THE staff of the SABC investigative unit, Special Assignment, are being subjected to office raids and are being demanded to take lie detector tests, as the public broadcaster continues its hunt for the person who leaked a programme on political satire it refused to air, according to a media release from the Media Institute of Southern Africa.
Two months ago, the SABC’s internal audit investigators arrived at Special Assignment offices confiscated their hard drives and called staff in for interviews. Special Assignment story editor Khadija Bradlow resigned after being informed that she would have to undergo a lie detector test to prove her innocence.
This week the staff received further emails from internal audit department questioning their loyalty to the SABC and allegedly suggesting they had links with other organisations. SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago told Business Day yesterday (28 September 2009) that a probe has been launched into the missing programme footage. “At the end of the day no organisation is going to let a breach of any form go unpunished. We cannot just let it go. We want action to be taken to ensure that it never happens again†he said
Background
The programme related to President Jacob Zuma and the lady Justice cartoon by satirist Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro) was leaked to the Mail and Guardian website when the SABC pulled the show moments before it was set to be broadcast in April . At that time the South Africa’s Broadcast Corporation (SABC) said the programme was withdrawn because proper procedure was not followed , but questions were raised about whether the broadcaster came under political pressure to withdraw the show. The programme was published on the Mail and Guardian website in April, the SABC launched an internal probe.
