Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
STOP the world, I want to get off! There are too many changes! My system can’t cope. The appointment pages of the business sections of newspapers used to be packed with proud, beaming white males whose bosses had just summoned them to their offices and said: “Jack, you’ve paid your dues and it is about time that we gave you that spacious office in the corner, an incomprehensible title and a bimbo secretary.” Jack would then pose for a black and white photograph — trying to look as professional and ambitious as he possibly could and, bingo, he would be in the papers.
This state of affairs could not do, the people in the business sections had to acknowledge that black people and women were not only good in the garden and the bedroom respectively. Besides, black and female faces gave those pages a little bit of colour.
This realisation gave birth to the age of affirmative action. “Give me a staff with blacks. Give an office with girls. White, striped polka dot, gay, disabled. Glory, glory, mixed. Mixed is my beautiful staff,” the head honchos of major corporations could be heard as they gyrated — with their power dressing ties turned to headbands — through the corridors of corporate South Africa. This song routine was encouraged by the terror brought about by the barbarians who were knocking loudly at the doors of government and whose victory seemed imminent. Well, you know what happens when darkies get into power, don’t you?
This tune has had the longest stay in the corporate charts, getting revamped from time to time and with various versions surfacing. Not everybody loves this tune, however; those who used to rule the appointment pages sing their own favourite when it gets played. “Nobody knows the trouble I seen. Nobody knows, ’bout standards,” goes many a white executive contemplating a future of sharing an office with blacks, women and other subhuman species.
One of the places where these two golden oldies, these evergreens have recently been discovered are the brightly coloured corridors of the bimbo radio station Five FM. Like the music that they play — loud teenage claptrap — they have been pumping up the volume as they place this affirmative action song firmly on their CD players.
Launched with my tax rands way back in the dark days of apartheid, the station has progressed from broadcasting greetings to the troopies on the border to becoming the major player in the brain-dead music stakes. On this station a song by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney would be played and the announcer would leave out Jackson’s name — not that Jackson is black, in any case. Ja, those were the days, swaer.
The station has changed into a First World operation garnering a number of announcers who speak in posh British accents and are quite proud of the dues they paid in strange and exotic places. Every time I listen to the station I wonder whether these people’s work permits are still valid. Maybe the new Minister of Home Affairs, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, should take a look at this station, one of these days — that will keep him out of trouble.
In the dark days it was fine because no darkie would want to listen to white people’s music. Besides, all darkies wanted to do was to stay in the township and listen to Mahlathini and the Mahotella queens. But not now, what with the darkies in power? The station had to find someone whose skin was darker than that of an Eskimo. A scout was sent to this remote region of the globe to look for a black announcer, and he came back empty handed, for the only announcer they could spare said he was still involved in the campaign to stop saving the whales, to make it politically correct again for his people to eat them. “Besides, Africa is too hot,” said the disc jockey. The scout came back and was beginning to despair when he heard that he needn’t have gone all the way but could have looked in the studios of one of the local black radio stations.
In these studios an announcer was found. After this find, many a fax machine in many a newspaper started working overtime as the discovery was proudly announced, “Wow, aren’t we great? Aren’t we totally, utterly and radically nonracial and progressive? We’ve got — wait for it — a black disc jockey.”
The guy is black all right. He is actually darker than I am and I think that is really black. Even his name is black. To all intents and purposes he is perfect, baring the American accent. But that is okay, people with American accents are people too.
I think it is a great achievement and they have to be commended, seeing that they have gone to the ends of the earth to find him; all the way past Soweto, Katlehong and Soshanguve. Only one problem though, he is a foreigner, a Zimbabwean.
Now, I believe that foreigners are very nice folks, when they stay at home and don’t come to my country to take jobs away from my countrymen (and, oh, countrywomen — I would not want to forget my sisters, now would I?). I can, however, fully understand why this radio station would have done this for it subscribes to the standards in the industry and therefore will be forced to look for the best talent within and outside the country. What I don’t understand is this; the post in question is not that of a brain surgeon who specialises in performing operations while whistling one of Beethoven’s symphonies. We are talking about people whose jobs are to sit in air-conditioned studios and talk to themselves.
This radio station is not the only one which has cottoned on to the game of head-hunting in Africa. Now the appointment pages are full of white males and black foreigners. Many a corporation will proudly assert that its affirmative action programme is progressing very well for they have hired a number of black people. The bulk of those will be people who come from one of the African countries. Aren’t there black South Africans who are qualified for the appointments available? In the case of Five FM the answer is clearly that there is more than enough local talent available for that post. I am sure there are people in this country who know when Mick Jagger first stretched his rubber lips and a teeny bopper fainted.
This is a xenophobic column, isn’t it? Well, it is intended to be for if we don’t speak about it, the next time South Africans go to the polls, they could find themselves with a black president who is actually Malawian.