By Johnathan Paoli
South Africa’s film and television industry will stage national marches in Cape Town and Pretoria in late January 2026, warning that the continued dysfunction of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition’s (DTIC) Film and TV Incentive has pushed the sector to the brink of collapse.
Under the banner “Save SA Film Jobs – Fix the DTIC Film Incentive”, industry bodies representing thousands of workers across the value chain will mobilise on 28 January in Cape Town and 29 January in Pretoria, demanding urgent reforms to restart approvals, restore investor confidence, and halt what they say is a deepening economic and human crisis.
According to the Save SA Film Jobs coalition, the incentive scheme, a cornerstone of South Africa’s creative economy, has effectively stalled.
“Our decline is the direct result of a poorly implemented and red-tape-riddled rebate system whose approvals have stalled, and a department that refuses to engage meaningfully with the industry,” the coalition said in a statement announcing the marches.
While the DTIC maintains that the incentive remains open, industry representatives say there have been no adjudication meetings since March 2024, leaving a growing backlog of applications unapproved and forcing productions to delay, downscale or relocate to competing international markets.
The coalition says the consequences have been severe.
Productions have stalled, tens of thousands of freelancers and permanent workers have lost income, and the industry has contracted by close to 50%.
The slowdown has also triggered a collapse in investor confidence, with major international film and television projects, and billions of rand in potential foreign currency inflows, being diverted to other countries with more reliable incentive systems.
The planned march follows an earlier protest held on 27 February this year, when hundreds of filmmakers, actors, writers, crew members and industry organisations gathered outside the DTIC’s Pretoria offices.
That protest culminated in the handover of a memorandum calling for the immediate resumption of adjudication meetings, clarity on delayed payments and meaningful engagement with the sector.
Despite subsequent engagements and assurances, the coalition says little has changed in the months since.
The lack of tangible progress, it argues, has made a renewed national mobilisation “necessary and unavoidable”.
Before the current crisis, the South African film and television industry was estimated to employ around 60,000 full-time and freelance workers, support more than 100,000 indirect jobs, and generate R8-R10 billion in annual production value.
The sector also attracted approximately R3.8 billion in foreign direct investment and played a significant role in youth employment, with 67% of the workforce under the age of 35.
Since 2020, however, the sector has shrunk dramatically, with hundreds of millions of rand in foreign investment reportedly lost due to the incentive’s poor functioning.
“When the film incentive fails, it is not just producers who suffer. Actors lose roles, writers’ scripts never reach production, directors and crew cannot secure work, and small businesses, from caterers to transport companies, are pushed to the brink,” the coalition said.
The industry organisations organising the march including Animation SA, the South African Guild of Actors, the Independent Producers Organisation, the Personal Managers’ Association, the Writers’ Guild of South Africa, and the South African Screen Federation.
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