South African filmmakers are sounding an S.O.S.
over the country’s beleaguered cash rebate system, with leading industry bodies demanding answers over unpaid claims and calling for greater transparency from the officials overseeing the cashback scheme. The country’s 25% cash rebate system has effectively been crippled by what industry representatives say are unexplained delays at the Dept. of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), the government body tasked with overseeing the rebate, which owes untold millions of dollars in unpaid claims to local filmmakers.
Dozens of applications are in limbo, awaiting approval from a department that hasn’t met in more than a year, a fact that Tshepiso Chikapa Phiri, CEO of production powerhouse Known Associates Group, described as “shocking.” “We should never have gotten here,” Phiri told Variety at the Joburg Film Festival . On a recent morning in the South African capital of Pretoria, hundreds of members of the local film and television industry picketed outside the offices of the DTIC, demanding that it fast-track applications awaiting rebate approval and settle its outstanding debts to projects that have already been approved, with some claims dating as far back as three years.
“Pay the claims! Pay them now!” Known Associates Group chairman Joel Chikapa Phiri demanded, to rousing cheers from the protesters. The picket, which was led by industry bodies including the Independent Producers Organization (IPO), the Indepe.
