Mark Esterhuysen

Mark Esterhuysen was a news announcer on 702-Radio in Johannesburg South Africa. I am speaking of that in the past tense because about 24 hours ago he was fired for spazzing out on air and uttering a stream of profanity instead of the scheduled 1:00 AM newsreel. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that he had committed "career suicide." Normally I don't cover stories about international broadcasting, but in this case I have the audio and that makes the story irresistible. The whole event was all of 15 seconds long. It goes something like this:

"GOOD morning. I’m Mark Esterhuysen. Fuck racism. Fuck the pigs that killed Andries Tatane. Fuck the AWB [Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging]. Fuck racism. We are all wild animals meant to live free. Fuck capitalism. Fuck fascism. Fuck this fucking wage slavery graveyard shit..."

702 Radio clip


Being 7 hours ahead of us, the Cape Times already ran their story on it, here.They described him as unrepentant. Which after reading his tweets, I can say is pretty accurate. Eyewitness News editor-in-chief Katy Katopodis then tweeted:  “Much has been said about the Eyewitness News bulletin in which profanities were used. We apologize, & have terminated the news anchor’s contract.” More here.