After entering a contractual agreement to cover the soccer match between Orlando Pirates and TP Mazembe in a CAF Champions League and to receive a feed of the game, the SABC send a technical team to the DRC to ensure a feed to South Africa after the DRC cut off all communication last Tuesday.
An hour and a half before the soccer match was about to start the SABC production team was thrown out of the stadium. The SABC scrambled to get help from Dr. Irvin Khoza, the owner of Orlando Pirates to help. He in turn phoned the owner and chairperson of TP Mzembe who told him the situation would be resolved. It wasn't.
Half an hour before the soccer match, the SABC production was allowed back into the stadion, only to have the feed cut five minutes before the soccer match while the production team in the DRC and the SABC in Auckland Park was doing tests.
One of the four person production team was arrested by Lubumbashi police without any reason. Another crew member who came to the aid of the arrested production person was also kicked out of the stadium and also detained. The SIM-card of another SABC journalist, a SABC radio reporter, was confiscated.
"The two crew members have since been released by the police and the SABC production team will be returning to South Africa tomorrow [Monday]," the SABC tells me.
Insider sources told me late on Sunday that the SABC is furious - and rightly so. "The organisation and admin there [Lubumbashi] is sh*t," a high-level SABC executive told me. "Actually, its more like non-existing. It's like North Korea. If they see a camera that not from the government they wanna throw sh*t."
"This is an unfortunately incident, which we, the department of sports, and Orlando Pirates, will take up with CAF and the local DRC broadcaster," says Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the SABC's acting chief operating officer (COO) in a press statement.
"We are grateful that our team which travelled to the DRC are safe and were unharmed during the incident".
