The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) presents its submission on the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) SOC Ltd Bill to the National Assembly’s Portfolio Committee: Communications and Digital Technologies today.

COSATU welcomes the tabling of the SABC SOC Ltd Bill at Parliament.  The challenges, controversies and abuses that have taken place at SABC over the decade of state capture and corruption are well known.  Workers at SABC paid the painful and devastating price with retrenchments, wage freezes and outsourcing.  The badly overstretched fiscus was placed under further pressure to bail out SABC due to incompetent management and corrupt tenderpreneurs who bled it dry.

We support the Bill’s objectives seeking to modernise and overhaul the SABC’s existing legislative governance.  We need its revised provisions to ensure we do not see a repeat of past shenanigans.

The Federation welcomes the Bill’s provisions setting clear roles and guidelines for what the Minister responsible for Communications, can and critically, cannot do, including prohibiting interfering with the editorial content of its news division.  It affirms Parliament’s role in the appointment of the Board and importantly protects the Board from untoward interference of a Minister. 

COSATU applauds the Bill’s progressive provisions affirming SABC as a public broadcaster whose mandate includes public education, the promotion of all official languages and locally produced content, as well as enabling working class families to watch national and emerging sports events.

Whilst welcoming the Bill’s progressive objectives, we are deeply concerned that the Bill has omitted to include representation for workers on the SABC Board as is provided in the Broadcasting Act.  It is critical that workers’ views and challenges are heard on Boards.  This careless omission must be reversed by Parliament.

It is also critical that Parliament also put in place checks and balances with regards to Board fees as is the norm in legislation.  Previous SABC Boards have treated their appointment as an opportunity to gorge on meeting allowances.  This naked pilferage must be prohibited and confined to the past.

We believe the Bill passes constitutional muster.  However, if progressive civil society has concrete proposals on how the Bill can be strengthened, we will welcome this.

Issued by COSATU

For further comment please contact:

Matthew Parks or Tony Ehrenreich 082 773 3193 or tony@cosatu.org.za