ANC wants Muthambion a short leash

Ruling party is losing patience with minister

THE ANC IS moving to rein in cabinet rogue and Communications Minister Faith Muthambi. There were signs at last weekend’s national general council (NGC) meeting that the ruling party may be losing patience with Muthambi’s department in a number of policy areas.

Among the issues that have angered the ruling party are the “flip flopping” on digital migration, which led South Africa to miss the June international deadline to switch from analogue to digital TV broadcasts, and a controversial deal between the SABC and MultiChoice that critics allege amounts to a takeover of the public broadcaster by a private monopoly.

Merger

Media group Caxton has referred the deal – which saw the SABC make its entire archive available exclusively to MultiChoice to the exclusion of its own free-to-air audience – to the Competition Tribunal, and alleged that it was a merger that should have been adjudicated by the country’s competition authorities.

Yesterday the ANC stopped short of backing this interpretation, but did not mince its words when expressing unhappiness about how the deal was handled, as well as Muthambi’s bypassing of party accountability.

Jackson Mthembu, the newly-elected head of the ruling party’s executive subcommittee on communications, said there had been “no transparency” around the deal, and the ANC would demand that Muthambi’s department account to the ruling party on major policy matters.

Muthambi has also riled the ruling party by acting as a bulwark of support to controversial SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

Yesterday Mthembu said the NGC had expressed concern about the decline of corporate governance at the public broadcaster. But most problematic for the ruling party is Muthambi’s ratification of a digital migration policy that does away with set-top box encryption, which threatens to derail the state’s ability to roll out critical e-government services to local households, and which will have the effect of entrenching MultiChoice’s monopoly in the pay-TV market.

Signal encryption in new set -top boxes would have allowed new entrants into the pay-TV market to secure exclusive content to compete with MultiChoice’s dominant DStv platform. Both the ANC and the cabinet took a decision in 2013 to back encryption, but Muthambi earlier this year unilaterally gazetted a policy that went back on this decision.

Muthambi’s about-turn will have the effect, if the ruling party fails to rein her in, of entrenching MultiChoice’s market dominance. The ANC is not happy. “What we can say is that there was no consultation between government authorities and the subcommittee of the ANC dealing with the matter,” he said yesterday.

Mthembu said the constant “flip flopping” on digital migration was an embarrassment to the ANC and to the country.

“All of us are very embarrassed that we couldn’t meet the DTT (digital terrestrial television) migration deadline in June. South Africa is a serious player (in this space) and we should behave as such,” said Mthembu.

The ANC had to satisfy itself that “no institution and no individuals are captured by capital” when decisions are made. “We must ask ourselves: is this decision in the public interest?”

Telecoms Minister Siyabonga Cwele added to the criticism, and said the ANC would ensure that the state did not subsidise the production of “dummy boxes” that did not allow the government to extend internet access and e-services to the poor.