TBN Plans to Build South African Network Could Violate U.S. Sanctions

Plans announced by Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network to build a string of Christian television stations across South Africa may run afoul of U.S. economic sanctions, U.S. officials said this week.

The assets section of the Treasury Department, which monitors transactions with South Africa, does not comment on individual cases. However, a department spokesman who asked not to be named said that building a television station from the ground up and maintaining ownership and control of the facility would constitute a new investment and would be banned under 1986 anti-apartheid legislation.

“The key issue is whether they own something there--a piece of land, a building, a station . . . that’s an investment that would fall under the legislation,” said Stephen Weissman, staff director of the House subcommittee on Africa. “If they own a station, equipment, then they are investing in South Africa.”

Trinity’s founder and president, Paul F. Crouch, has told viewers and readers of the network’s monthly newsletter that he has been negotiating directly with South African officials, including President P.W. Botha, to build Trinity-owned stations in the country.

‘For Whole of South Africa’

“We also met with the South African minister of communications and the head of the Dutch Reformed Church,” Crouch wrote in TBN’s November, 1988, newsletter, “to present our proposal for 100% Christian television for the whole of South Africa.”

On Wednesday night, Crouch showed viewers a letter he just received from Stoffel van der Merwe, the communications minister, approving negotiations for TBN and other Christian broadcasting services, including Pat Robertson of CBN, to take over an unused, nationwide VHF frequency of the South African Broadcasting Corp.

Crouch, who has frequently voiced his support for the Botha government, also repeated his opposition to apartheid, which he said “is not Christian, is not right,” on a broadcast last week with a black South African political leader.

Like TBN’s first African station, which was completed before the legislation went into effect, the next two stations are planned for black-ruled “homelands.” Philip Little, a spokesman for Trinity, said that Crouch is aware of the sanctions but that he considers these areas “sovereign nations” and believes that the sanctions do not apply.

A State Department spokesman, however, said the U.S. government’s position is that the homelands are legally and diplomatically indistinguishable from the Pretoria government. They are considered to be part of Pretoria’s plan for “grand apartheid,” uprooting South African blacks from their homes, withdrawing their citizenship and forcing them to live in the crowded, barren areas from which their ancestors may have come.

Within Nation’s Borders

These territories are completely within South Africa’s borders, and television signals from them easily reach major metropolitan areas such as Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, Capetown and East London. In addition, Crouch’s flagship talk show, “Praise the Lord,” is already carried on several other systems in South Africa.

According to regulations accompanying the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, “no national of the United States may, directly or through another person, make any new investment in South Africa” after Jan 1, 1987. One exception which could conceivably apply to TBN states that “contributions to charitable organizations engaged in significant welfare, public health, religious, educational and emergency relief activities in South Africa will not be treated as new investments.”

But Weissman, of the House subcommittee, said that for this regulation to apply, Trinity would have to donate funds and/or equipment to an existing South African organization doing charitable work in religious areas. And if the existing Trinity station in South Africa is the model for future stations, that is not likely to be the case, he said.

In 1986, Trinity began broadcasting on a $1-million station and studio not covered by the sanctions in Bisho, the capital of a homeland known as Ciskei. Built on 5 acres of land given to TBN by the Ciskei government, the station is owned and operated by Trinity, according to the network’s newsletter, and is managed by a white South African.

Unlike some other Trinity stations in the United States, the Ciskei station has no separate board which includes local residents. Nor does it offer any charitable adjunct which feeds or houses the poor, as the network does at several of its stations in this country.

For Government Use

According to the manager, Bernard Roebert, a block of time on the station--the only one in Ciskei--has been reserved for use by the government.

Recent TBN newsletters and broadcasts have been chronicling the building of a second station in another homeland, Bophuthatswana.

And last week, Crouch had as a guest on a half-hour program Maj. Gen. Bantu Holomisa, the military ruler of a third homeland, Transkei. Crouch said he was going to meet privately with Holomisa--who traveled to the United States on a South African passport--about building a Christian station in Transkei’s capital of Umtata.