Fixing South Africa’s broken Post Office and SABC

South Africa’s new communications minister, Solly Malatsi, says he aims to stabilise state-owned enterprises in his portfolio and promote competition in the ICT sector.

Malatsi was appointed Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies at the end of June, and his predecessor, Mondli Gungubele, was appointed as his deputy.

He acknowledged that a lot of valuable work had been done within the industry and said much more remains to be done.

“The initial discovery is that there has been a lot of steady work that has been established, but there is still a lot of room for improvement,” Malatsi told the Sunday Times.

Malatsi believes this improvement lies in governing and stabilising SOEs and creating legislation that promotes competition within the ICT sector.

Since his appointment, Malatsi has been preparing to fill vacancies on several entities’ boards. He said expediting the appointments was important to ensure stability.

Two entities in his portfolio that require particularly close attention are the Post Office and the SABC.

Malatsi told the Sunday Times that opening the Post Office to public-private partnerships would ensure its financial sustainability in an already competitive market.

As for the SABC, the new minister believes that under its new leadership, it has turned its attention to important matters — improving its content offering and becoming a competitive force in the broadcasting space.

The litigious nature of the ICT industry is also something Malatsi hopes to change.

Malatsi believes that a proactive approach to stakeholder engagement could resolve some of the sector’s disputes and impasses.

Vodacom taking the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to court over spectrum pooling agreements the regulator approved between its competitors is a recent example of the sector’s litigious tendencies.

eMedia also filed court papers against former communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni after she proclaimed her intention to shut off South Africa’s old analogue TV signals.

According to eMedia, Ntshavheni risked cutting off millions of indigent South Africans’ access to TV. This would be detrimental not only to those households but also to the broadcasters reliant on that audience for their advertising revenue.

Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, former Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies

Malatsi also plans to address major industry issues, such as the aforementioned analogue switch-off, scheduled for December, and sports broadcasting rights.

South Africa’s migration to digital terrestrial television and the switch-off of old analogue TV broadcasts initially had a 2011 deadline.

Poor leadership at the Department of Communications, vested interests, and constant litigation delayed the migration for over a decade.

The constant delays had huge ramifications, as the old television signals occupied radio frequency spectrum that South Africa’s mobile networks could have otherwise used.

It also hurt electronics producers like Altron and Ellies, who were involved in the manufacturing and distribution of decoder-like set-top boxes needed for old TV sets to receive the new digital signal.

Only since Gungubele and his predecessor, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, was significant progress made in switching off South Africa’s old analogue television signals.

Ntshavheni also made progress on releasing new spectrum and announced the shutdown of South Africa’s 2G and 3G networks in 2022. She then passed the ball to Gungubele.

Gungubele was appointed as communications minister in March 2023 when Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet.

The two effectively swapped roles during the March 2023 reshuffle, with Ntshavheni taking over Gungubele’s old post in The Presidency.

During his time as minister, Gungubele set final deadlines for the broadcast digital migration project, announcing 31 December 2024 as the day all analogue TV broadcasts will be switched off.

Mondli Gungubele, former and now deputy minister of communications and digital technologies

As for Malatsi’s sports broadcasting rights ambitions, he said the industry and public need certainty around how they are managed and disputes resolved.

This partly refers to the conflict between MultiChoice and South Africa’s free-to-air TV broadcasters surrounding the rights to matches involving South Africa’s national teams.

The issue traces back to MultiChoice’s SuperSport and the SABC reaching a last-minute agreement to broadcast sixteen Rugby World Cup 2023 matches live, including every Springbok game.

The deal was reportedly worth R57 million.

Part of the sub-licensing deal restricted the SABC from broadcasting the matches on any third-party platforms it didn’t own, including eMedia’s Openview. eMedia also owns and operates E-tv free-to-air channels.

Despite the SABC calling the restriction “anti-competitive” and “irrational”, it struck a similar deal with MultiChoice later that year for the Cricket World Cup rights.

As a result, eMedia took MultiChoice to the Competition Tribunal, which eventually awarded an interdict in eMedia’s favour, pending its final ruling on the matter.