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Minutes Raise Questions Over Multichoice-SABC Deal Legalbrief | your legal news hub Monday 27 September 2021 Minutes raise questions over MultiChoice-SABC deal Minutes of a high-level 2013 meeting between SABC executives and MultiChoice suggest the Naspers pay-TV subsidiary tried to use a R500m payment for an SABC news channel as cover to secure influence over government policy on encryption, notes a Business Day report. Analysts said MultiChoice saw encryption as a threat to its dominance of the pay-TV market and the company was determined to reverse government policy and ensure set-top boxes were not encrypted. At the time of the meeting, the government’s policy was to back encryption. The release of the minutes has fuelled growing calls for a probe into MultiChoice’s relationship with ANN7 and the national broadcaster. ‘If MultiChoice says there is nothing untoward in its relationship with the two television stations, then it must come clean and show us all the documents,’ said Phumzile van Damme, the DA’s communications spokesperson, who has called for an inquiry by Icasa. The minutes form part of documents provided by the SABC in December 2016 to the parliamentary ad hoc committee looking into the SABC. Van Damme said they support recent media allegations that MultiChoice paid then Gupta-owned ANN7 millions in exchange for similar influence over the government’s position on set-top boxes. ‘It speaks to a company willing to stop at nothing, including paying kickbacks to the Gupta family, thus supporting state capture, in order to get its way.’ A City Press report says the minutes appear to confirm that, for MultiChoice, the R100m a year five-year deal with the SABC for a news and an archive-based entertainment channel on their DStv platform was hinged on the future TV market and set-top box encryption as the ‘dealbreaker’. Van Damme said the minutes suggest MultiChoice made the deal with the SABC ‘in exchange for the public’s broadcaster political influence over digital migration’. The SABC says it has ‘noted the publication’ of various internal minutes dealing with the controversial agreement, pointing out the contents were the reason it referred the matter to the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). The new board has distanced itself from the unfolding scandal, notes a report in The Citizen. Sacked SABC board members and executives, including Ellen Tshabalala, bosses Hlaudi Motsoeneng and Jimi Matthews, have been fingered as having participated in secret meetings regarding the MultiChoice deal. In a statement, the SABC said: ‘The content of these minutes and the reported statements of the various individuals identified underlines why the MultiChoice agreement and its related documentation was referred to the SIU for an urgent investigation.’ The statement issued by the chairperson of the SABC board, Bongumusa Makhathini, added: ‘The SABC Board distances itself from the alleged unlawful behaviour and re-iterates its commitment to independence from both political and commercial interests.’ The new SABC board, appointed in October, said it and management will continue to co-operate with any investigation into the alleged wrongdoing that led up to the signing of the MultiChoice agreement. Motsoeneng has defended the deal. According to a report in The Mercury, Motsoeneng told Independent Media that the five-year deal, which included the SABC 24-hour news channel and entertainment classics rerun channel, SABC Encore, was his innovation, his project and had actually made the public broadcaster money. The former SABC chief operating officer also gave warning that the contract the public broadcaster signed with MultiChoice was renewable for another five years after its expiry next year. Motsoeneng said the deal helped fund the SABC’s news operations. ‘We paid salaries using MultiChoice money. There’s nothing wrong with the deal… MultiChoice has done very well to fund the SABC,’ he said. He dismissed Van Damme’s claim that MultiChoice sought to pay the SABC R100m for its 24-hour news channel in exchange for the public broadcaster’s political influence over digital migration. ‘We approached MultiChoice, not the other way around… All South Africans should applaud MultiChoice for funding a public broadcaster,’ he is quoted as saying. The SABC’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting has been mired in controversy‚ notes a TimesLIVE report. It says allegations of bribery‚ corruption and tender manipulation surfaced regarding the procurement of five million set top boxes (STBs) which could receive the new digital signal. The STBs would be distributed for free‚ while a further three million would be sold by private retailers. Twenty-six companies were awarded work on the contract to supply the STBs but the process has been subject to a court challenge that ended up before the Constitutional Court‚ a probe by the Competition Commission and an investigation by the Special Investigations Unit. In August‚ the Constitutional Court upheld a decision by former Communications Minister Faith Muthambi that the STBs did not need to have the capability to decrypt broadcast signals‚ which was a move in favour of MultiChoice which holds a strong monopoly in the pay TV sector. Controversially‚ Muthambi was in 2015 awarded powers by President Jacob Zuma that led to her being able to make the decision. This, notes TimesLIVE, would play in favour of state capture culprits‚ the Gupta family and their ANN7 news channel. Multichoice has denied wrongdoing in its dealings with the Gupta-owned TV channel. The report notes digital migration may yet face further delays. In August‚ the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa‚ which regulates and controls the procurement of STBs‚ filed papers with the Gauteng High Court asking that the awarded tender for the STBs be declared invalid. The matter is yet to be heard..
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