Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies, Khusela Sangoni-Diko, says Parliament hopes to finalise the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Bill by June this year.
She made the comments during a media briefing of the chairpersons of the economic cluster in Parliament yesterday.
The SABC Bill has been delayed for years.
Communications Minister Solly Malatsi withdrew it in November last year.
This was amid concerns in some quarters that the Bill would allow for political interference at the public broadcaster and failed to adequately address a new funding model.
However, Parliament’s oversight committee insisted that Malatsi’s move was unconstitutional.
Sangoni-Diko says the committee will make the Bill its priority this year.
She says, “We will be prioritising for recommendation to the National Assembly the SABC Bill by June of this year, June 2025. The Bill was introduced in Parliament in October 2023 and it seeks to position the SABC to compete in the digital era. It seeks to separate the public mandate from the commercial services, establish a subsidiary commercial board and provide a legal framework for the funding of the public mandate of the broadcaster.”
Sangoni-Diko says the committee is pinning its hopes on Malatsi to come up with a funding model for the SABC and that this should happen within three years of the approval of the Bill.
She says one of the issues they are considering is asking MultiChoice to pay the SABC for its DSTV channel.
Sangoni-Diko adds, “In fact, the ECA Act (Electronic Communications Act) says subscription TV like MultiChoice must carry the SABC to ensure that there is a reach to all South Africans and don’t leave the SABC out. You must carry but then it also says they must pay carriage of it because you cannot have content that is produced at a huge cost to the SABC and it’s carried for free these platforms and by the way, MultiChoice pays all other channels they have what they call carriage fees, you can check so they pay everybody else but the SABC.”
Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) Director William Bird says the answer to securing the stability of the SABC is not to force through a flawed SABC Bill.
Bird says a better piece of legislation is required.
VIDEO | Interview with MMA on SABC Bill:
