SABC Newsroom Guest Smokes Marujuana During On Air Interview

The formula for the SABC Newsroom show on the SABC News Channel at 9am is very simple: a technologically driven news bulletin simulcast on Youtube and engaging with viewers on social media. It is that simple. Well at least on paper.

But the bulletin just seems to court controversy more than any other bulletin on the SABC News Channel.

Today, May 11th SABC Newsroom guest, Andre du Plessis, decided he was going to start smoking marujuana, an illegal substance in South Africa, live on a national broadcast platform that is owned by the government of South Africa.

Just last month the actual anchor of Newsroom, Eben Jansen, was suspended for his conduct during an interview with a member of the EFF.

The strange part of the marujuana incident is that the SABC actually posted a clip of the incident on their Youtube page (something they did not have to do as it just draws attention to the situation and considering the whole bulletin is uploaded to Youtube in any case) with the description/statement , "The SABC Broadcaster and the SABC Newsroom does not condone the actions of our guest Andre Duplessis. The views expressed in this video clip/ interview are not that of the SABC and Associates, but that of the guest."

What makes thing even weirder, so to say is that there seems to be cheering du Plessis from whoever is behind the camera in the Cape town studio where he was for the interview, as pointed out by one of the people who have commented on the video.

The incident also caused the term "Dagga" to trend on twitter earlier today.

SABC News Takes Eben Jansen Off Air Indefinitely Following Controversial Interview

The SABC has pulled anchor Eben Jansen from the air following his controversial interview with EFF Spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi over the statue uprising currently taking place in South Africa.

The interview has gone viral since Thursday morning when it took place, being covered by many major news organisations and also led to 'Eben Jansen' becoming a Top Ten trending topic on Twittr for a great portion of Thursday.

The first minute or so of the interview goes smoothly, but things go downhill  quickly when Jansen asks Ndlozi about colonists that have historically gone to places and wiped away the history of the people native to whatever region was colonised and what made the current statue revolution different from those events. Ndlozi responded that the question was fundamentally wrong, which it was, and then Eben gets very defensive, interrupting his guest multiple times, raising his voice and depriving the viewers of hearing what could have been a very interesting opinion on the statue revolution.

Ndlozi is then rudely cut off.

On his removal from the air, SABC spokesperson, Kaizer Kganyago, said,“We were unhappy with what happened and have taken Eben off air. He will be off air until the matter has been dealt with between us and him.”

The really unlucky part of the whole situation, from a PR perspective for the SABC at least, is that out of all the news bulletins it airs across its array of channels including the 24 hour news channel, SABC News Channel, SABC 1, 2 and 3, Newsroom with Eben Jansen is the only programme that gets uploaded in its entirety onto Youtube, which likely caused the interview that took place in the morning, when most people are doing other things other than watching news, to go viral.An average episode of Newsroom with Eben Jansen typically gets about 300 views on Youtube but the edition featuring the interview has already been watched over 120 000 times (and has more down votes than up votes).