Cape Town – The Democratic Alliance on Friday said its standoff with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) over airing election campaign advertisements has been resolved with the broadcaster capitulating and agreeing to show the material.
“The DA is pleased that the SABC has finally agreed to flight the DA’s election adverts having used every trick in the book to delay their airing for more than five days. This is an important victory which we hope will dissuade the public broadcaster from attempting to censor opposition political parties again,” DA MP and communications spokeswoman Phumzile van Damme said.
She said the official opposition would therefore shelve its complaint to the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), which was filed on Monday.
“Given that the SABC has agreed to air the DA’s election adverts we have placed our complaint with Icasa on hold. This does not mean the complaint has been dropped completely and should the SABC use any other means to delay the airing of the advert we will revive the complaint immediately.”
Earlier on Friday, Van Damme accused the SABC of stalling despite days of negotiations and an in principle agreement to air the advertisements in which the party claims that the poor receive better services in areas where the DA is in government.
She said that after an agreement was reached the SABC alerted the DA that it could not open video files containing the advertisements. Once this issue was resolved the SABC then asked the party to add a disclaimer stating that the viewing material constituted political advertising.
Van Damme said that in the past the SABC had added the disclaimer itself and the DA suspected that the public broadcaster was trying to prevent the party having a head start in terms of campaign advertising over the African National Congress ahead of the August 3 municipal elections.
“The SABC’s excuses were shown up for what they always were – poor attempts to delay the adverts. Excuses ranging from their search for political party slots (not required for paid advertisements) to determining bizarrely if we were in fact a political party at all demonstrated their desperation to block us at every turn.”
SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said earlier this week the DA’s complaint was spurious, as the broadcaster needed to receive confirmation of party registration for all those contesting the vote before it could air their material.
This, he said, applied to paid advertisements, like those in question, as well as a separate category used in allocated campaign time slots.
He said the relevant information was, however, finally received on Monday and therefore material could be aired the customary five days after receipt. Kganyago could not be reached for further comment on Friday.
The SABC has in the past week come under heavy criticism from opposition parties and rights groups over a decision to stop airing footage of violent service delivery protests, with the Right2Know campaign likening this to apartheid-era censorship.
African News Agency