AFP/Johannesburg
South Africa’s state broadcaster refused to air an advertisement for a fish and chips firm depicting President Jacob Zuma feeding his family on a budget meal, the company and its agent said yesterday.
“You won’t get to watch the new television advert ... for the Fish and Chip Company on SABC because they have banned it,” said agency MetropolitanRepublic on its website.
The clip titled Dinner time at Nkandla (the president’s rural homestead) depicts Zuma having fish and chips with his wives and children.
He says at 25 rand ($3, two euros) a plate even the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will approve.
Company chief executive Carlo Gonzaga said it was “quite presumptuous that they (SABC) are exercising such a censorship role”.
The advert opens with the sketch of a mansion, supposedly the president’s residency, with a front fountain in the shape of a shower head.
After his rape trial testimony where he said he had showered after sex to prevent HIV infection, cartoonists often throw in a shower head when parodying Zuma.
Early this month the SABC ordered its journalists to stop referring to Zuma’s controversial state-renovated Nkandla rural house as a “homestead” or as “Zumaville”.
His home in Nkandla, a village in rural KwaZulu-Natal, is at the centre of a storm over a security upgrade costing around $28mn.