CASE NUMBER: 08/2006 – LOWIES, LENZ, CILLIé, CRONJE, WASSERMANS, GOSS VS SABC2 – RACISM

The Registrar of the Broadcasting Complaints Tribunal of SA (BCCSA) received complaints regarding what was perceived by the complainants as unfair biased contents of an SABC documentary titled “Three Decades of SA Television”. In the main, these complaints focused on the political contents of a programme:  particularly the strong emphasis on the apartheid theme, the way in which the main political actors of the time were depicted, and the assertion that at the time of the previous regime, the SABC was a “government propaganda machine”.  By its innate nature, politics as practiced by political parties are subjective and nuanced. Choices are made and sides are taken depending on the particular philosophical or ideological vantage point of the practitioner, participant or observer. Even so, there are limits of disagreement when certain essential societal and moral norms and values are at stake.  Political history confirms that universal agreement, albeit ex post facto, exists as to what is moral or immoral, good or bad, or right or wrong. Therefore, Nazi-ism in Germany, Stalinism in Russia and Fascism in Italy, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Aminism in Uganda, to name but few examples, are generally condemned as sub-human the world over. Apartheid as an ideology falls in the same category. Apartheid was declared by the United Nations as “a crime against humanity”. In its total context, the documentary must be judged from this perspective, irrespective of other considerations, such, for instance, as admitted by the SABC, that it “fell far short of the usual standards of the channel.” No transgression of the Broadcasting Code, particularly the applicable articles 16(3) and 35, were found by the Tribunal. The complaint is dismissed.