The target of completing the more than decade-long broadcast digital migration process is on track to be completed by June, Communications Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told Parliament on Tuesday. 

Additional emergency demand is on track to be met by July, the minister said. 

This comes after the Department of Communications was subjected to months of court challenges and apprehension from its own entities about the government's readiness to switch off the analogue broadcast signal for good.

In addition to a court challenge brought by free-to-air broadcaster e.tv, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) expressed its misgivings about the government's preparedness for the migration's conclusion, for which Ntshavheni strongly admonished the public broadcaster. The SABC has since apologised.

The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria dismissed e.tv's case in March, affirming its lawfulness and constitutionality, and directing the government to extend its deadline for the analogue switch-off process to the end of June.

READ | e.tv seeks Constitutional Court appeal against 'unlawful' digital migration

Acting director-general Nomvuyiso Batyi told Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Communications on Tuesday morning that the delivery of set-top box decoders to all eligible households in Gauteng and the Northern Cape had been concluded.

"Gauteng has reached the target for the installation. [The] Northern Cape is also completed. We would have been ready to switch off Gauteng, but we also had to earmark that the Brixton [Sentech] Tower is the last to be switched off in June," said Batyi.

Batyi said a number of sites across the country made progress and would wait for instructions from the SABC. She said decoder distribution and analogue switch-off in KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and Eastern Cape would be concluded in June.

She said at the end of March, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that 507 251 households should be migrated by the end of June and 260 868 households should be migrated by the end of September.

"Installations are currently underway in all nine provinces in order to reach the target. The department is making progress on installations to meet the March court ruling that support the Minister to migrate those who registered by 31 October 2021 and analogue switch-off to be concluded by 30 June," Batyi said.

She said 163 SABC analogue transmitter sites were already switched off. She said e.tv switched off five transmitters since February, making up a total of 9 analogue transmitters switched off by the broadcaster.

READ | 'Last hurdle' in the way of digital migration: Minister to oppose e.tv's ConCourt bid

DA MP Tsholofelo Motshidi-Bodlani said the projections of the department for the targeted deadline were "optimistic", especially when flooding in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape are taken into consideration.

She asked what would happen to households that do not receive decoders by the end of June. Ntshavheni said 33 000 households' broadcast signals were potentially affected by floods but that the department was working with the Department of Human Settlements to restore household capacity to receive a signal.

"There is no optimism on our part. There is realistic planning on our part. The names that we have collected are not thumb-sucked but come from the disaster management intervention. The current run rate bar the forces of nature we cannot control, we are confident we will complete those numbers by the end of July," said Ntshavheni.

Ntshavheni said the department had not yet closed applications for those who had not previously applied for a set-top box be October last year or those who will require assistance due to flooding damage, adding that the department earmarked July to provide additional assistance to those in need after the June deadline.

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