In politics, the phrase “too big to fail” often just means “too interconnected to be allowed to fail”. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is one such beast deemed to be too big to fail.
Since 2009, the SABC has received the equivalent of nearly R9 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts. That’s a staggering sum. It is money that could have fixed schools, staffed clinics, rebuilt crumbing infrastructure, or simply stayed in the pockets of South African citizens scraping to get by in a sluggish and declining economy. And what do we have to show for it?
A broadcaster still unable to pay its bills, bleeding relevance by the year, and locked in the same cycle of dysfunction and mismanagement that it’s been trapped in since the dawn of democracy.
The SABC is on life support, and it has been for decades. And the time for gentle treatments (partial privatisation, public-private partnerships, or another “turnaround plan”) has long passed. The only meaningful reform left if we are to revitalize it again, is full, unapologetic privatisation.
A History of Bailing Without Sailing
Let’s look at the SABC’s track record. In 2009, the SABC got its first major rescue, R1.47 billion guaranteed by the state. In return the promise was structural reforms, cost containment, and a new era of financial responsibility. Fast-forward to 2018 and there is yet another R1.2 billion in loan guarantees. Then in 2019, another R3.2 billion cash injection.
All told, that’s R5.87 billion in nominal terms, nearly R9 billion in today’s money adjusted for inflation, without any visible improvements, sustainable structural changes or actionable improvements of the entity.
Yet even with these lifelines, by 2023 the SABC reported a R7 billion shortfall and still couldn’t meet its financial obligations. Staff went unpaid. Content creators abandoned ship. Viewership and ad revenues withered. If these bailouts were investments, we’d call them catastrophic failures – failures funded by money provided by ordinary South Africans. But they weren’t investments, they were subsidies for an institution that simply no longer works.
The truth is, every bailout has only delayed the inevitable, namely that the SABC, as a public entity, is structurally incapable of operating like a modern broadcaster. And with each passing day of technological progress its incapacity grows.
The SABC’s Time Is Over
When the SABC was founded, state broadcasters were the norm. In apartheid South Africa, SABC served as a blunt propaganda tool. Post-1994, there was hope it might evolve into a genuine public broadcaster, independent and representative of the needs and desires of all South Africans. That never happened.
Despite democracy, the SABC remained politically compromised. Board appointments became a game of cadre deployments as journalists walked out or were thrown out deliberately. While every minister swore change was coming, every turnaround plan died a quiet death with the majority of promises still remaining unfulfilled today.
In the meantime, the world moved on rapidly, leaving those like the SABC who stayed behind in the dust. We’re in a digital age where access to news and entertainment is cheaper, faster, more interactive, and more diverse than ever. A rural teenager with a smartphone and TikTok today has more informational reach than her parents did with a transistor radio.
South Africans no longer need the SABC to access current affairs, sports, or entertainment, they only need reliable data and freedom to choose the content that they consume.
So the question becomes: why are we still propping up this dinosaur?
But What About “The Public Good”?
This is the favourite refrain of those who defend the SABC’s existence: that it serves the public interest, reaches the poor, provides local content, and protects democracy. In principle, that’s a perfectly noble goal. But in practice, the SABC frankly does none of these particularly well.
Its content is uneven, its editorial independence is compromised, and its ability to reach rural or under-resourced areas is in practice not at all a function of virtue and more a legacy of infrastructure that’s rapidly being overtaken by mobile networks and streaming services. Meanwhile, genuinely public-interest journalism is now being done better without state handouts and with more editorial courage.
The SABC’s defenders also like to invoke the BBC. But the comparison doesn’t hold any substance. The BBC is funded by an enforceable licence fee, operates under a fiercely guarded charter of independence, and exists in a media ecosystem that prizes public debate and input. South Africa, by contrast, has neither the regulatory backbone nor the cultural consensus to support such a model.
Our TV licence system is barely enforceable. The SABC owes more than it earns. Its management is politicised. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of state ambition and institutional fragility.
The Case Against Half-Measures
Some suggest that the SABC could be “partially” privatised. This is a trap. Keeping the state involved, even as a minority shareholder, invites the same old problems of interference, inefficiency, mismanagement, and blurred accountability. We’ve seen this movie time and time again.
Russia’s Channel One kept its state ties and never shook off subsidy dependence. Zambia’s TopStar project saddled taxpayers with debt and failed to deliver any content improvements whatsoever. In the Philippines, Radio Philippines Network limped along with private partnerships until it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, many taxpayer interventions later.
These models do not reform state broadcasters, they just zombify them and prolong the inevitable end.
It should also be admitted that privatisation isn’t a silver bullet, but it creates conditions that no public bailout ever will: competition, efficiency, and a healthy fear of failure. Look at France’s TF1, privatised in the 1980s. Revenues soared. Content quality improved. Or Argentina’s Telefe, now a global media asset.
The point isn’t that South Africa will magically replicate these outcomes, but privatisation at least creates the environment where this can become a reality, where the consumer and the customer has the power to dictate success. It is clear that the SABC can’t improve while shackled to the state.
Selling the SABC would also send a crucial message that the government is willing to let go of power where it no longer serves the public good, and where it cannot afford to justifiably sustain it. That’s rare in South African politics, where the instinct is to hoard control, no matter how dysfunctional the outcome.
It would show seriousness about media independence, not by proclaiming it in speeches, but by getting government out of the newsroom and into the playing arena where South African citizens are. The ball is therefore squarely in the GNU’s court. The question remains whether they will act on it.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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