Maureen Barnes Down the tube
There is no crisis. That’s what Dr Khulu Mbatho from the Department of Home Affairs said to Chris Gibbons about our electoral . if you’ll pardon the expression . arrangements.
Well it depends, of course, on your definition of crisis. Compared to the San Franscisco earthquake, the bubonic plague and the outbreak of World War II, he was indeed correct – there is no crisis. But compared to the electoral process in almost every other country in the universe, our little fiasco is nothing less than a crisis in progress.
Dr Mbatho’s complacency was echoed by Professor Mandla Mchunu, Chief Electorial Officer. Each man, naturally, was careful to distance his department’s wonderful work from the work of the other.
Keeping a low profile this time in order to avoid the substance that was flying off the fan was Judge Johan Kriegler, the man at whose desk the buck ought to stop.
We must remember that the judge has never given the public a satisfactory explanation for the two million ballot papers which went missing after the last election – also under his control.
It was nice to get away from elections, registrations and even presidents getting it wrong, tee-hee, and switch over to gardening – my current obsession.
How soothing it is to watch Gardens Wild and Wonderful (how that title irritates me) on SABC3 at 9.30am, and see Doug McMurtry and Anne Lorentz enthusiastically showing us how it’s done. The number of viewers who tune into this first-class production ought to have indicated to the SABC how important it is. As usual they heeded not – except by reducing the programme from 30 to 15 minutes. Big mistake.
Another big mistake – this time on the
part of the producers of the programme – is the time devoted to Margaret Roberts. Apparently she has a big and unquestioning following but there are many viewers who are not fans of holier- than-thou herb vendors. A week or two ago she waxed lyrical, as always, this time on the benefits of barley. She retold an old story – or possibly urban legend – about a farmer who accidentally dropped a bale of the stuff into his hitherto murky dam. And lo, within a few days, the dam thing was clear as crystal. Ms Roberts treated this event as the holy miracle of the barley bale.
Actually in the version I heard some years ago, the farmer’s dropped bale consisted of nothing but plain old straw. After hearing this I tried putting a small bundle of straw into my algae- ridden koi pond and, guess what, I had a miracle too.
The addition to the Gardens Wild and Wonderful team of Yashika Singh as presenter hasn’t worked either. She’s got that “other worldly” ethereal quality which might appeal to the Roberts fans, but not to those of us to whom gardening is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a wonderfully down-to-earth pasttime.
If only M-Net gave as much publicity to the good material it gets as it does to even the most mediocre movies. The first part of A Dance to the Music of Time (8pm) arrived almost unheralded last Thursday in the form of a “miniseries” – a meaningless description if ever I heard one.
It’s the dramatisation of Anthony Powell’s masterly epic and the production was given excellent reviews in England when it was screened earlier this year.
In some cases these reviews were reluctantly given, as many devotees of Powell believed it impossible to translate this work to the screen.
Unfortunately M-Net and, it must be said, the SABC as well, does not seem to have the ability to comprehend or publicise any but the most banal material. Everyone in the country will know when they’re going to screen Dirty Harry or Road Warrior because M-Net both understands and loves such films. But give them anything like the Powell piece, with a bit of intellectual content , and they don’t seem to know what to do with it.
They end up all but ignoring it, thus losing most of the admittedly limited audience it might have attracted.
By the time you read this you may have missed the second two-hour instalment on Thursday. Don’t miss any more. Although there are “stars” such as Sir John Gielgud, Miranda Richardson and Edward Fox, it was chubby Simon Russell Beale’s performance which got the critics raving.