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The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the somewhat sudden withdrawal of the controversial Public Service Broadcasting Bill by the Department of Communications, pending further consultation. The shelving of the Bill follows the DA's call last week for its withdrawal, as well as oral submissions by affected stakeholders, who indicated they were not in favour of major sections of the Bill, including the inclusion of 1% personal income tax, as well as centralising the control of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in the Minister of Communications as a member of the executive and government.

The DA welcomes the prudence exercised by the Communications Department in this regard, as the Bill would have had harmful consequences for South Africa's media sector, and public broadcasting in South Africa. Indeed, it was deeply concerning that the bill was mooted in the first place, with the sweeping powers it would have afforded the Minister of Communications regarding financial control over the SABC and the misguided attempt to fund the SABC from a 1% income tax.

In his statement withdrawing the bill, Minister Padayachie said:

‘First, for the developmental and democratic goals of the Republic to be best served it is imperative that our broadcasting policy is at the cutting edge of our digital age. Second, broadcasting policy, to realize its full potential for the country, requires wholehearted and energetic mobilization of State, industry and societal role players.'

This is a tacit concession that the bill, which epitomised clumsy political intervention, had little to do with an engagement with the broadcasting industry as a whole, or with its needs. Indeed, the bill's major innovations unfortunately encapsulated the department's lack of foresight and misfires in trying to address the actual crisis at the SABC. The public broadcaster had been wracked by financial and administrative mismanagement, requiring a bail-out from the state of over R1 billion. Rather clumsily, the department seemed to believe that the solution was a sweeping bill that would affect the entire industry instead of limiting its energies to the public broadcaster.

We have repeatedly stated our agreement with the Finance Minister's assessment of the 1% tax levy - that this approach to funding the SABC was wrongheaded, and fraught with difficulties - and have voiced our objections to the increased powers that the bill would afford the minister, thus potentially compromising the integrity of the SABC as a public broadcaster free from intervention from the executive.

We hope that this announcement is also a signal that the Communications Ministry has recognised the importance of ensuring that the SABC remains free of any political control, and will be funded in a manner that will ensure that the public broadcaster is able to provide quality programming to all South Africans.

The DA believes that the current Broadcasting Act should remain in force, but with the additions of certain amendments to it. Such amendments would address the more targeted problems that public broadcasting actually faces, by ensuring that the SABC board is adequately performance managed and the introduction of a scaled license fee regime, which would allow for license fees to be collected based on income. The department would do well to consider how to fix the actual problems in broadcasting in future and not tinker with excessive political management.