Namibia bans foreign TV shows
Namibian President Sam Nujoma has ordered the state broadcaster to immediately stop showing all foreign television programmes, saying they are corrupting the nation’s youth.
And when a white woman on the staff of the Namibian Broadcasting corporation protested that not all European values were bad, President Sam Nujoma accused her of having “a British colonial mentality.”
He asked her why she was “keeping the good things to yourself and showing us lesbianism?” said a staff member who attended the meeting.
Nujoma, who has claimed foreigners are spreading homosexuality in his southern African country, told NBC to replace Western programmes with locally made shows that portray Namibia in a positive light, The Namibian newspaper reported.
The television station immediately began revising its schedule and confused staff members started pulling old tapes off the shelves almost at random to fill airtime.
The US soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful was dropped and the science fiction miniseries Dune was replaced by a programme on the recent ruling party congress.
Several viewers called the station to complain about the changes, the newspaper reported.
Government spokesman Mocks Shivute said Nujoma did not intend to ban all foreign shows. He just wanted those containing sex and violence to be broadcast later in the night, when children were less likely to see them.
“Basically what he said was that NBC should reprioritise the screening times of foreign films because most of them don’t add value to the Namibian culture and they are shown at wrong times,” he said.
But station officials gave a different account of the meeting with the president and said they were worried the tiny country of less than two million people did not have enough local programmes to fill the schedule.
According to staff members at the meeting, Nujoma, who is also information minister, told workers they would be fired if they broadcast any more sex or violence and he condemned all foreign programs, The Namibian reported.
In recent years Nujoma, who led the country to independence in 1990, has been accused of making provocative comments.
He has threatened to arrest and deport homosexuals and promised to ban gay tourists. He has referred to Aids as a man-made biological weapon. In a recent speech at the World Summit in South Africa he told foreign donors he did not want their aid.
