On Wednesday, March 19, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria continued to hear the legal bids of eTV, Media Monitoring Africa, and SOS Support public broadcasting.
The applicants are requesting that the Court postpone the final analogue switch-off date of March 31 and allow the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies to determine a new date for determination and gazetting. The three applicants want the March 31 analogue switch-off date to be ruled void and discontinued. They claim that millions of South Africans will not have access to television if the deadline is not stopped.
eTV states in its heads of arguments before the court: “Government failed to consult on the Analogue Switch-off (ASO) date before deciding to set 31 March 2025 as the date. On 28 November 2024, the minister informed stakeholders that the previous ASO date of 31 December 2024 would not be extended.
“On 5 December 2025, the minister told stakeholders that the deadline was now 31 March 2025. There was no consultation in between.
“Stakeholders were never advised that government was considering an extension to 31 March nor were they asked to comment on whether 31 March was a viable and reasonable date before a final decision was taken,” eTV added.
According to SOS national coordinator Uyanda Siyotula, millions of impoverished people’s rights will be violated if the deadline is implemented. Siyotula said: “Lawyers were able to point out to the court that it was important for us to be consulted following the Constitutional Court ruling. But I think the other important thing is that they pointed out the fact that the rights of many poor and marginalised people are going to be infringed should this analogue switch-off go ahead as planned on the 31 March.”
William Bird, the Director of Media Monitoring Africa, goes on to remark that this is about a persistent and shared incapacity to ensure that the impoverished and pure get access to television.
According to him: “What we know is that 28.5 % of South African audiences still rely exclusively on free-to-air services to access television, so had they gone ahead with this decision, you would have that entire group of people (4.5 million households) cut off from television completely.
“That would have been completely unacceptable because, of course, these are the poorest of the poor,” he added.
According to the applicants, if the deadline is not extended, about 14 million people will be without television.
Four million households would be cut off as a result of this transformation, SABC Group CEO Nomsa Chabeli has warned. The sustainability of the public broadcaster is impacted since these households lack access to set-top boxes or satellite systems.
According to the CEO: “The SABC, even though it is a public broadcaster, if you look at the public mandate, it is self-funded and not funded by the government.”
BrandSpur digital news platform reports that the SABC’s public mandate is jeopardised when its capacity to reach audiences and viewers to advertisers—where the money is generated—is undermined.
Chabeli went on to state: “We still have about 4.4 million households that are not part of any satellite platform etc. that have not received their set-top boxes, therefore it means that if it does go ahead on 31 March, we are in a situation where the SABC is about to lose 27% of their audiences and that immediately translates into revenue losses.”
