TELEVISION: Charl Blignaut
AS the public broadcaster of a developing nation, the SABC was given all its Olympic footage for free. But, not the type to pass up an opportunity to prove its commentators “can match the world’s best”, the corporation decided to make up for all the money it had saved by sending no fewer than 86 staffers to cover the Atlanta games.
Well, at least we think they’re in Atlanta. According to Dumile Mateza (the man with the accent that makes even Michael Jackson seem black), they’re actually in Ahtluntah — as in “Hello and wellicalm to Ahtluntah”.
The truth is that, for the most part, they could just as well have stayed at home and produced confused, insipid coverage at a third of the cost. We’ve actually witnessed, in the first boxing coverage to be aired, commentators excitedly declaring how, at the end of a bout, “the red one” produced “a brilliant, impressive fight” — only to see the “blue one’s” arm raised in victory. Now, anyone can make an error in judgment — but not when the scores were there on screen all along. Someone went all the way to America to offer us less than we already knew.
Another fine example was continuity presenter Vuyo Mbuli’s brief but sensitive insight into the mind of an Olympic high jumper. Finals and all the pressure’s on. The athlete steps off the mat, unsuccessful and on the verge of tears; we hear Vuyo: “Oh. He missed. We-ell, he’s very unhappy with that. Very unhappy indeed.”
Or take Tony Frost. Here’s a leading athletics commentator — who never stops to think about what comes out of his mouth. So we end up with lines like: “Carl Lewis. What a legend! When the chips were down he looked at them only long enough to take out a whole new set of chips!” Or introducing Hezekiel Sepeng and Johan Botha: “Two of our young tigers … no, no, in South Africa we have lions. Two of our young lions … or cheetahs?”
Elma Neethling’s one of those headgirl-types who’s done her research and, though a tad eager, manages to produce the goods. She’s also the only woman in a man’s world (you can’t count Ursula Stapelfeld, last seen simpering in front of an abandoned and very wet beach volleyball court). The problem with Elma is her hair. What could’ve been a modest bob has been poofed into an alarming mushroom. This hairstyle is scarier than Ilke, the German discus-thrower, scarier than the man with floppy tits in the Vodacom ad — scarier, even, than a pipe bomb at a reggae concert.
Speaking of explosions, several moments of silence, please, for Martin Locke. He was actually at the scene of the bomb just three short hours before it went off. And Dorianne Berry, GMSA anchor, wouldn’t let us forget it. (Not one to keep her mouth shut, Dorianne also told us how her co-anchor was barred from filming the aftermath — at the precise moment that CNN’s live footage of the scene played off behind her).
But back to Locke. He proved to be one up on the rest of Atlanta who, according to an expert interviewed on CNN, would be waking up in a state of major grief at not having been blown up. He called it “survivor guilt syndrome” and then declared that Atlanta would be needing therapy a good few months on. If that logic applies to local Olympics viewers, best you book into a mental institution right away.