The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa, BCCSA, has ruled in favour of the SABC and one of its current affairs programmes, Cutting Edge.
This comes after Alleluia Ministries International and its senior pastor, Alf Lukau, took the public broadcaster to the BCCSA after the airing of the “Fake Prophets” insert on Cutting Edge on SABC 1, on the 12th of March, 2019.
Lukau claimed that the SABC did not afford him the opportunity to reply following allegations of faking miracles and subsequently ‘resurrecting’ Brighton Elliot Moyo.
The programme attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers, and trended on social media. This as South Africans and online users vented their frustrations at how gullible and vulnerable some believers could be.
Lukau felt the story was not balanced, and the allegations of staging miracles and paying ‘actors’ to fake disabilities were damaging to his name and the church.
But the tribunal found that days before the SABC aired the show, it had made reasonable efforts to afford the church the right of reply. “The tribunal found that the church failed to seize the opportunity to reply more than three times.”
It also said that Lukau’s right to privacy, dignity and reputation was overridden by the legitimate public interest.
