From: Bjoern Skolander 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