Have you finally reached the end of your watchlists on Netflix and Showmax? Has Young, Famous & African whet your appetite for local drama? The latest serving of sniping coming this week is more real than reality TV and carries the burden of what most reality TV lacks: actual consequences. Cue “Ntshavheni versus everybody”.
Communications & digital technologies minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has come out fighting in response to the SABC’s statement on the matter of the analogue signal switch-off. To recap previous seasons: the “digital migration policy” (the provision of TV services moving from analogue to a digital signal) has been an eons-long standing policy of the government, and — frankly — a testament to its ability to fail with actioning its own programmes. The fact that we’ve had a dozen or so ministers into whose ambit the policy fell is a case study in how not to get things done.
Now Ntshavheni is in charge, and tasked with doing the damn thing. Understandably, there is pressure to hit a deadline, any deadline, in the rolling out of free and subsidised digital set-top boxes and achieving the switch-over. Honestly, I think most people are rooting for her, keen to see that this show reach its inevitable conclusion. We also know digital means better quality audio and sound, and opens space for new TV entrants. Plus, the freed-up space ought to mean lower mobile and broadband data costs.
The theory is pretty sound, but the implementation has been a dog show — and not one of those nice Crufts ones. According to the department, more than 82% (11.5-million of 14-million) of TV-watching households have already “self-migrated”, making the switch to consume their TV channels via services such as DStv. An additional 1.2-million households are set to receive their free digital decoders, but reportedly only 165,000 or so have been installed. The numbers of who needs a box and who has one are contested, as is the question of whether enough public consultation and education have been undertaken.
In October last year the minister set April 1 2022 as the switch date, and then designated just three weeks for qualifying households to register for their set-top devices. Thank goodness it was a quiet and boring year in which nothing else was happening and our gainfully employed and digitally empowered citizens could register on their smartphones while waiting in line at Starbucks. Yes, I know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit and what-what. But sometimes only sarcasm will suffice.
Additionally, there’s been plenty of pushback, legal and otherwise, including the current kerfuffle: on Friday, March 25, the SABC board released a statement “not[ing] public concerns about the analogue switch-off deadline… and its potential impact on the public…”. The statement makes its support for the policy explicit, but also warns that the current plan and date (just days away), viewed in combination with the “slow progress” on set-top box installations, “presents an unsustainable risk to the rights of millions of indigent households, as well as the corporation’s turnaround plan”.
Additionally, on Monday the North Gauteng High Court dismissed e.tv’s application to set aside the switch-off date. The court did, however, postpone the date to the end of June 2022. In a statement, Ntshavheni said she was “elated”, and “welcomed the deferment” which would give her department “sufficient time to complete” the installations for households that had “timeously registered”. Timeously registered? She couldn’t help but add a further dig there.
Her elation at the e.tv ruling aside, the real concern here is Ntshavheni’s reaction to the SABC statement. She responded in a letter dated Sunday 27 — addressed to board chair Bongumusa Makhathini but subsequently making its rounds in local media — in which she accuses the SABC of making false statements about the effects of the switch-off and contradicting itself in terms of financial viability.
As TimesLive reported, “Ntshavheni said the board’s media statement was based ‘on a different set of facts which were not included in the performance reports submitted to the department’…” Furthermore, she wrote that she would be communicating with parliament to withdraw the SABC quarterly reports she had previously signed off, as “they are based on inaccurate information”.
Most damning, she threatened to withhold the release of the next tranche of financial assistance earmarked for the SABC’s turnaround strategy. It’s not quite the slap that stole the Oscars, but certainly a resounding smack from the minister.
Given the SABC’s flailings of recent years, it may be hard to muster sympathy for an organisation that almost mismanaged itself into near-obsolescence. But that misses the point. You can detest mismanagement and still acknowledge that for many millions in this country the SABC is the only ready source of news and information. Additionally, I’m sure you can scrounge up some sympathy for the scores of journalists, editors, presenters, and production staff directly affected by the public broadcaster’s decline.
Finally, having a minister openly threaten the public broadcaster is no laughing matter. I know the question of actual independence has been raised, but — here again — the theory is sound. We want our public broadcaster to be free from state interference, don’t we?
Ntshavheni has made a few good calls for which she deserves credit, the licensing of spectrum being a big one. However, the bullying and interfering approach to the SABC’s pretty reasonable objections is not a tick in the win column, and should not be allowed to stand.
• Thompson Davy, a freelance journalist, is an impactAFRICA fellow and WanaData member.
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