A TV commercial for fish and chips depicting President Jacob Zuma and his family having dinner was not aired on Monday night because it implied presidential endorsement of the product, the SABC said yesterday.
"We are of the view that the advert implied an endorsement of the product sold by the Fish and Chip Company," spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said.
He said the SABC was concerned about media claims that it had banned the advertisement.
"The SABC reserves the right to exercise editorial control over all content, as per our trading terms, licence conditions and public broadcast mandate."
The animated commercial begins with the words "Dinner time at Nkandla" appearing over a photograph of a mansion.
The next frame is indoors. A woman, seated at one end of an extremely long dining room table lined with children and several women, says in Zulu: "Oh Zuzulicious, we're having fish and chips from Shabba today."
The huge family enjoys the fish and chips dinner.
An animated Zuma responds: "Eat up honeybunch, there is a lot of good food here. It's from the Fish and Chip Company. There are many of you in this house. At only R25, even Pravin will approve this."
Kganyago said the advert was not submitted to the SABC in time for it to check the quality and other technical aspects of the clip.
The material needed to be received five working days before broadcast, but it arrived just after 2pm on Friday for Monday night flighting.
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