EDITORIAL: Scrap the SABC Bill and do the hard work

The SABC Bill is notable for several reasons, but perhaps most importantly for its capacity to unite. If a bill is roundly condemned by the DA, the EFF, AfriForum, Media Monitoring Africa, the SA National Editors Forum, lawyers for both e.tv and MultiChoice (imagine!) and even some in the ANC, perhaps it is worth asking what gives.

The bill, discussed in the portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies last week, is a disgrace. It does next to nothing to address the state of the SABC and proposes nothing in terms of its mandate and how it might be funded. It is hard not to be cynical as to the motivation behind a bill that would keep the SABC in a state of crisis.

The corporation is run according to 1999’s Broadcast Act, a legislative framework that — at a quarter of a century old — reflects a time so detached from today’s digital realities that it may as well have been drafted in the Jurassic period.

This issue was spotted 13 years ago, when a policy review was begun. That generated a draft white paper, which rattled around for a bit, and then another. The papers raised many good questions concerning the need for a thorough overhaul of the corporation, its unfunded public broadcast mandate, and the utter failure of its split fundraising model, whereby a commercial arm is meant to cross-subsidise a public broadcast operation.

The SABC Bill addresses none of this, essentially restating the 1999 Act and asking the minister to come up with a “framework” within three years. There is no need to bother parliament with this. The minister can order a review, and surely there is more urgency than the three-year deadline when the corporation is in crisis.

The SABC’s woes come at a time in which independent media are struggling to make ends meet, but the corporation’s purpose of public broadcasting remains something we should fight for. Its radio stations provide millions of our compatriots with a link with the world and the rest of the country, especially now that the analogue TV signal has been switched off in five provinces. Done properly, it is a critical service at the heart of our democracy. This important role can slip the mind of metropolitan elites.

It is naive to suggest the corporation has not been politically captured — indeed, that was at the heart of its apartheid purpose — and the democratic era has seen ongoing rampant political abuse of the public broadcaster by political entities that ought to have longer memories. Further, its financial woes are well known and long-standing.

But this is not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A review, done in full sight of stakeholders and the public and with consideration of the SABC’s important role in society, ought to be conducted. That way parliament can consider a Bill that addresses the corporation’s failings and its funding in a digital age characterised by deepening inequalities in terms of technology and access as opposed to this absurd legislative performance of “busyness” that entrenches its deep-rooted problems.

Ongoing crisis only helps those who hold the purse strings. That is unhealthy, unethical and wrong. The SABC Bill should go back to the department for redrafting after a scholarly and serious review of the SABC, its purpose and its funding.