BBC crime broadcast has Pahad fuming
businessday.co.za
>>CAPE TOWN — The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been slammed by a fuming Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad after the broadcaster aired a documentary on crime in SA, broadcast at the time that President Thabo Mbeki made his state of the nation address.
The documentary was filmed in parts of Hillbrow and concluded that SA was the crime capital of the world.[Hillbrow is a suburb of Johannesburg, formerly cosmopolitan but now exclusively black]
African National Congress (ANC) MP Mike Masutha got the debate rolling on Tuesday with a member’s statement in the National Assembly that said crime statistics showed there had been considerable improvements in the situation in Hillbrow. He condemned the BBC’s programme.
Pahad, using the ministerial slot to comment on members’ statements, lashed out, saying that the BBC report was “selective, one-sided and distorted”. One could not understand how it could have come from an institution with such a good reputation for fair reporting.
He said government had many times acknowledged that crime was unacceptably high in SA and had consistently made more and more resources available in the fight against crime.
“We need an explanation for this broadcast,” Pahad said.
He then laid a trap for the opposition, reading a letter to a newspaper editor which complained of rampant crime.
When opposition MPs interjected and asked him how he could explain the letter, he announced that the letter had been written to the editor of a newspaper in Halifax, Canada.
“It is not unique to SA.
“There are also places in London where you cannot go,” Pahad said.
A week ago, the ANC, on its website, accused the BBC of being racist.
It also said the SABC could easily go to Britain and do a similar exposé in parts of London suggesting that Britain was also sinking under a wave of crime.
According to the BBC website, its world news editor, Jon Williams, responded by saying that the BBC had done similar programmes in south London on the incidence of gun crime.
“But there’s no question that crime is a real issue in SA. John Simpson’s report touched a raw nerve — but to liken the BBC’s report to ‘the most die-hard racists in the country’ is absurd.”<<
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