The Mail & Guardian is going ahead with plans to screen a controversial documentary on President Thabo Mbeki at its Critical Thinking Forum in Johannesburg this week — despite possible legal action against the documentary’s producer by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
The public broadcaster was on Tuesday seeking an urgent court interdict against Broad Daylight Films to prevent the screening of the documentary titled Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki. Its application will be heard on Wednesday at the Johannesburg High Court.
Spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said: ”The documentary is our property and they [Broad Daylight] do not have the right to show it to anybody.” He added that an ”approved version” of the documentary will be shown by the SABC when it becomes available.
In its court papers, the SABC says it only became aware on July 13 that the documentary was scheduled to be screened at the M&G Critical Thinking Forum as well as in three other provinces.
The M&G, however, has not been named in the court papers served by the SABC. M&G editor Ferial Haffajee said on Tuesday afternoon: ”As far as we know, we are going ahead with the screening and the debate.
”We have had an unprecedented response from the public. Many people have said they will sit on the floor, such is their keenness to see the documentary.”
Haffajee said it is her view that South Africans will make up their own minds about what they can and cannot view. ”We look forward to a great debate on public broadcasting following the screening. It will feature the president’s biographer Ronald Suresh Roberts, the Freedom of Expression Institute’s Jane Duncan, the producers and myself,” she said.
‘Bizarre’
Redi Direko, producer of the documentary, told the M&G Online: ”It’s completely bizarre and incomprehensible that they [the SABC] are suddenly serving us with urgent court papers when we are in the middle of a series of screenings.”
The documentary has already been shown in Grahamstown, Durban, Pietermaritzburg and East London, said co-producer Ben Cashdan.
”There was very positive feedback. People said, ‘We enjoyed the film, and we found out more about Thabo Mbeki,”’ he said. ”Even those who said they didn’t like it, said the SABC should have shown it, as they wanted to be able to make up their own minds.”
The interdict application ”gives the impression that they are yet again trying to silence debate and stifle freedom of expression”, Cashdan said.
The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) said in a statement it condemned the SABC’s urgent application for an interdict.
”The SABC has taken over a year to resolve with the producers the question of the documentary’s screening, which led to the producers cancelling the copyright contract with the SABC. Had the SABC responded more timeously, and screened the documentary when it intended, this crisis would never have arisen. To that extent, the broadcaster needs to take responsibility for how events have unfolded,” the FXI said.
”The huge public interest in the tour shows that there is considerable public demand for the documentary. Preventing the public from seeing the documentary is not the answer, and a narrow approach towards copyright should not be used to prevent the free flow of debate about the documentary,” it added.
Delayed screening
The broadcaster has delayed the screening of the documentary, which is reportedly critical of Mbeki, for more than a year.
The initial canning of the documentary caused an outcry, with accusations of self-censorship levelled against the national broadcaster. At the time, the SABC said the programme was canned because ”internal approval processes were not correctly followed”.
The storm over the documentary was preceded by a furore over the SABC’s banning of certain political commentators.
Last month, the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) said it was disturbed by the ”now you see it, now you don’t” approach the SABC had towards the screening of the documentary — this after the SABC had changed its mind for a second time about broadcasting it.
An FXI statement said that the SABC’s 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”.
At the time, Kganyago said it was 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 had had a year ”to sort out these matters”.
Apart from forum discussions in Johannesburg (on Wednesday night) and in Cape Town (on July 24), the M&G and the Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust plan to show the documentary at several venues across the country, including Soweto, Khayelitsha, Durban and KwaMashu. The screenings are to be followed by a question session with the filmmakers.
On the net
Documentary trailer
Screening details