South Africa is pressing TikTok to open creator rewards to local users

South African communications minister Solly Malatsi is pressing TikTok to extend its creator rewards programme to local users, arguing that South African creators are helping to generate traffic and trends without receiving the same direct monetisation available in larger markets.

Malatsi said his department raised the issue with a TikTok vice president during recent discussions. The argument is simple: if creators in the US and UK can be paid directly for qualifying content, South African creators should not be limited to gifting, sponsorships or indirect commercial deals.

The monetisation gap

TikTok has built a large South African audience. MyBroadband, citing DataReportal, reported that TikTok's advertising tools indicated 29.1 million active users aged 18 and above in South Africa in late 2025.

That scale gives local creators real influence. The problem is that reach and payment are not the same thing. Creators can earn through live gifts, brand work, affiliate deals and other channels, but South Africa remains outside TikTok's main rewards programme.

Malatsi described that gap as economic exclusion. His point is not that TikTok offers no monetisation at all. It is that South African creators do not have access to the same platform-level revenue mechanisms available elsewhere.

A comedian in Soweto, a cook in Durban or a reviewer in Cape Town can rack up views that advertisers in Johannesburg will pay for indirectly. The platform can still keep them off the Creativity Program or equivalent payout ladder because of geography. That is a product decision dressed up as a market-readiness story.

YouTube's Partner Programme, Meta's various payout experiments and TikTok's own ladders have all rolled out unevenly across Africa. Creators already know the pattern: you are useful for attention; you are late for the money.

Why this matters beyond influencers

The creator economy is increasingly ordinary digital work. Video editors, musicians, comedians, educators, reviewers and small businesses use platforms such as TikTok as distribution infrastructure. When a platform controls discovery, monetisation rules become labour-market rules in practice.

That is why the government's intervention matters even if no regulation follows. It asks whether a global platform should be allowed to treat South African audience contribution as commercially valuable while keeping direct creator payouts geographically restricted.

SMMEs that sell through TikTok Shop or live selling will care as much as dance accounts. If rewards stay closed, the professionalisation of local creator businesses stays slower: fewer full-time editors, fewer studio rents, more dependence on a single brand deal.

DTIC and DSAC cultural-industry language often celebrates export of SA culture. A platform that exports the trend and imports none of the reward pool sits awkwardly in that story.

TikTok has alternatives, but Malatsi is not satisfied

TikTok pointed to alternative monetisation mechanisms, including gifting. Malatsi said that was not the issue he wanted resolved.

South African creators, he argued, are often originators of trends that can later be copied or amplified in countries where participants have access to better monetisation. That claim is difficult to quantify across the whole platform, but the underlying policy question is legitimate.

If a platform can monetise South African attention at scale — 29 million-plus 18+ users in advertising tools — what obligations, if any, should it have toward the creators producing that attention?

Gifting is uneven, taxable in messy ways, and skewed toward live performance. It is not a substitute for a documented RPM on qualifying videos. Creators who do not want to beg in LIVE should not have to in order to be "monetised".

Regulation would be complicated

Government cannot simply force a foreign platform to launch a commercial rewards programme without considering competition law, digital-services regulation and platform terms. Any intervention would need to avoid creating a rule so specific that it distorts one platform while leaving comparable services untouched.

There is also a risk of promising creators an outcome that depends on TikTok's global product strategy rather than South African policy alone. Malatsi can pressure. He cannot compile the app.

A lighter path is transparency: require large platforms to publish which monetisation products are available in South Africa, the eligibility criteria, and a timeline. Shame is a tool. So is public procurement and advertising spend, if government ever chose to use it that way — a separate, politically loaded decision.

What remains unresolved

TikTok had not publicly committed to opening the rewards programme in South Africa when MyBroadband reported on the meeting. That makes this a pressure campaign, not a product announcement.

The next useful signal will be whether TikTok changes eligibility, publishes a South African roadmap, or offers a local programme with comparable economics. Until then, South African creators remain part of TikTok's audience engine without access to one of its best-known direct reward systems — and the minister has put that fact on the record.

A meeting is not a rewards programme

Malatsi put the gap on record: 29 million-plus adult users in ad tools, no local seat on TikTok's main creator rewards ladder. Gifting is not that ladder.

Until TikTok publishes SA eligibility or a date, creators should keep stacking YouTube, brand work and live gifts — and treat the minister's pressure as politics, not payroll. The useful government follow-up is a public comparison of which monetisation products are live here versus the UK, not another closed-door VP meeting. Creators should ask TikTok for the same RPM math the UK programme publishes, not for vibes. If the company cannot show a path, Malatsi's exclusion label stands. If it can, the next fight is tax, eligibility thresholds and whether brands stop paying because the platform started to.