FIRST OFF . . .

Two South African television news agencies said Monday that videotapes of an anti-government church service to be used by U.S. and British networks were erased after being transported by South African Airways. Worldwide Television News and Visnews said its crews delivered four videotapes to the state-owned airline’s office in George, about 250 miles east of Cape Town, to be flown to Johannesburg. When the shipment was collected, the video images on all four tapes had been erased, the agencies reported. The program was to have been used by CBS, ABC and NBC, the British Broadcasting Corp., and Britain’s Independent Television News. South African Airways said it would investigate the matter. The service was held to protest the government’s planned eviction of 1,800 residents in Lawaaikamp, a black settlement outside George. The Foreign Correspondents Assn., which represents more than 100 journalists working in South Africa for foreign news organizations, said in a statement: “Foreign correspondents here are constantly exhorted by the authorities to play by the rules. Such exhortations would carry more weight if other parties were seen to be under the same obligation.”