A South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) radio station has allegedly been instructed to cancel an interview with journalists talking about the governing party’s upcoming elective conference.
Sakina Kamwendo, presenter for popular music station Metro FM, is reported to have played music for 15 minutes after she was told to cancel a political discussion with three print journalists about the African National Congress (ANC) elective conference in the city of Mangaung this month.
ANC delegates are planned to elect leaders at the conference who are then likely to govern the nation following elections in 2014.
The state-owned SABC is the country’s public broadcaster, with 18 radio stations as well as 3 television stations.
One journalist who was supposed to take part in the discussion, Business Day’s Sam Mkokeli, told Eyewitness News (EWN) that the host of the programme was forced to play music for 15 minutes instead of conducting the interview.
“You could pick up that something was wrong, but we thought maybe it was technical. Then she went on air and said ‘I’m not going to talk about the Mangaung conference’,” Mkokeli told EWN.
He said Kamwendo said her boss had “got instruction from the hierarchy.”
“I don’t know where the instruction came from, but it sounded like it was a very serious issue.”
In response to a listener's question about whether the station had been censored, an emotional Kamwendo replied, “This is a fantastic station, a fantastic platform and I will not, I will not...be the one to dishonour it.”
Subsequently, the SABC has said that Kamwendo did not follow the broadcaster's policy of 'balanced' reporting by not inviting an ANC representative to the show. The SABC, therefore, says this is the chief reason for the interviews having been cancelled.
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