The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) has ruled in favour of the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) on the party’s complaint against the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) description of Pretoria as Tshwane.
In a summary of its judgement on Monday, the BCCSA said the FF+ had complained about inaccurate news reporting by the public broadcaster when referring to places where events occurred, such as ”Onderstepoort, outside Tshwane”, ”Mamelodi, east of Tshwane”, ”Winterveldt, north of Tshwane” and ”the city centre of Tshwane”.
This created the impression that the areas were outside the Tshwane metropolitan municipality, whereas they were all within the municipal area.
There was also not an entity or place by the name of the City of Tshwane.
”The said descriptions are inaccurate and as such they constitute a contravention of … the code.
”[The] Complaint [is] thus upheld although no penalty [is] imposed,” the commission said.
”In a decision by the tribunal in May 2005 it was found that [the] respondent did not contravene the [broadcasting] code [of conduct] when using the name Tshwane.”
There was a municipality named Tshwane.
Willie Spies of the FF+ said he found it ”strange” that no penalties had been imposed on the SABC for the breach and this was a disappointment.
However, the party was ”thrilled by the success of its complaint”.
”The FF+ will study the judgement in more detail in order to decide whether the party will file an appeal against the commission’s decision not to impose penalties,” he said. — Sapa