From: Bjoern Skolander <[email-masked]>

The Windhoek Advertiser
PO Box 3436
Stübel Street 
Windhoek
NAMIBIA
Tel: (int. access code) 264 61 230 331
Fax: (int. access code) 264 61 225 863

18-12-1996

NBC SAYS TAPE OF PRESIDENT'S SPEECH 'ERASED'

Efforts by The Windhoek Advertiser to verify further remarks made by
President Sam Nujoma against homosexuals at a political meeting earlier 
this month were futile, as the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) had
destroyed the relevant filmed evidence of the Head of State's speech held 
at the Swapo Women's Council Congress in Gobabis almost a fortnight ago.

According to another informant who telephoned The Windhoek Advertiser this
weekend she could recall that the President also used words like "purity"
and "a healthy nation", while referring to homosexuality, as "a foreign and
corrupt ideology." Although remarks were made in a departure from his 
speech, a delegate to the Congress said that it appeared that these remarks
seemed to have actually been read off.

When the NBC's Department of TV Programmes was requested on Monday morning
to provide a video copy of President Nujoma's full statement, this newspaper
was told that the NBC only made available items to the public, which has
previously been broadcast. It was understood that the verbatim speech was no
longer available, because it had been erased.

When the Public Relations Officer of the NBC, Mr Cassius Moeti, was asked
for an official explanation why the copy could not be made available, 
all he could say was that the Corporation's archives only housed the actual
(edited) news item.

TV editor Mr. Asser Ntinda, former editor of Swapo PLAN's (People's
Liberation Army of Namibia) "The Combatant" newspaper and the short-lived
post-Independence Swapo newspaper "Namibia Today" in July last year refused
to share video archive material of an interview conducted by him with
Minister Hidipo Hamutenya slamming the newly-formed Swapofor for Justice
Party. The material was to be used for a Current Affairs production on the
newly formed party and had temporarily disappepapred from the NBC Newsroom.
Two top journalists of the NBC's TV Current Affairs department resigned in
August that year in protest against Mr Ntinda's ideological commitments.

The News desk of NBC Television spiked television coverage of a news
conference by the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) on August 23,
1995, at which Congolese national Ms Sylvie Makosso related her ordeal.
Eight-and-half month's pregnant Ms Makosso was allegedly abducted from the
transit lounge at Windhoek International Airport and on the grounds of
suspicion that she was being used to carry cocaine to South Africa,
submitted to a humiliating anal and vaginal search in Katuturo State Hospital.

The news desk of NBC Television spiked television coverage of a NSHR press
conference at which a detailed critical analysis of Swapo's long-promised
"Book of the Dead" was revealed. The NSHR analysis revealed historical
falsifications, (...) and contradictions in the "Book of the Dead".

Typed from a fax by Bjoern Skolander <[email-masked]>