Debating the bill, Maele said the seeming withdrawal from the three-tier model of broadcasting concerns him.
The Broadcasting Act of 2008 says an ideal broadcasting model has public, private and community broadcasting while the Bill under consideration only talks about "state" and "commercial" broadcasters. Maele said Molefhi's Bill also goes against the African Charter on Broadcasting signed in 2001, which also promotes a three-tier system of broadcasting.
The African Charter was adopted by media practitioners at a 2001 UNESCO Conference held in Windhoek, Namibia, and calls for all state and government controlled broadcasters to be transformed into public service broadcasters. It further presses for public service broadcasters to serve the "overall public interest, avoiding one-sided reporting and programming in regard to religion, political belief, culture, race and gender." Maele argued that the regulatory bill is only concerned with the state-owned media and the private media but does not cover community radio stations.Like other MPs who previously debated the bill, Maele said community radio stations are very imperative in the sense that they can bring about interaction among communities, adding that it is high time government considers issuing licences for such entities.
