EnviromediaNews

SABC screens anti-nuke film

A South African documentary critical of the nuclear industry received an unexpected screening on SABC2 on Sunday night.

Uranium Road, based on the book by anti-nuclear researcher Dr David Fig, reveals the secrets, the risks and huge amounts of money wasted on South Africa’s nuclear power programme.

The film was first screened on MNet’s Carte Blanche in 2007. It provoked an outcry from the nuclear industry which laid a complaint with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. The dispute was later resolved, but no information about the deal have ever been released.

The SABC gave the programme no pre-publicity apart from the synopsis on its “group sales” page where it says the film “rips away the veil of secrecy from both the past and the present South African nuclear programmes, showing how the nuclear industry creates closed cliques of the powerful and fundamentally undermines the democratic principles of our young democracy”.

Is this a signal that the public broadcaster has become more willing to carry content which challenges government policy, or is someone in programming in for the high jump?