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SABC again bans doccie from airing at arts fest

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Sylvia Vollenhoven
Sylvia Vollenhoven

Despite the recent crises at the SABC, documentary producer and former SABC journalist Sylvia Vollenhoven says the uproar should not become a campaign against the SABC’s chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

“We cannot play the man. We cannot start an anti-Hlaudi campaign,” she said this week, despite the prolonged SABC interdict against her that has, yet again, prevented her controversial documentary film, Project Spear, from being screened at this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape.

The documentary has been the centre of a legal battle since May 2013, when lawyers for the SABC barred Vollenhoven from hosting a private screening at the Franschhoek Literary Festival.

Project Spear, which deals with allegations of apartheid-era theft of public funds, was commissioned by the SABC in 2012, but never screened.

“Our plan cannot be to attack one man, to take him down. Our plan has to be bigger,” said Vollenhoven.

“We need to start a corporate governance campaign and have a coherent social plan. We need to do more than just protest. The country has sick leadership, the SABC has sick leadership – and we need to make it better as a country.”

Another of Vollenhoven’s films, Getting Away with Murder, which looks at the role the apartheid media played in gross human rights abuses, was screened at the festival.

Meanwhile, former SABC acting group chief executive officer Jimi Matthews did not arrive at a Grahamstown festival panel discussion he was scheduled to take part in this week.

The arts festival draws to a close today.

Filmmaker Samora Sekhukhune and journalist and former newspaper editor Anton Harber were also meant to take part in the discussion, which included journalists from RT, the Russian government-funded TV network.

“We wanted to bring the SABC to talk because it is a major player in the television industry,” Alexander Kulyaev, the third secretary at the Embassy of the Russian Federation, told City Press on Friday.

“But you know how all that played out. It did not work out in the end ... . It was his [Matthews’] personal decision not to come. We obviously wanted him to be there, but he apologised and said he could not make it,” said Kulyaev

Vollenhoven said Matthews was an ally of the Project Spear film throughout the proceedings that saw it being canned.

Referring to his resignation, Vollenhoven said: “What he did – the way he did it – just shows you how difficult it is at the SABC. I worked there for 12 years as a journalist and later as an executive, and when you stick your neck out, you just get chopped down daily. In the end, I was just too tired of fighting against them.”

The documentary was to be aired as part of a triple bill of Vollenhoven’s films last Sunday – including footage that implicated the involvement of senior ANC officials and struggle veterans in the loss of hundreds of millions of rands during the change of power in 1994, seemingly in an illicit deal with international governments and investors.

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