In 2023, the chairman of the SABC board, Khathutshelo Ramukumba, revealed during a briefing to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technology that the TV licence fee evasion rate over the past financial year, had reached over 87%, compared to 82% in 2022, and 69% in 2019. Put differently, only 13%, or about 1 in 10, of TV licence holders paid their fees last year.
This striking case of civil non-compliance, which can even be seen as mass protest action against a broken, corrupt SABC, speaks of a government in retreat that is desperately clinging on to an illusion of total power to enforce its legislation. In light of this, a fresh suspicion begins to rise to the surface of public consciousness: ‘What other laws and regulations are the government unable to enforce?’
A sure sign of a government whose power and capacity has started to chronically crumble is a growing dependence on the deceptive projection and illusion of power and control. However, the simplest ways to expose these theatrics can be found on the shrinking margins of government’s power. The non-compliance opportunities with the least risk and the greatest chance of success are the low-hanging fruit where the citizenry begins to call the government’s bluff. A shining example of this is the e-toll system, which revealed an evasion rate of about 90% in 2023.
This fact makes the abolition of this system inevitable, and the government has already started grumbling about such an outcome. As Seneca noted: “Fate guides the willing, the reluctant it drags.”
Bloated government apparatus
The 87% evasion rate regarding TV licence fees puts this corner of the bloated government apparatus in the same failure-to-enforce relegation zone as e-tolls. This reality bolstered AfriForum’s push for TV licences to finally be abolished in its written submission on the South African Broadcasting Corporation SOC LTD Bill. AfriForum simply seeks to bring the de jure reality in line with the de facto reality. If the government does not officially abolish TV licences, it will inevitably be unofficially abolished through mass non-compliance.
These areas where effective and low-risk non-compliance is possible will only grow as the government’s influence recedes, its power to enforce its authority withers and the illusion of enforceability, which it desperately clings to, fades. Small or wounded dogs often hide behind the most fervent barking fits.
Another area of government control that is increasingly situated outside of its capacity to control is racially discriminatory legislation (Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment). Notably, the percentage of JSE-listed companies that submitted BEE compliance reports to the government, decreased from 51% in 2017 to 40% in 2021. The number of B-BBEE certificates uploaded on the B-BBEE Certificate Portal System also decreased from 5 818 in 2019 to only 1 373 in 2021 – a 76% decline. If this trend continues, it is only a matter of time before the South African government’s racialist regulatory ambitions start to buckle under the weight of growing non-compliance.
Receding sphere
The receding sphere of government’s influence and power not only impacts its ability to enforce immoral or destructive policies. It also starts to affect the delivery of critical services that the government is currently responsible for, such as policing, health services, infrastructure maintenance, border security, power generation, and water supply. As the deterioration of government’s capacity starts to compromise these critical areas, as is already the case, the responsibility falls on communities to mobilise in earnest to fill the gaps. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does power.
If communities and non-governmental organisations do not effectively occupy the new vacant margins on the growing outskirts of government power, criminal elements will.
A retreating government creates new frontiers, but communities interested in taking back control over basic services and security are not the only ones who notice this opportunity. Historical frontiers like the Wild West, for example, were also characterised by the presence of opportunistic bandits.
One of our top priorities therefore needs to be the establishment and expansion of effective, resilient security networks. In such disruptive times, it is imperative to grasp, as my colleague Ernst Roets has emphasised, that new realities are not created by demanding them from the government, but rather that new realities are recognised after communities themselves have already created them.
If the main thing one can take away from the past 114+ years of South African history is a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of an increasingly centralised government, we should ensure that the legacy of our time is that there is indeed life after the death of this old paradigm.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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