence removed from the SABC, paving the way for it to become a ANC government propaganda tool under the control of Faith Muthambi."

"Along with the SABC Memorandum of Incorporation secretly signed by Faith Muthambi in September 2014 which gives the minister of communications the right to usurp the SABC board's powers reducing it to a mere rubber stamp, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill will give the ANC complete control over the SABC," says the DA.

"For South Africa's hard-won democracy to thrive, it is imperative that the country has a public broadcaster that is independent of government, free from political interference and presents news that is an accurate representation of conditions in South Africa."

"Any machinations to remove the independence of the SABC must be viewed as not only undemocratic, but also possibly, unconstitutional."

"The DA will vehemently oppose this Broadcasting Amendment Bill for the benefit of all South Africans who have a right to impartial news, not ANC good news stories and propaganda".

The South African Communist Party (SACP) is also vehemently opposed to the Broadcasting Amendment Bill and minister Faith Muthambi's shocking plan.

The SACP says the Broadcasting Amendment Bill will turn the SABC from a public broadcasting into a "corporate broadcaster". "The Bill will effectively make the SABC a company. All future minister of communications will have direct control over the SABC, instead of parliament".

The Inkata Freedom Party (IFP) is also strongly opposed to the Broadcasting Amendment Bill and shocked by the proposed plan to turn the SABC into a state broadcaster, calling the Broadcasting Amendment Bill "disturbing" and "an illegal take-over of the SABC".

The IFP is calling for South Africans to boycott the SABC and to immediately stop paying their SABC TV licences.

"We must unite, across political divide to save our public broadcaster," says the IFP in a statement.

"As a start, the IFP is of the opinion that citizens should lead a campaign of civil disobedience by not paying their TV licenses. If all else fails, the courts must be approached to stop this disastrous amendment bill from succeeding".

"The tabling of the Broadcasting Amendment Bill by the minister of communications will effectively turn the SABC into a state broadcaster," says the IFP.

"As things stand, the National Assembly, through the portfolio committee of communications, is part and parcel of shortlisting, interviewing and recommending candidates to serve on the SABC board."

"While the IFP has in the past lamented the fact that the SABC board appointment process is flawed - because the ANC uses its majority in Parliament to push though candidates of their choice - the current process does allow for opposition parties to negotiate and fight for the most qualified, independent candidates to be considered for these posts."

"However, if the broadcasting Amendment Bill is passed, the National Assembly will no longer be involved in appointing members to the SABC board. This will become the sole prerogative of the minister of communications."

The Economic Freedom Front (EFF) party slammed the Broadcasting Amendment Bill as "an Apartheid move".

The EFF calls the proposed change of the SABC from a public broadcaster to a state broadcaster under the control of the minister of communications "an anti-democratic, totalitarian move".

"This proposal demonstrates an uncontrollable desire by the ANC government to totalitarianism and be accountable to no one. The significant thing of any totalitarian government is total control of public broadcasting services coupled with suppression of all media freedom".

"Without the public broadcaster‚ held accountable by both parliament and cabinet‚ society only depends on corporate private broadcasters to hold politicians accountable," says the EFF.

"This Broadcasting Amendment Bill is therefore an Apartheid move‚ a fascist totalitarianism seeking to monopolise the running of the people's broadcasting services to government."

"Without parliament‚ people like the SABC's chief operating officer (COO) Hlaudi Motsoeneng‚ who are unqualified to hold positions they occupy‚ will be increased in the leadership of the SABC solely because they want to kill independent journalism within the pubic broadcaster and stop all criticism on the government of the day," says the EFF.