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Exclusive: Solidarity delighted with court order on SABC footage ban

Trade union, Solidarity, which is representing four of the SABC 8, has expressed its delight at the decision to have the public broadcaster’s ban on violent protest footage removed in the interim.

The North Gauteng High Court granted the Helen Suzman an interdict against the SABC to remove the ban, until a court of law has proven its lawfulness.

htxt.africa spoke to Solidarity chief executive, Dirk Hermann, who said the decision strengthens its case against the SABC and will assist it in its application at the Labour Court tomorrow.

“It [the decision] strengthens our case tremendously, we are quite delighted with the order. The fact of the matter is, the order actually confirms that the SABC decision or instruction to censor is unlawful. It is actually in line with the Icasa decision,” Hermann said.

“You can’t have a situation where that there’s an interdict against your decision to censor but you dismiss employees for distancing themselves from the censorship. It’s quite clear now for us, even more than yesterday, that the disciplinary actions and dismissals are unlawful. If the instruction is unlawful, then suspending and firing them is unlawful,” he added.

Hermann said that following the interim order against the footage ban, there should at least be another against the dismissals of the journalists.

“It’s quite clear now that Icasa’s decision stands with an interim order confirming it, so there’s no way you can dismiss someone based on the fact that they distanced themselves from an unlawful instruction,” he concluded.

Solidarity will address media and the public prior to its Labour Court application tomorrow morning.

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