South Africa’s film industry founders as state withholds support
Hundreds of South African film and television professionals rallied outside Parliament in the Cape Town leg of the “Save SA Film Jobs” protests. Dressed in black and carrying banners, actors, crew, writers, producers, and industry bodies (SAGA, WGSA, IPO, SASFED, and others) demanded urgent fixes to the stalled DTIC Film & TV Incentive Programme, delayed approvals, unpaid rebates, and frozen projects that are driving productions overseas and costing thousands of jobs. The demonstration follows similar actions last year. Industry leaders warn that the creative sector, once a major economic driver, faces collapse without swift government intervention.
Image: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
SOUTH AFRICA’s once-thriving film industry says it’s on the verge of collapse because the government has withheld financial support for the past two years, leaving thousands of actors, producers, writers and support staff struggling to find work.
The number of films and documentaries made in the country soared in part due to the introduction of the South African Film and Television Production Incentive, which provides rebates of up to 40% of costs to production companies that meet certain requirements, including that they are locally registered and utilize South African directors.
The film industry complains that the Department of Trade Industry and Competition, which oversees the program, is withholding between R600 million ($37.5 million) and R1 billion that is due to qualifying companies in violation of court orders to pay out the money. Furthermore, a panel within the department that is supposed to adjudicate on the rebates hasn’t met for two years.
"It’s a pure case of maladministration,” said Jade Ganzena, secretary general of the Independent Producers Organization, a filmmakers’ group. "We stand on the brink of collapse as an industry."
Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau said the issue is being addressed, and his department in the process of dispensing with a backlog of applications for production rebates and rebuilding capacity to vet them.
The incentive scheme underperformed during the Covid pandemic “and the budget was taken away and reallocated to other programs,” he told a lawmakers’ panel in Cape Town on Tuesday. “We have been saying to National Treasury to reallocate” the money for rebates as the under-performance was due to extenuating circumstances, he said.
A number of major international feature films have been made in South Africa, including Invictus, which portrayed Nelson Mandela’s role in the country’s victory in the 1994 Rugby World Cup, and Lord of War, a film about the international arms industry that starred Nicolas Cage.
About 6,600 people, including, actors, writers and producers, work in film and television, while hundreds of thousands of others are employed in support roles, but those numbers have shrunk considerably, said production company owner Luke Rous.
"We have seen a massive contraction in the industry,” he said.