At its twelfth Annual General Meeting held on Saturday, June 24, 2006, the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) adopted a resolution expressing its outrage at the manner in which freedom of expression and access to diversity of news is being flagrantly abused by the public broadcaster, the SABC. The full text of the resolution is as follows:

At its twelfth Annual General meeting held on Saturday, June 24, 2006, the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) adopted a resolution expressing its outrage at the manner in which freedom of expression and access to diversity of news is being flagrantly abused by the public broadcaster, the SABC. The full text of the resolution is as follows:

'…[The SABC] has denied the South African public the opportunity of seeing on TV a so called "Unauthorised” documentary on President Thabo Mbeki, an unacceptable ban which followed the canning of a video interview with former President P.W. Botha and a live studio interview with the former Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

These bans have been followed by the disclosure of a decision to ban several respected political analysts and commentators from television and current affairs programmes and replace them with a limited range of academics and other unspecified organisations. This decision conflicts with the SABC Charter, as contained in the Broadcasting Act of 1999, to promote the widest access to information and diversity of opinion. This serious offence is compounded by an attempt by the SABC officially to deny the ban only to be publicly shown to be lying by one of its own senior staff presenters.

In the view of this clear deviation from the SABC’s constitutional duty as a professed public broadcaster, the FXI demands that an independent commission of inquiry be set up to investigate the manner in which the SABC is deviating from public broadcasting principles and to propose rectifying action and to insist that whistle blower protection be provided for any SABC staff witness.

The FXI also feels that the Mbeki documentary be aired to give the public the opportunity of making its assessment of its worth and to give its programme staff full freedom to enlist analysts and commentators of their choice'.

The FXI has since learned that the SABC has set up a Commission of Inquiry to be conducted by former SABC CEO, Dr Zwelakhe Sisulu and Advocate Gilbert Marcus. There have been concerns raised about Dr. Sisulu’s involvement in the Commission, on the basis that his involvement may constitute a conflict of interest: concerns that the FXI shares. In addition, the FXI finds it distasteful that the SABC has gone to the huge expense of running its press statement on the 'Unauthorised' documentary as advertisements in several weekend newspapers. The SABC should rather concentrate on having its side of the story covered by virtue of the force of its arguments, rather than the size of its bank balance.