By Wendy Jasson da Costa
The cameraman at the centre of the saga of the SABC's non-coverage of people heckling Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says his reputation has been tainted.
"I'm a freelancer, this has affected me work-wise. It's not easy for me," Sanjay Singh said on Tuesday.
He was given the blame and the boot after the South African Broadcasting Corporation investigated the incident that happened on Women's Day.
Singh said he first heard about the problem when he was telephoned by e-tv and told that the SABC had fired him.
He said he then bought a newspaper and was shocked to read about it.
"The first day when it broke, they should have told the truth. They should have not lied and it should not have gone this far," said Singh.
"At the end of the day, my reputation has been tainted".
He said he had received a brief from the SABC to cover a Women's Day rally in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal.
Singh said he was on time for the event but only sent them 15 minutes of footage and not the whole tape because "at that stage I didn't see it to be a major breaking story".
"There were 10 000 people at the event. This (the hecklers) was between 20 to 30 people," he said.
Singh said he believed the heckling aspect had been exaggerated.
On Tuesday he told Sapa that he had been inundated with calls of support from people who knew the quality of his work, while members of his community in the Dundee area in northern KwaZulu-Natal, where he is based, have also approached him to say they had followed the dispute on the news.
"Ten years of untainted service with he SABC and never before have I been questioned about my work," Singh said.
Apart from the SABC, Singh has also worked for international news organisations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters and CNN.
On Monday, a two-man team that led a probe into the matter at the SABC revealed that there was no evidence supporting the allegation that the SABC was guilty of political bias.
The team found that the reason the footage was not flighted was that Singh thought the "noise" was not newsworthy. - Sapa