Harsher penalties for the nonpayment of TV licence fees and slashing the size of the SABC board are some of the proposals contained in a recently published bill meant to boost the governance structures and cash flow of the public broadcaster.
Communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams published the much-anticipated SABC Bill for public comment last week. The public has until August 31 to submit comments.
The SABC says it is not commenting on the proposed legislation as yet.
The public broadcaster’s problems have historically revolved around weak finances and poor governance amid political meddling.
While it was widely expected that a new TV licensing regime, such as an information levy, would be proposed to boost the public broadcaster’s finances, the bill maintains the current licensing scheme with minor tweaks including fines and penalties for nonpayment.
It also proposes allowing the SABC to appoint inspectors who are empowered to approach households to check the validity of TV licences.
However, a media watchdog says the legislative proposals are out of touch with reality and will do little to solve the public broadcaster’s funding challenges.
“If enacted in its current form it [the bill] will doom the SABC to certain economic, technological and governance catastrophic failure,” non-profit media watchdog Media Monitoring Africa director William Bird said on Wednesday.
The SABC has previously proposed that the TV licence fee system be scrapped and replaced with “a device-independent, tech-neutral household levy for public broadcasting, which would levy all households, with exemption for the indigent and discounts for pensioners”.
According to that proposal, the levy would be linked to the public’s ability to access public broadcasting content rather than the consumption of that content. Such a levy would affect all homes whether they own a TV set or not.
Bird has called for something similar or an information levy to support public broadcasting.
The cash-strapped public broadcaster — the main source of news and commentary for many in SA, especially in far-flung areas — has barely managed to turn a profit over the past decade, largely relying on government bailouts to remain afloat.
With government funding drying up, the broadcaster has targeted boosting TV licence fee collections to revive its finances. Currently, a small portion of its revenue (12%) comes from licence fees, with at least 76% of households not paying.
Bird said the financial problems at the SABC will not be solved by the bill.
“It was hoped the SABC Bill would have sought to deal with the tricky issues of the SABC funding model, of the new approach to an information levy vs the outdated TV licence fee,” Bird said.
According to the bill, no person may use any television set unless they are in possession of a television licence. The current TV licence tariff of R265 a year, which translates to about 72c a day, has remained unchanged since 2013.
The bill stipulates that any person who contravenes the licensing rules can be fined an amount equal to double the amount of the applicable prescribed licence fee.
A dealer who sells a TV set to a person who is not in possession of a licence is liable to pay a penalty of R3,000 or such higher amount as may be prescribed, but such a penalty may not exceed R10,000 in respect of each television set sold. It also highlights that it is a criminal offence not to pay the TV licence fee, with those convicted facing a R500 fine or imprisonment of up to six months.
The bill also proposes that the size of the SABC board be reduced from 12 non-executive directors to nine. The department of communications has previously argued that a smaller board is necessary for faster decision-making and accountability.
Bird said it was not necessary to cut the size of the board and emphasis should be on appointing competent and independent people.
Bird also said the bill was lacking as it did not explicitly give clarity on the role and responsibilities of the board in line with freedom of expression principles and a 2017 high court ruling.
In 2017‚ the high court in Pretoria affirmed the independence of the SABC board, ruling that the executive members of the SABC had to be appointed solely by the board without any requirement of approval by the minister.
The case had been brought by groups including Media Monitoring Africa, after years of political interference that led to the collapse of previous boards and contributed to the financial mess at the broadcaster.
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