The ANC has stepped into the future and revealed it wants to scrap TV licences in favour of tax.
The news was announced during a media briefing at the ANC’s National Policy Conference by Communications Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni. According to Ntshavheni, the ANC wants the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to get rid of TV licence fees and replace them with a broadcasting household levy.
She further stated that the TV licence scheme is not working, and could impact the SABC’s ability to survive, as per My Broadband.
“The public broadcaster must be strengthened. The SABC has both a commercial mandate and a public mandate. In the public mandate, we want the SABC to be funded from the national fiscus, but we are also proposing a household levy,” she said.
Education channels, health channels and history channels are just a few priorities that she believes the public broadcaster should put on its agenda.
The SABC’s annual performance plan was published in May 2022 and outlined its plans to introduce the new tax. South Africans who prefer getting their entertainment from Netflix may not be exempt from the proposed tax as the levy will be “device independent.
This suggests that South Africans who do not have a television set will still be required to contribute. Additionally, the proposal also states that part of the levy’s revenue will be collected by the “dominant subscription broadcaster,” which will be DStv and Multichoice, on behalf of the broadcaster, reports Business Tech.
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