Sth Africa TV sacks staff after sex scene

Press, 20 February 1986, Page 19

Sth Africa TV sacks staff after sex scene

NZPA-AAP Johannesburg South African state television has sacked employees who showed the station’s first shots of a black man making love to a white woman, during the evening news. Until last year, sex and marriage across the colour line was illegal, even in private and without television cameras. The showing shocked, confused, titillated and angered hundreds of thousands of viewers used to the stringent puritanical code of State televison during peak viewing time. The film clip appeared only on screens in Natal province. Newspapers described it as “blue”, and a “nudecast.” The head of the Statecontrolled South African Broadcating Corporation,

Riaan Eksteen, said in Johannesburg that he had summarily sacked the staff responsible for what appeared to have been a technical faux pas. Mr Eksteen also called in the police to investigate. Posession of pornography is a serious criminal offence in South Africa.

One newspaper in Durban reported that today it had received hundreds of calls about the “porno” showing, and that most of the readers could not contain their mirth.

The snippet lasted several seconds — as the voices of news reporters droned on — until the screen was blacked out

Then the words, “We have a problem. Please do not adjust your set,” flashed on to the television screens.