Top Billing is a well known programme on SABC 3, one of the tv channels of the SABC, the public 
broadcaster. It attracts a wide audience and deals with matters of interest, whether in the arts, travel, architecture and the like. In the programnme under discussion the presenter took his viewers to a Vietnam restaurant where on of the dishes is snake meat. Five complaints were received about what was, inter alia, described as cruelty to animals and the broadcast of cruelty as a form of entertainment. In the Tribunal’s view the information value of the insert ultimately saved it; it was not broadcast for its entertainment value. In a sense one was struck by the hopeless ordeal of the captured snake. It is true that the actual killing was not shown and that the cobra in the insert was probably merely included to frighten viewers. Yet it could be argued that the insert promoted cruelty to a captured animal. However, one must accept that this is also the ordeal of animals slaughtered at an abattoir. The more one thinks about it, the less attractive meat dishes could become! But culture, and often very local South African culture, has led to the eating of a wide variety of creatures. Only tolerance of different eating cultures would overcome the need for clashes as to what one should eat and how the living creature should be slaughtered or killed. The Tribunal believes that the insert was tolerable within a community where the right to know is one of the central values. The insert did not promote violence but, on balance, promoted knowledge of different cultures. There is also no evidence that a criminal was being paid for information. The eating of snakes is, in any case, not a criminal act in South Africa.
The complaints were not upheld.