TV licences will add to taxpayer woes

A proposal for a public broadcaster service levy may soon lie in store for South Africans. To grasp why you may soon have to pay a fixed levy to SARS for your TV licence we will have to go back to 2014.

After the controversial Hlaudi Motsoeneng was permanently appointed as chief of operations at the SABC in 2014, the public broadcaster began its rapid decline. A skills audit in 2014 showed that 60% of the SABC’s senior management did not comply with the minimum requirements for strategic thinking on managerial level, while 56% failed to show sufficient competence in problem solving.

These and other factors contributed to the SABC’s current woeful financial position, which has led to the consideration of a fixed levy. Motsoeneng’s decisions were branded “irrational” and “draconic”, and included ideas from 80% “good news” that had to be broadcasted, to newspaper headlines that were prohibited from being repeated on radio or shown on TV. He also introduced major limitations on press freedom, which resulted in the suspension of three senior journalists.

The SABC fired Motsoeneng In 2017 after an Internal disciplinary hearing had found him guilty of behaviour that had brought the broadcaster in disrepute and had caused irreparable damage. The decline of the SABC can therefore be attributed to serious problems with operational efficiency and managerial failure. These challenges led to questions about the government’s control over the SABC, especially since it appropriates public funds in an unsustainable manner. As a result, various organisations called on the government to privatise the SABC, especially after it was revealed in 2017 that the broadcaster were in a woeful financial situation and unable to pay its employees.

2018 saw further unhappiness when the SABC board refused to place the public broadcaster in voluntary business rescue. The SABC has over the years considered various plans to collect funds in a bid to survive financially – but to no avail.

One example of this is when the SABC proposed to Parliament and the portfolio commission for communication that providers of paid TV services like Netflix and DStv had to collect licence fees from their customers on the broadcaster’s behalf. Another is an email that the SABC sent to owners of TV licence holders to inform them that owners of TV monitors should also pay licence fees, even though these monitors can only receive a broadcasting signal when they are connected to digital boxes, decoders, DVD players or even computers.

It was also reported that It was easy to track the money that the SABC had wasted, and that Is was clear that the SABC was sabotaging its own solutions. An example of this is when the SABC spent almost R1,2 million on bullet-proof vests for its journalist. Although the transaction was questioned by the IFP MP Liezl van der Merwe is, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, Minister of Communication and Digital Technology, defended the transaction. Not to mention Motsoeneng’s selling of the SABC’s archives to MultiChoice for a bonus amount of R30 million. This transaction resulted in MultiChoice having had to pay an amount of R553 million over five years to the broadcaster for the creation of two new channels on DStv.

It has also been reported that Ndabeni-Abrahams revealed that the SABC had spent R58,4 million between April and August 2020 on independent contractors. At that stage, the SABC was owed R57,1 million in unpaid TV licences and advertisement fees from state departments, municipalities and state-owned enterprises. Its legal expenses amounted to more than R65 million in November 2020.  

It was recently reported that Cabinet had approved a number of bills to be tabled in parliament, including the SABC Bill of 2023, which is aimed at improving the SABC’s financing model.

This means that the current SABC Act will be repealed if the new Bill is passed into law. The Bill seeks to improve the efficiency of the public broadcaster’s operations and replace the SABC’s current financing model and TV licencing system. Although little detail is known about the Bill and the subsequent changes, these is a possibility of a new household levy that will be collected by SARS.

The question remains whether it is fair for taxpayers to carry the SABC’s financial problems. Can it truly be expected of exhausted taxpayers to further finance an inefficient SABC? Should taxpayers really pay an additional tax similar to the fuel levy? There is concern whether these funds will be managed effectively, and whether it would be used for its intended purpose. This on the eve of the implementation of National Health Insurance that will further put taxpayers under pressure.

The privatisation of the SABC should be a serious consideration so that people will be willing to pay for a service that they value. This can be an alternative approach to alleviating financial pressure on state institutions.

Zel-Marí Gelderblom is Coordinator for content and media relations at AfriForum’s Campaigns division. She holds a master’s degree (cum laude) in gender politics from the Nelson Mandela University.