Channel vision
Last Sunday’s Newsmaker interview with Mr Thabo Mbeki should be released on video as a teaching aid, for use in first-year state-of-the-art political sycophancy lectures. Marketed overseas it could become an academic gotta-have. If ever there was a demonstration of how callow and smarmy it is possible to become, this was it. Snuki Zikalala, hands wringing, voice quivering with reverence, grovelled deeper than ever before. Every cower, every twitched abjection was there.
Here’s a typical Snuki “sweetheart” question – verbatim: “After Parliament on Friday there was a small protest march regarding the policy of providing pregnant women who are HIV-positive with AZT. Is the government looking into that?”
Notice the cute insertion of the word “small”. Just in case the main man might get resentful, just to make sure he knows you know the march wasn’t worth much anyway. “Sorry to have to mention this, Mr President, sir, but this totally insignificant small crowd of apartheid’s greedy residue have taken to the streets …” Soapy enough? Not for Snuki, who then sat nodding pliantly through a yardful of vague quasi-medical conjecture from Mbeki, the essence of which was that it’s actually tuberculosis that causes people to be diagnosed as HIV-positive. (More at www.zanydocs.com.)
And so it went on, the examples too numerous to detail. Has it ever struck people like Snuki Zikalala that their servility is actually profoundly insulting to their subjects – never mind what it says about their own credibility? To any viewer with a quarter of a mind they come across as somewhat pathetic lickspittles.
True, Snuki was dealing with a man who used the occasion to be cozily avuncular; our state president clearly enjoys playing the part of judicious sage and oracle. This was no interview, it was an hour put aside for Mbeki to answer some pre-fried questions, to dilate in his most condescending manner how everyone, save himself and a few cronies, have got the wrong end of every stick. Be it health, labour, education, crime, finance, demarcation, the wind direction, we’ve all got it hopelessly wrong. Oh yes, and the government is busy “focusing” on it.
For all his patient sighs and expressive forbearance a good few of Mr Mbeki’s statements were preposterous. He expressed himself quite surprised that there should have been any criticism about the composition of the new Aids Council, going on to say that such criticism could only come from those who thought they should have been on the council. That screamed for a sharp question or two. Not from dutiful Snuki who instead smiled obsequiously and exuded some even stickier glycerine. If Snuki Zikalala has one very luminous gift it is impersonation. This performance was flawless Cliff Saunders de nos jours.
One is puzzled as to why M-Net should spend lank bucks on importing a zooty overseas producer in order to come up with something about as original as a stop sign. One can’t imagine why the much vaunted new series Duty Calls should turn out to be so badly thrown together, a series of hand-held shots with occasional subtitles, a few stumbling explanations from police personnel.
This feeble schlock is the work of one John Lacote, a super-wealthy French- Canadian. If the first episode is anything to go by, Mr Lacote’s identifying talent would appear to be his ability to talk people into commissioning him. “This high-speed series tells the up-close-and-personal story of the South African police’s fight against crime in central Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town in rapid tightly cut scenes so vivid you’ll duck for cover.” So ran some published blurb for the series. Duck for cover? It was about as thrilling as watching blancmange set.
Carte Blanche, the SABC and others have previously done far better work on subjects of this sort. The average Special Assignment documentary comports much more realism. What makes Mr Lacote’s work so remarkable that it is chosen in preference to the local talent? Does he have some sort of precognitive powers? Or is it that he owns dozens of Lear-jets and flies his own Ferrari?
I must say the cricket has been fun, but they do tend to overdo the replays. Hansie’s admittedly wonderful catch in the last Zimbabwe game is a point. Did we have to look at it fifteen times?