Matthew Krouse Down the tube
However hard they may be trying, the SABC is finding it difficult to impart a sense of fun and bravery to its election programming. While the elements of sacrilege that do exist are arousing a bit of contention, to date things haven’t gone nearly far enough.
Three of the six specially conceived programmes in the Election ’99 campaign are designed as light-hearted probes of the innermost feelings of a society on the brink of the vote. These are meant to transcend the regular diet of yacking politicians.
Best of this bunch is Kagiso Educational Television’s half hour Walala Wasala – meaning “If you snooze you lose” – on Wednesdays at 6.30pm on SABC1. A voter education programme for the youth, it is well spiced with humour, barrier breaking encounters with politicians, conscientised pop music and some very odd camera angles.
The remaining two funnies of the entire schedule are Off the Record (SABC2 on Sundays at 10.15pm) and Evita’s Ballot Bus (SABC3 on Wednesdays at 6.15pm). While the former is improving at a snail’s pace, the latter remains consistently entertaining, however much Evita may be a predictable comedic force.
Worst of the serious interrogations, leading up to the elections, must be Newsmaker (SABC2 on Sunday at midday) that began its life on April 25. This dowdy piece of actuality goes to great lengths to reiterate news highlights that, by Sunday, everybody already knows.
The supposed big moment of the weekly programme is a 45 minute, face-to-face encounter with a major player. In their own words: “In depth and up front” – two things the programme isn’t.
Phil Molefe’s interview with Thabo Mbeki that kick-started the series was very telling indeed. It was an exercise in two-way adoration, a love story between “Mr Mbeki” and “Phil”. Like a stern schoolmaster, Mbeki reprimanded his interviewer for an inaccurate summary of what had characterised the “Mandela years”. It left Molefe so mortified that I was afraid he might dash off the set and shoot himself through the head!
Even with all his fawning, Molefe couldn’t get Mbeki to soften up or drop formality. In the “get to know the man” section, the ANC president begrudgingly described a book he’d read – an economic analysis of world change by a pair of Americans that sounded as dry as the person who had read them.
Right at the end of the excruciatingly long dialogue, Molefe took the opportunity to thank Mbeki for his Sunday attendance in church!
Last week, Mangosuthu Buthelezi was pitted against Chris Bishop and Snuki Zikalala. On the one hand things were better, and on another things got worse.
The interviewers obviously were not hero worshipping the head of the IFP. But “Mr Bishop”, as Buthelezi called him, was so nervous that he stumbled over just about every word he said.
As the soft bit – about Buthelezi “the man” – turned to that old chestnut, his appearance in the film Zulu Dawn, I switched channels with a yawn. Honestly, the interviewers could learn a lot from watching the Dali Tambo show – he may dress badly, but he certainly knows how to suck information out of his guests.