The SABC’s grand relaunch: Was it worth the money? Did anyone learn anything? Will advertisers support the new-look state television station?
Jeff Zerbst found the SABC’s grand relaunch of its TV stations to be a spectacle loaded with symbolism for the new South Africa
IT was in a spirit of awe and reverence that one watched the SABC launch on Sunday. This veritable phantasmagoria of light and sound was pregnant with meaning and symbolism, and left nobody untouched by its sheer magic.
The ideological tone was set by those piercing lasers which flashed their way into every nook and cranny of an Air Force hangar near Pretoria. Here, in imagistic form, was a rapier-like representation of the truth commission. One almost expected to see Magnus Malan hanging from a forklift.
The quintessential theme of flying was introduced before the show even began: a shamanistic warrior on a rock told us that, from now, South Africa, the sky’s the limit. This prophetic statement, uttered during the same week that astronomers in California discovered a distant galaxy, 14-billion light years away, appeared oddly conservative in scope. Why should our limit be the sky when billions of miles of space stretched beyond it? Was this the SABC’s way of telling us it wouldn’t be televising our joint space project with the Russians?
But then the point became clear: we should aim high, but keep a ceiling on our expectations. We shouldn’t expect too much. Fair enough, I say.
The image of the Boeing as a contextualising motif was astonishingly apposite. It was a veritable symbol of the South African nation. After all, it had a left wing and a right wing, and couples were spotted leaving it at regular intervals.
No, no, this was not a celebration of the possibility of migration. The big, white plane, sporting the orange, white and blue of the old regime, was a symbol of the South Africa we had boarded in the past and from which we have now disembarked. Couples were seen abandoning it for a world of light, colour, diversity and plurality.
And what great people there were seen disembarking. South Africans thrilled to the sight of a glittering array of local celebrities coming down the gangplank into the new world of hope and glory: Paul Ditchfield, Prudence Solomon, Martin le Maitre, Nicky Rebelo, Titch Mataaz … few nations have seen their equal.
And, of course, there was President Nelson Mandela, a national talisman of truly business-class proportions. Madiba used a brilliant image which had obvious relevance to the occasion: Today we are shedding another layer of baggage. This statement constituted a reference to the morally overweight parcels we, as a nation, stored in the hold of the great white bird which failed to take us to heaven. It was a moment as moving as any in our history.
He also spoke at one point about steering the great ship through troubled waters, an image oddly out of joint with the aircraft theme until one realised that here was a moving reference to the Helderberg, which otherwise was not mentioned.
But, lest readers should imagine that the evening was clouded in sentiment, one should hastily add that it was not. As in all new orders, brutality has its place and purges are perfectly within reason. Several SABC presenters left behind on the runway of history were Eon de Vos, Jan van Niekerk, Clarence Keyter, Dr Piet van Rensburg, Professor Tertius Harmse, Professor Ryno Swanepoel, Norma Odendaal, Adrian Steed, Tim Hart and Estelle de Koning.
For Eon de Vos, himself a pilot, the whole evening must have seemed like a supernatural nightmare choreographed with his personal humiliation in mind. But he got off better than Clarence Keyter, whose voice suddenly disappeared as a film clip of Mandela’s release from jail was shown. Keyter’s image is expected to disappear mysteriously from all old SABC staff photographs during the next few weeks.
What these sacked presenters must appreciate is that only one person will now read the news and that weather forecasts will be voice-overs. This smacks of responsible budgeting in a world of gravy trains. How can launches costing between R4,5-million and R9- million be funded unless a few people’s careers are sacrificed for the common weal?
The chief criticism of the evening was the presence of black American males as chief presenters and guests of honour. Some SABC staffers, indeed, have had the temerity to suggest that the evening represented a slap in the face of South African entertainment.
These whingers missed several key points. Firstly, since Louis Farrakhan a recent visitor here is always telling black American men to shape up, get a life, stop using drugs and spend more time with the family, it was important to prove that African- Americans could stand up straight and deliver a dozen or so lines without running off stage to ingest a prohibited substance.
Secondly, having already placated Afrikaners with a white aeroplane, and the rest of South African whites by parading the cricket and rugby teams, it was entirely unnecessary to include more palefaces. The whole history of South African TV has, after all, been a sea of white faces sprouting lies, propaganda and hatred. It will take many decades before anyone here trusts a white face with moving lips again. A celebratory pageant was obviously the wrong occasion to try the concept out.
Thirdly, the appearances of Blair Underwood, Malcolm Jahmal Warner, Robert Guillame, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cochrane reveal that we are now accepted in America, the spiritual home of commercial TV. The coded message here is that we, too, are now sufficiently moral and pure to watch soap operas, sitcoms and talk shows.
Fourthly, we must not cultivate short memories in this brave new democracy. Examine, for example, the following reader’s question published in The Citizen: What the hell has OJ Simpson’s lawyer got to do with my viewing? With respect, sir, Johnny Cochrane was one of the finest TV performers of 1995. Did you not watch the OJ Simpson show packaged in the States as a courtroom drama and realise that here was the reason for LA Law’s sudden loss of ratings and subsequent demise? Did you, somehow, miss the best viewing of the century?
Lastly, and most importantly, we have the rest of our lifetime to watch so-called local talent. Why spoil a good party by forcing us to watch it at an eagerly awaited launch?
Some perennial conscientious objectors have claimed the SABC launch was merely surface gloss and told us little about what has actually changed at the SABC. They could not have watched the inserts about Channels 1, 2 and 3 very carefully. These were crisp and informative and, even if they weren’t, they were over pretty quickly.
In any case, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The launch extravaganza cannot tell us how good our TV is. Only watching it can do that. My wife tells me you can now see The Bold and the Beautiful in the morning and in the afternoon! She’s very happy with the new SABC and we should all be too.