South African Muslims and Hindus are now adding their voices to 6 major Christian faith based groups as well as the Family Policy Institute (FPI) and South Africa's Film and Publication Board (FPB) as major public pressure and opposition is growing against pay TV operator TopTV's plans to launch pornographic TV channels in South Africa.
TopTV is already getting slammed by criticism through online social networks by TopTV subscribers and the general public about its plans. Now the South African Muslim Network (Samnet) as well as the South African Hindu Maha Sabha in the country are also denoucing TopTV's plans for porn.
The groups are joining a growing movement from civil society as well as faith-based organisations within South Africa supporting a boycott against TopTV as well as TopTV sponsors and advertisers. They're asking subscribers to cancel their TopTV contracts.
TopTV plans to start a stand-alone, separate package of porn channels with an R18 rating, which it calls its Adult Pack, at R199 per month for three 24 hour pornographic channels that will require a separate PIN code and a separate call centre to be called for activation. In a letter to subscribers TopTV told subscribers it will start the porno package on 20 December 2011. A TopTV spokesperson then said the new package will only launch in 2012.
South Africa's Film and Publication Board (FPB) said it will ''strongly oppose'' TopTV's porn application. South Africa's broadcasting authority, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has not approved TopTV's porn plans and has not yet called for a public hearing date following the publication of TopTV's ''application for authorisation of channels'' in the Government Gazette on 17 November. TopTV says the pay TV operator has the right to start the channels despite not having an authorisation certificate for the channels from Icasa.
Now the Islamic organisation Samnet says that it too will be boycotting TopTV as well as advertisers and sponsors involved with TopTV. The South African Hindu Maha Sabha says they reject TopTV's plans for porn channels and will ''continue to protest and object to its introduction''.
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