Africa Censorship News

Kenyan censors have banned a show on Disney channel from airing in Kenya, citing the introduction of a gay character for its second season.

The Disney Channel made history recently after it introduced a gay storyline to its popular show, Andi Mack , for its second season. In the show, 13-year-old Cyrus Goodman comes out as gay and confesses to his best friend that he has a crush on cool kid Jonah Beck.

Kenya Film Classification Board boss Ezekiel Mutua said the programme would not be allowed to air in the country. Mutua announced the sanction on his Facebook timeline, saying his organisation was unapologetic when it comes to protecting children from content that he termed inappropriate and warned that gay content would not air in Kenya.

Following the complaints and ban, Multichoice Kenya issued a statement saying it had contacted its channel provider, Disney, and confirmed that the show was not scheduled to air on DStv and GOtv.

Update: Disney decides to pull Andi Mack from all of Africa

8th November 2017

Disney have now decided to pull the show altogether across Sub-Saharan Africa, with a spokesperson saying that the show will be taken off DStv to respect cultural sensibilities.

It means Andi Mack's gay storyline won't be shown in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Angola, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Mauritius and Tanzania.

A Disney Channel spokesperson told The Cape Argus:

While our shows are developed for global audiences, we are committed to respecting each market's cultural sensibilities, compliance rules and regulations.

Disney Channel in South Africa serves multiple countries across Africa and the Middle East, each with its own regulations to which we adhere.

Accordingly, Andi Mack will not be broadcast through DStv.

In the second phase of rescuing the self-regulation of advertising in South Africa, the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) has introduced a voluntary levy system on advertising spends.

The scheme sets a voluntary levy of 0.1% of advertising spend and is to be collected by advertising agencies that implement advertising campaigns.

ASA have noted that companies with a massive spend, such that they consider 0.1% is too high, then ASA will be willing to negotiate the figure down.

Libya's second Comic Con event was brought to a sudden end on Friday when an Islamist paramilitary group raided it, citing a range of offences against Islam.

According to a report, the so-called RADA Special Deterrence Forces (SDF) paramilitary group detained and assaulted some 20 fans. They also seized computers and other equipment, saying that Libya was not a free/liberal country.

They arrested over 20 people. Organisers, participants and visitors. Anyone who was wearing a badge, including visitors, were arrested.

The organiser said that the militants told the detainees that they were rescuing the youth from Comic Con, an event they called destructive and foreign to Islam and Libya, and that they had committed large number of crimes against public morals. These included agnosticism, atheism, masonic ideas, believing in Halloween, distorting the minds of youth and even abandoning Islam altogether.

The organiser ironically noted that the islamists claimed to be concerned about supposed pious morality but had no problem with real violence saying:

Some of those who were released had received a beating, had had their head shaved bald and were given a religious lecture. They were told that Libya was a Muslim country not a free/liberal country.

The Kenya Films Classification Board (KFCB) Chief Executive Officer Ezekiel Mutua has reacted to reports of gay lions in Maasai Mara, Kenya's most visited Game Park.

Speaking to the Nation, Mutua, a vocal anti-gay campaigner spouted:

These animals need counseling, because probably they have been influenced by gays who have gone to the national parks and behaved badly.

Some research needs to be done. And also, I wish I can get the bio to confirm that the two lions were male, because it is not normal.

The two could have been possessed by some evil spirits that has taken over some human beings. I mean where on earth have you ever heard of something like this happening? The demonic spirits inflicting in humans seems to have caught up with animals.

The Ugandan government's obsession with enforcing morality and protecting the country's cultural values has added a new twist: a nine-member anti-pornographic control committee.

The committee, which was sworn in Kampala in late August, is expected to stamp out pornography by collecting and destroying pornographic materials, and to apprehend and prosecute perpetrators. The committee will have a staff of between 30 and 40 people who will use a high-end 'machine' to detect the sharing of nude materials on mobile phones, computers, and television. This week the porn committee reportedly says messages of a sexual nature, or sexting, will also be defined as porn and attract punishment.

Simon Lokodo, Uganda's ethics minister, the minister, who has repeatedly denounced homosexuality and pornography, said the 'machine' will help stop one of the deadliest moral diseases in this country. Lokodo also claimed pornography was to blame for the increasing levels of drug abuse among the youth, teenage pregnancies, and abortion, according to the Daily Monitor newspaper. Pornography is now eroding Uganda's human resource, which, he said, will hinder the achievement of our vision.

United Bank for Africa (UBA) is a leading commercial bank in Negeria.

It has just announced that its customers can no longer buy jewellery, bet or have access to pornography sites with the bank's payment cards.

In a statement the bank said its debit and prepaid cards are now restricted from performing such transactions. UBA said,:

We wish to inform all cardholders that we have placed restrictions on the Bank's debit and prepaid cards from carrying out transactions with merchants that are transacting on the following business categories, Jewellry, Pornography,Dating and Escort Services, Betting (including lottery tickets, casino gaming chips, off-track betting and wagers).

Ghana's TV censor, the National Media Commission (NMC) has ordered three of the country's public TV channels to immediately stop broadcasting pornography, saying actual sexual intercourse between humans should at no time be transmitted with no exceptions. After complaints, the NMC said the channels' broadcasts didn't meet the NMC's broadcasting standards.

The TV channels, XYZ TV, Thunder TV and Ice TV told the regulator they're broadcasting pornography because some other TV channels that they compete with are also doing it.

One of the channels, Ice TV, that said it will abide by the directive, has reportedly now threatened the NMC with court action over the decision, saying they want Ghana's courts to give clarification on whether the regulator has the right to stop it from airing pornography on Ghana's free-to-air TV airwaves.

The Dinner Club ( De eetclub) is a 2010 Netherlands thriller by Robert Jan Westdijk.
Starring Bracha van Doesburgh, Thom Hoffman and Halina Reijn.

Karen and Michel move with their daughter to an exclusive residential area. She soon finds a new close circle of friends: the women of the Dinner Club, and their husbands. But when two of the Club members commit suicide under suspicious circumstances, Karen starts to have second thoughts about her new friends. She has to choose: will she reveal the truth and dish the dirt, or will she protect the interests of the Dinner Club?

The Embassy of The Netherlands in Kampala, Uganda announced that the Uganda's censorship board has banned a Dutch film, The Dinner Club, after accusing it of glorifying homosexuality .

The embassy made the announcement in a Facebook post that it deplored the decision to ban the film. It then published the full list of objections from the media council which also include using lurid language and smoking, especially by women. The Uganda Media Council described the film as women forming a:

Dinner Club which is, in reality, a sort of brothel, and said the film included scenes of gay men sauntering away drunk. While glorifying homosexuality two women say marriage (presumably to men) is hard work! This is against Ugandan values.

The council also objected to one man calling another a hot chick .

The film was released in 2010 and was due to be shown at a European film festival in Uganda. But the Embassy of the Netherlands said it will no longer taking part in the festival.

Proposed changes to censorship law in Kenya have filmmakers, bloggers, actors and many others in the media industry worried that their free speech will be curtailed.

Officials at the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB), the government agency that regulates the creation, broadcasting and distribution of films, propose that the board would have extended powers to regulate film and stage productions as well as publications, including online content.

ISPs would be required to ensure that anyone who uses their platforms to publish content is registered with the board, and would be required to prevent use of their services for hosting or distributing pornography, radicalization materials, hate speech and glamorization of use of drugs and alcohol, among other content. Internet service providers who fail to comply with these provisions face a fine of 2 million shillings ($19,655) upon conviction, or a prison term of up to two years, or both.

In addition, compliance officers would be able to seize film that they feel violates the law. However, some fees, including those paid to the board for reviewing films, would be removed.

Opponents of the proposal say it would take the country back to the 1990s, when the media and arts were heavily censored by the government, because the plan would increase the board's power and expand its scope.

According to current law, a film cannot be made in Kenya without a license from the board. Film producers are required to submit a full description of the scenes and the full text of the spoken parts of the entire film for approval, as well as to pay fees, before a license is granted. Changes to the film are subject to further review. Police can intervene, by force if necessary, to stop the making of a film if in an officer's opinion it endangers the safety of any person or property, among other reasons.

Organizations in the arts industry have rejected the board's proposed law and have approached the Ministry of Sports, Culture and the Arts about an alternative bill.

Kimani Njogu, the chairman of the Kenya Creative Economy Working Group, says that if his organization's push for an alternative bill does not succeed, it is prepared to go to court to seek interpretation on the constitutional provisions on freedom of expression.