A final report from BMIT Knowledge Group on a new funding model for the SABC is expected imminently. It arrives not a moment too soon: South Africa’s public broadcaster is at an existential crossroads, its foundations crumbling under a TV licence system that has effectively collapsed and a media universe that’s been fractured by the internet.
With licence fee evasion rates surging from 69% in 2019 to a staggering 86% in 2024, the question is no longer whether the current model must be replaced. The more uncomfortable question — one that policymakers have been reluctant to ask — is whether the thing being funded still justifies the effort.
Of the nearly R5bn billed in TV licences in the last full financial year, the SABC collected just R758m. That is a gap of more than R4bn!
SABC CEO Nomsa Chabeli has called the TV licence system “archaic” and “outdated”, and she’s right. But the problem runs deeper than a broken collection mechanism. The 86% evasion rate is not just administrative failure — it’s a verdict. South Africans have voted with their remotes, their phones and their wallets, and the SABC has lost.
The media universe of 2026 bears no resemblance to the one in which public broadcasters were conceived. News arrives via WhatsApp groups and TikTok feeds. Entertainment is served by Netflix, YouTube and a dozen other platforms that know their audiences with an intimacy the SABC never achieved.
That said, no-one has yet produced a credible private sector alternative for indigenous-language news programming or rural coverage. With that scepticism in mind, what are the options?
A household levy
This model would charge every household a flat fee for access to public broadcasting, regardless of whether they own a television. Communications minister Solly Malatsi himself has called the household levy a “terrible idea”, and it is easy to see why. Imposing a new compulsory charge on every household — including the millions who have actively chosen not to watch the SABC — would be politically toxic.
A Sars-collected public broadcasting tax
This proposal would scrap TV licences entirely and have the South African Revenue Service (Sars) collect a dedicated broadcasting tax. The advantage is obvious: Sars has enforcement infrastructure that the SABC’s own collection apparatus can only dream of.
But dressing the same levy in different clothes does not answer the fundamental question of value. Why should a young South African who consumes all media on a smartphone and has never voluntarily watched an SABC programme subsidise a broadcaster that has failed to earn their attention? The SABC’s track record, scarred by state capture and chronic mismanagement, invites no such confidence.
A broadcaster wholly dependent on government appropriations is a broadcaster on a leash
A device levy
One proposal is the idea of imposing a charge on devices capable of receiving broadcast content — essentially a tax on smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. But in a country desperately trying to close the digital divide, taxing the very devices that connect people to opportunity is perverse.
Direct government funding
The most straightforward option would be for the National Treasury to fund the SABC’s public mandate directly through the fiscus. There is one major problem with this model: a broadcaster wholly dependent on government appropriations is a broadcaster on a leash. South Africa has already lived through an era of SABC editorial capture. We don’t want a repeat.
A public content fund
Under this model, South Africa could establish an independent public content fund — financed through a modest, ring-fenced allocation from the Treasury — that commissions indigenous-language news and educational programming from a range of producers, including but not limited to the SABC.
This would separate the question of public interest content from the question of whether a single, sprawling public broadcaster is the right vehicle to deliver it. It would introduce competition, accountability and editorial diversity. It would also force the SABC to survive on its commercial merits in the entertainment and mainstream news space or shrink to a size that matches its actual audience.
This may be the option that best reflects the fractured media reality of 2026. The age of the monolithic public broadcaster is over, in South Africa as elsewhere. What remains worth funding is not the SABC as an institution, but the public interest content that no commercial player will produce.
The sooner policymakers make that distinction, the sooner they can stop trying to resuscitate a 20th-century model and start building something fit for the world South Africans live in today.
The final BMIT report will land on minister Malatsi’s desk soon. If it merely puts the burden on taxpayers, it will have missed the point.
McLeod is editor of TechCentral
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.