23 September 2020, MYBROADBAND, Hanno Labuschagne
MyBroadband spoke to William Bird from Media Monitoring Africa and independent media analyst Nozi Dikgale about the relevance of TV licences in South Africa.
Bird said there were numerous reasons why South Africans were not paying their TV licences.
Internally, the broadcaster has been lurching from crisis to crisis, he said.
Additionally, there has been a big increase in access to digital platforms and services, which means people have been able to get SABC content without the need for a licence.
“We also had the high cost of collections and some stories I recall that pointed out how some of the service providers simply weren’t doing their jobs properly,” he added.
Bird also claimed that government had handed out set-top boxes for digital broadcasts to people who did not possess TV licences.
“So you had the state to a degree tacitly supporting non-payment – and a breaking the law,” Bird said.
