South Africa High Court in Johannesburg. The JMPD said it recognised the important role played by the media in gathering and disseminating information and undertook to investigate the matter. The meeting agreed to set-up a forum at which journalists and JMPD members can share perspectives about each other’s roles. In light of incidents involving other metro police departments, it was suggested that Sanef should also have similar meetings with them. There were numerous incidents of violence against and harassment and intimidation of journalists and photographers by both police and demonstrators, during the ``Feesmustfall’’ protests across the country. (The protests were by students and directed at universities and other higher education institutions calling on them not to raise their fees, or to levy any fees at all on impoverished students, in the coming year.) Sanef declared that the police’s heavyhanded approach, in particular at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, affected journalists from a number of media houses including EWN, Radio702, Daily Vox and the BBC. Protestors injured eNCA and SABC journalists and some of these incidents were captured on video. A reporter from the BBC and an eNCA cameraman, were injured after stones were thrown at police and journalists at the Union Buildings. Equipment was damaged and there were also reports of theft. Sanef commended students who intervened and forced the protesters to return stolen equipment. SABC journalists were ordered to leave a meeting of students who claimed that the broadcaster showed bias. BROADCASTING Threats to the independence of the public broadcaster Faith Muthambi, Minister of Communications, dominated media news in the year under review, mainly in connection with the operations of the national broadcaster. Following the SABC Memorandum of Incorporation signed by the Minister in September 2014, giving her the right to usurp the SABC board’s powers, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill was gazetted in 2015. The Bill intends to give absolute control to the Minister to hire and fire SABC board members and the chairperson and to reduce the number of SABC board members. If passed, the Bill will make the SABC unaccountable to parliament or to the people of South Africa and instead only accountable to the President through proxy of the Minister of Communication. Both freedom of expression organisations and opposition political parties have vehemently opposed the Bill. They are joined by the SACP, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and ANC alliance partners. The concern is that the Bill will turn the SABC from a public broadcasting into a “corporate broadcaster”, or worse still, a state entity. Digital migration behind schedule South Africa failed to meet the deadline to migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting by mid-June. Additionally, the splitting of the former department of communications in 2014 into two entities - the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (DTPS) and the Department of Communications (DOC), resulted in a turf war between ministries over control of the migration process. South Africa agreed in 2006, along with over 100 other countries in the ITU, to switch from analogue to digital television broadcasting by June 2015, but as So This is Democracy? 2015 59