Booted off the air

last updated 8 January 2015

Johannesburg

South Africa’s publicly funded broadcasting agency has compiled a blacklist of commentators it will not allow on the air, a government investigation found this week. The South African Broadcasting Corp. is run by the African National Congress, the party that once fought apartheid and now controls the presidency, the parliament, and all nine provincial governments. The ANC has banned nine commentators of various ethnic groups and affiliations who have criticized the government, Zimbabwe (a government ally), or the Palestine Liberation Organization (another longtime ANC ally). Karima Brown, the political editor of South Africa’s Business Day and one of the country’s top journalists, is among those blacklisted. “The ANC may have abandoned its socialism, but has it abandoned its Stalinism?” Brown said. “I don’t think so.”