Broadcast Digital Migration policy
The South African Communist Party welcomes the commitment this week by the Minister of Communications Ayanda Dlodlo re-asserting the Broadcasting Digital Migration (BDM) policy of the African National Congress including encryption.
The SACP agrees with the basic principles underlying the policy, specifically the strategic aim to strengthen free-to-air, public and community television broadcasting. The SACP campaigned against an amendment pushed in government by the former Minister of Communication Faith Muthambi effectively undermining the policy. In May 2016 the Supreme Court of Appeals correctly found that the amendment was an edict, irrational, invalid and set it aside. The SACP raised its objection when Muthambi appealed. Both her amendment and the appeal further delayed South Africa’s analogue to digital terrestrial television migration.
The Muthambi amendment was simply to the benefit of parasites and pay television monopolised, including through encryption/conditional access, by Naspers’ through its subsidiary Multichoice. Naspers was established during colonial rule in South Africa and served as the mouthpiece of the Broederbond, the ideological vanguard of apartheid. The action to strengthen its monopoly and parasites could only be the function of false radical economic transformation at the expense of true radical economic transformation.
In sharp contrast, true radical economic transformation must de-monopolise our economy. It must decisively elbow the stranglehold of private monopoly capital, concentration, oligopolies, oligarchs and parasites from the neck of our economy, including in the media and communications sector.
The digital terrestrial television broadcasting space must therefore be democratised by means of bringing an end to the Monopoly of Naspers’ Multichoice.
The government must use the BDM process to expand access to new entrants. Encryption significantly lowers the financial barriers to entry for new entrants in the pay television sector, while allowing for state revenue generation to recover, over a few years, the cost of the initial stated subsidisation of STBs.
The economic benefits of the process must be shared, with priority given to the workers and poor through adequate state support.
The government must therefore be seen lifting content producers in our communities out of inequality, unemployment and poverty, among others by means of a decisive pursuit of an infrastructure of encrypted – that is protected digital terrestrial television broadcasting to host their content for access by means of pay as you view or subscription. This will bring them income and change their lives for the better.
Further, the inclusion of encryption should give South Africans, including those qualifying for subsidised Set-Top-Boxes (STBs), that is those households earning a maximum of R3 200 per month, as well as those who by the STBs, access a variety of digital platforms including e-government services. e-Government services can only be delivered in home language and geographically specific form, with STBs that have functional conditional access/encryption chips.
Examples include enabling people to receive, in their home language, information about government services, including pensions, social grants, health services. Indidivudal home language and geographic message targetting is possible because functional conditional access/encryption makes each STB individually addressible. This technology is presently employed by Naspers' Multichoice but for a different reason (profit making), to tell subscribers that they must pay and then to cut access to the signal which also affects access to free-to-air television.
Save public resource
The SACP hopes that Minister Dlodlo will put national development and transformation imperatives and public interest to the front. We therefore call on her to save public resources. In line with her decision to re-assert ANC BDM policy, the Minister should withdraw the Muthambi appeal application before the Constitutional Court. This will fast track and enable government to confront the challenges that pushed back our BDM process. As the Auditor General found, the process was fraught with irregularities. Minister Dlodlo must lead a government effort to address all the irregularities from scratch, present an alternative plan and help South Africa to meet its international commitments and deadlines.
Invest in content development
The SABC, our public broadcaster must invest in content development and strategy to ensure greater benefit from the BDM process. The process offers an opportunity to strengthen free-to-air television with multichannel, high definition television, interactive television and expanded coverage for the content and language diversity of our country.
Long range, organic state planning is essential
Government must start looking beyond Set-Top-Boxes and going forward to the future invest in Integrated Digital Television based on our national development and transformation imperatives.
Statement issued by the SACP, 7 May 2017
