VIA adds a new weekly, Afrikaans agriculture magazine programme, Landbouweekliks, to its schedule with presenter Ivor Price.

VIA has added a new weekly agricultural Afrikaans magazine programme, Landbouweekliks, starting on Tursday 9 January at 19:30 with presenter Ivor Price.

Like Megaboere on kykNET, Landbouweekliks (Agriculture weekly) will interview and profile Afrikaans South African farmers, looking at their vision and life journeys.

Experts will also share advice and information, and the magazine Landbouweekblad's editorial staffers will also make appearances.

Ivor Price will visit several farmers - from winter to summer grain, animal to fruit and wine farmers and those operating successful empowerment projects.

Landbouweekliks has two seasons of 26 episodes of half an hour each and is produced by Brand Republic.

“VIA's lifestyle content provides the ideal platform for a modern agriculture programme placing an emphasis in South Africans farming forward," says Izelle Venter, VIA channel head.

"The programme won't just touch the agricultural community, but also ordinary consumers who are eager to gain a deeper understanding of where their food comes from".

Chris Burgess, Landbouweekblad editor-in-chief, says Landbouweekliks will profile "exceptional people with a unique perspective on life that will surprise ordinary viewers. Experience farmers in a way you haven't seen before".

SABC's SABC2 TV news anchor and RSG presenter Ivor Price resigns; slams Hlaudi Motsoeneng whose 'poisonous tentacles have infested the entire public broadcaster'.

The well-respected SABC TV news anchor Ivor Price has resigned, saying he cannot remain silent any longer and slammed the SABC's controversial boss Hlaudi Motsoeneng, saying "his poisonous tentacles have infested the entire public broadcaster".

In Ivor Price's open letter (in Afrikaans) published by Netwerk24, the SABC2 TV news anchor and presenter on the SABC's Afrikaans radio sttion RSG, says that even if Hlaudi Motsoeneng "resigns tomorrow or is fired,it will take long before good journalists will get over the debilitating fear".

Ivor Price on Tuesday revealed that he resigned from the SABC after the public broadcaster fired all 8 of its journalists who voiced concern over Hlaudi Motsoeneng's sudden diktat on 26 May that the SABC will censor SABC TV News visuals of public protests and will not be broadcasting the destruction of property.

Without any disciplinary hearings, flouting labour law and without any due process, Sebolelo Ditlhakanyane, the SABC's head of news and actuality, emailed dismissal letters to Suna Venter (senior journalist), Foeta Krige (RSG executive editor), Jacques Steenkamp (senior investigative journalist) and Krivani Pillay (SAfm current affairs executive producer).

Then Nyana Molete, the latest acting head of SABC News signed dismissal letters for Busisiwe Ntuli (specialist producer for the investigative programme Special Assignment on SABC3), Lukhanyo Calata (a SABC journalist in Cape Town whose father Fort Calata was one of the Cradock Four anti-Apartheid struggle activists), and Thandeka Gqubule (economics editor).

Contributing editor Vuyo Mvoko as the 8th person of the #SABC8 group who spoke out against SABC censorship was a freelance journalist and the SABC will not be continuing his contract.

In his letter Ivor Price writes that in May this year it was "no longer always enjoyable going to work in the morning. It felt more and more like dark clouds were gathering" and that SABC journalists feel they are being watched, and details a May incident of how Hlaudi Motsoeneng threw his toys on the floor.

"More and more SABC journalists say straight up in the corridors they don't want to touch SABC related stories because they have too much to loose," Ivor Price writes.

In June he says, when the Right2Know Campaign held national public protests at various SABC offices countrywide in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and which the SABC decided not to cover at all, "all hell broke loose inside the SABC."

"The SABC has become a place where you can lose your job because you differ from a colleague."

"I can't sit and watch helplessly how unjust actions are perpetrated in my name," writes Ivor Price whose last working day at the SABC is on 5 August.

Last TV news bulletins in other South African languages sign off for a final time on the SABC News channel after all news besides English are dumped.

"Goeienaand en welkom by hierdie laaste uitsending van die nuus in Afrikaans op die SAUK se 24-uur nuusdiens," said SABC News anchor Ivor Price at 19:30 on Tuesday 31 March.

("Good evening and welcome to this last broadcast of the news in Afrikaans on the SABC's 24-hour news service.)

At the end co-anchor Louise van Wingerden said: "Dit was dan die heel laaste Afrikaanse bulletin op die SAUK se 24-uur nuusdiens." ("This was then the very last Afrikaans bulletin on the SABC's 24-hour news service".)

"Baie dankie vir die saamkyk die laaste 21 maande en die nuus in Afrikaans was danksy u ondersteuning verreweg die gewildste 30 minute segment op hierdie kanaal," said Ivor Price. 

("Thank you for watching with us the last 21 months and the news in Afrikaans was, thanks to you, by far the most popular 30 minute segment on this channel.")

"And we also wish to thank our English speaking viewers for their wonderful support. The very successful format of this bulletin will be applied to the Afrikaans news on SABC2," said Louise van Wingerden.

The Xhosa news TV bulletin on the SABC News channel has also been cancelled.

The Sotho news TV bulletin on the SABC News channel has also been culled.

The Ndebele language news TV bulletin on the SABC News channel is also gone.

Scrapped are bulletins in Zulu, Afrikaans, Siswati, Tsonga, Xhosa, isiNdelebe, Sotho and Venda as part of SABC News's (DStv 404) shocking move to rid the news channel of all news bulletins in languages other than English.

The move to dump all TV news and TV news bulletins is South African's other official languages besides English includes SABC News doing away with its regular weekly half hour magazine shows like Health Talk, Film SA, Bophelong, Afroshowbiz News, Rights & Recourse, The Journal and Kaleidoscope.

SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago didn't respond to multiple media enquiries and calls made the past few weeks about the drastic change to the SABC News schedule and why the public broadcaster cancelled the news bulletins in all vernacular languages.

Scrapped are bulletins in Zulu, Afrikaans, Siswati, Tsonga, Xhosa, isiNdelebe, Sotho and Venda.

On its website and in marketing material the SABC says "a unique selling point is SABC News Channel's multilingual programming" and that SABC News is delivered "to audiences in all 11 South African official languages".

When the channel launched, the SABC's famously matricless chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, said the SABC News channel will be an opportunity for the SABC to "enhance its public service mandate and extend its focus on provincial stories and the different official languages".

The SABC News channel launched in August 2013 which replaced the SABC's first struggling attempt at a 24-hour news channel, SABC News International. SABC News International was shut down after bleeding millions of rands after just three years at the end of March 2010.

SABC News, now running for a year and a half, is part of a controversial deal worth millions of rand Hlaudi Motsoeneng signed with MultiChoice's DStv platform.

It makes SABC News exclusively available to DStv only, keeping it off On Digital Media (ODM) and China's StarTimes Media SA's StarSat, as well as Sabido and Platco Digital's OpenView HD satellite TV platforms.

Earlier this month in an interview on SABC2, Hlaudi Motsoeneng called SABC News "a pilot project".

"The channel that is sitting on the MultiChoice bouquet, the news channel, it is a SABC channel. When we migrate to DTT, that channel will be migrated to our own platforms. It is an SABC channel. It is sitting there as a pilot project."

SABC News provides another half hour of Afrikaans news per day at 19:30 on the public broadcaster's 24-hour TV news channel.

The 24-hour TV news channel SABC News (DStv 404) from the South African public broadcaster has added another new half hour of Afrikaans news to television per day with the Afrikaans news broadcast every day at 19:30, and repeated at 02:00.

The additional half hour of Afrikaans news is broadcast live at 19:30 on SABC News, following the existing half hour of Afrikaans news at 19:00 on SABC2.

News readers for the Afrikaans news on SABC News include Ivor Price and Suna Venter (above) and Erik Holm (Riaan from the soap Binneland on kykNET) and Lynette Francis from Fokus on SABC2 (below).

(Suna Venter and Lynette Francis also read the Afrikaans news on SABC2.)

Since SABC News launched at the beginning of August, neither the SABC nor the SABC News channel has made any information available or communicated any programming specific information about the Afrikaans news, nor who the news readers are, nor responded to any of the multiple media enquiries made about it and the channel the past weeks.