South Africa’s Public Broadcaster Faces a R120 Million Crisis Just Weeks Before Local Elections

A Funding Gap That Threatens Democratic Accountability

The South African Broadcasting Corporation stands at a critical crossroads. With local government elections scheduled for November 4, the country’s public broadcaster is still waiting on a R120 million funding request that has been circulating through government channels for over thirteen months — and the silence from National Treasury is getting louder by the day. The central thesis here is hard to ignore: when a state fails to adequately fund its public broadcaster ahead of an election, it is not just a budgetary oversight — it is a democratic failure with real consequences for millions of citizens, especially young voters who depend on accessible, wide-reaching media to make informed choices.

This is not a minor administrative delay. The scale, technical capacity and geographic reach of the SABC’s election coverage will be directly shaped by whether Treasury unlocks those funds. That is a staggering amount of power to leave sitting in bureaucratic limbo three weeks before polling day.

Thirteen Months of Waiting, Still No Answer

SABC Chief Executive Nomsa Chabeli appeared before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies and made the situation plain. The broadcaster, she said, would cover the elections regardless of the funding outcome — but the depth and reach of that coverage would depend entirely on available resources. “We have not yet reached final operational readiness. Funding and resource allocation remain open. The reality is that these decisions will materially affect the provisional deployments,” Chabeli told lawmakers.

Board chairperson Khathu Ramukumba confirmed that the R120 million request was first submitted thirteen months ago through the standard Medium Term Expenditure Framework process. The SABC resubmitted the request in August 2025, this time through the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, responding in detail to questions raised by National Treasury. Yet the money remains outstanding.

To put the numbers in perspective: the SABC received just R35 million in dedicated funding for the 2024 national elections. The broadcaster is now asking for more than three times that amount to cover what is, admittedly, a more logistically complex local government election — one that spans hundreds of municipalities across the country. The gap between what was given last time and what is being asked for now reflects the true cost of comprehensive public broadcasting, a cost that the state appears reluctant to meet.

Political Will and Ministerial Meetings That Produced Nothing

Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi has held discussions with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and President Cyril Ramaphosa in an attempt to unlock the funds. The outcome of those high-level conversations? “There was no immediate resolution to release funds as a result of the meetings,” Malatsi acknowledged. That sentence alone should give pause to anyone who believes this government prioritises the infrastructure of democracy.

Godongwana is scheduled to deliver the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement and Adjustment Budget later this month. Whether any allocation for the SABC will appear in that statement remains entirely uncertain. The broadcaster — and the public it serves — is essentially being asked to wait and see.

This uncertainty is not happening in a vacuum. The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies is simultaneously exploring a new SABC funding model, having appointed research firm BMIT Knowledge Group in September 2025 to develop one. The SABC’s declining advertising revenue and mounting financial pressures make this structural review necessary. But a long-term funding model does nothing to solve the immediate crisis of covering an election that is weeks away.

What This Means for Young South Africans

For young voters aged 15 to 25, many of whom are engaging with local government elections for the first time, the SABC remains one of the most accessible sources of political information — particularly in rural and peri-urban communities where internet connectivity is unreliable and private media penetration is low. A scaled-down election broadcast is not just a logistical inconvenience; it is a narrowing of the democratic information space at exactly the moment it should be widest.

When public institutions are starved of resources, it is rarely the powerful who suffer the consequences. It is the young voter in a township outside Polokwane, the first-time participant in Butterworth, the student in Kimberley trying to understand what local governance actually means for their daily life. The SABC’s funding crisis is, at its core, a story about who gets to be informed and who gets left out.

Chabeli’s assurance that the SABC “will deliver the election coverage within our capability” is admirable in spirit. But capability without resources is just resilience dressed up as a plan. South Africa’s democracy deserves better than a public broadcaster forced to improvise its way through one of the country’s most consequential electoral moments.