By Bulelani Phillip
Copyright sabcnews
The Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, has poured cold water on the assertion that the SABC signal could be switched off by the end of December if the public broadcaster fails to pay its debt to digital signal distributor, Sentech.
He also says the SABC could know its new proposed funding model by the end of the year.
Malatsi was speaking on the sidelines of his department’s handover of digital devices to learners at Eerste River, outside Cape Town, in conjunction with Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube.
Fresh from an announcement that his department has appointed a service provider to develop a new funding model for the SABC, Minister Malatsi says it’s not wise to wait for the finalisation of the SABC Bill to come up with a new funding model for the public broadcaster.
“One of the shortcomings of the SABC bill in the draft format was that it was said that a funding model must be developed within three years, and that is kicking the can down the line. You need a funding model immediately so that you can have a sense of how we are going to capacitate the public broadcaster to generate revenue in a sustainable manner because one of the fundamental challenges that it faces is around the issue of funding.”
The Minister says the investigation into the SABC’s new funding model will be completed within three months.
“The service provider will have a minimum period of three months to finalise their work. Once that is done, we can then start moving on to the other finer elements. There are several contentious issues about the sabc bill in the format that it was and those are widely accepted and some of which are even accepted by the sabc and i think it’s important to contexualise that one of the fundamental flaws of the bill in this version is that the sabc ceo must be the editor in chief and that is a contradiction of the most basic principle of media independence because the newsroom must be run by journalists and not by management.”
