A Pietermaritzburg couple who started an online petition campaign to stop porn on e.tv hope to have 5 000 signatures by Monday when they will take on e.tv in a tribunal before the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA).
Rene and Mark Morcom, founders of Christian-based child welfare organisation, Assist, call on South Africans opposed to porn on public television to sign the petition this weekend and to promote the petition campaign through their networks.
Rene said they have partnered with other people in Pietermaritzburg to take on e.tv and would present the petition at the BCCSA tribunal on Monday.
“The BCCSA say they get five complaints a day. Well let’s give them 5 000 — and that’s in two weeks,” she said. At the time of posting this article, 1 351 people had signed the petition.
“We need the community to stand together this one last time and email, tweet it on twitter, facebook it, mention it at church and get as many people as possible to sign by Monday 30th May,” said Rene.
Last Saturday anti porn protestors handed over a memorandum to e.tv at their studios in Cape Town and Johannesburg, demanding that they remove sexually explicit programmes from the channel. About 150 people participated in the Cape Town and Johannesburg protests. Family Policy Institute director, Errol Naidoo, who recently called for a national switch-off of e.tv in protest of the “Naked News” programme and other nude and pornographic content, said e-tv viewed the poor turnout at the protests as support for Naked News on e.tv.
“They covered the protests in their evening news-bulletin suggesting the protests emanated from a small group of ‘religious fundamentalists’,” said Naidoo. “The newscast defended e-tv’s broadcast of Naked News and reminded viewers that the Broadcasting Complaints Commission had given it the thumbs-up.”
In a post on Assist’s facebook page, Rene Morcom says the anti-porn campaign should not be seen as an attempt by overzealous Christians to impose their views but as a broadly-based moral issue. “It’s a stand for the safety of our woman, our children and even for the person watching the freely available pornography on e.tv,” she says.
In her post she presents an argument supporting the conclusion that e.tv’s actions infringe the rights of children and contribute to family breakdown, child abuse and sexual crimes in South Africa. Read the post here.