The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) said on Friday it was disturbed by the ”now you see it, now you don’t” approach the national broadcaster had towards the screening of the documentary Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki.
A FXI statement issued on Friday night read that the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) decision was ”yet another indication of chaos inside the broadcaster, where different units of the same organisation talk past one another, and then land up working against one another”.
On Thursday, the SABC again changed its mind about screening the controversial documentary on President Thabo Mbeki that was canned about a year ago.
”No, it will not be shown,” said SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago on Thursday after the FXI released a statement indicating that the documentary would be screened.
On Thursday, documentary producer Ben Cashden told the South African Press Association that the programme would be aired on June 10 at 9pm on SABC 3.
Provisional booking
”We really feel no-one has the right to announce things for us,” Kganyago said.
Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki also appears as an entry in the 9pm time slot on SABC’s online schedule.
”That is just provisional booking … it was provisionally put on the schedule, it can change,” said Kganyago.
However, the FXI said on Saturday it did not buy that argument.
”This shows an unacceptably cavalier approach towards its own schedule,” read the statement.
”As the FXI has noted recently, the SABC has withdrawn other controversial programmes at the eleventh hour: something that the corporation appears to do all too easily, and without public accountability.
”The latest withdrawal of the Mbeki documentary confirms the impression that the public cannot trust the scheduling information the SABC puts out, and should treat its contents with a pinch of salt.”
The initial canning of the documentary caused an outcry with accusations of self-censorship levelled against the public broadcaster.
At the time SABC said the programme was canned because ”internal approval processes were not correctly followed”.
The FXI expressed concern that the reportedly critical tone adopted towards Mbeki had resulted in the withdrawal of the documentary, thus constituting self-censorship.
Kganyago stuck to the broadcaster’s stance saying that the programme would be scheduled when the SABC was ready.
”From where we sit we are dealing with the producers and when we are ready we will say. At the moment we are not ready to show it,” he said.
He said it is not a matter of whether the documentary would be aired but when.
However, the FXI said this was ”astonishing”, ”given the fact that the broadcaster has had a year to sort out these matters”.
Meanwhile, Cashden, who on Thursday believed his documentary was to be aired at the weekend, said minor edits had been made, including adding a few sentences.
”SABC’s lawyers informed us five weeks after the doccie’s canning in May 2006 that they felt that viewers might infer that we were trying to insinuate that Mbeki was involved in the Hani assassination,” he said.
”We proposed back in June last year adding a few sentences to stress that the rumour was baseless and that two right-wingers were convicted of Hani’s murder.”
”In any case, we welcome SABC’s decision to show our film. A year late is better than never,” said Cashden.
Kganyago said the broadcaster will ”announce and advertise” the screening of the programme when it was ready to air it. – Sapa