It was most disturbing to read last week’s Mail & Guardian revelations about Mr Enoch Sithole. No one enjoys seeing such stylish colossi toppled. What is more, it makes for a general nervousness in the television- watching populace when, one after the other, senior SABC directors are suspended for fraud and corruption, stealing each other’s bribes or selling SABC news footage to the opposition. It does little to restore our faith in a corporation desperately trying to slough off the accumulated disrepute of all those frightful apartheid years.
This time the tumble from grace and favour was especially distressing as Sithole was one of several appointments made in the spirit of affirmative nepotism by Mr Zwelakhe Sisulu – erstwhile CEO of the SABC – and who made his own exit from the corporation just ahead of an ominously gathering cloud.
Enoch Sithole was the Holy Ghost in the SABC news trinity where he reigned alongside Snuki the Father and Phil the Son. It is believed Enoch was assigned his particular rank because ghosts are nearly as insubstantial as his academic achievements and claims to nationality.
Enoch’s precipitate departure will leave things unbalanced. Whatever the outcome of the scandal, I must confess to feeling a bit worried that the spotlight at present focused on Enoch might well spill over on to those who have stood too close to him. The SABC news department’s chief representative on earth, the Reverend Hawu Mbatha, said on last Sunday’s Newshour that he would be investigating the educational qualifications of all his flock.
In his enthusiasm I hope he’s not going to start recklessly prying around secular academic attributes like Snuki Zikalala’s PhD (Bulgaria), a qualification he is known to imprint on all his correspondence with a rubber stamp. I would be most disappointed if I picked up a newspaper and read that Snuki’s doctorate was anything but blessed.
Whatever the stresses from above, it was intriguing to note an obvious difference in the SABC news coverage of last Saturday’s protest march in Harare. The BBC and e.tv pointed out that white protesters were singled out for assault by Mugabe’s goon squads. The BBC ran comment which identified this as a possible consequence of Mugabe’s continual playing of the race card, an entirely feasible argument and one which screams for exploration.
But when it came to old faithful SABC, their bulletins did not mention the colour of the victims. Perhaps they didn’t want to challenge the prevailing Human Rights Commission philosophy which holds that the racism virus has chromatic partialities: it can only be hosted by white people. In the circumstance it was a conspicuous piece of censorship.
On BBC World’s long-running Hardtalk last week a guest was the enigmatic Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, the man imported by Blair minions to interrupt the rapidly crumbling fortunes of the Greenwich Dome. M Gerbeau was called in because single-handedly he had salvaged another disaster in the shape of Euro Disney. It was the weekly British journal, The Spectator, which first published news of a strange coincidence. Apparently the wrong Gerbeau had been hired. Pierre-Yves had only been a middle-ranking executive at Euro Disney. It was Jean-Marie Gerbeaux, Euro Disney’s communications manager, the Dome organisers should have head-hunted. The X-factor, or as The Spectator’s Petronella Wyatt put it, they recruited the wrong frog. A real coq-up.
Last week the BBC’s Sarah Montague spent an entire half hour with Pierre-Yves who spent the same entire half hour taking credit for some modest improvements in Dome gate receipts. He came across as the sort of impostor you used to find in Victorian melodramas, dodging and squirming his way around every direct question, his face wreathed in oily smiles. Montague did not have to press any question too hard. All she had to do was sit back and let her guest slowly garrotte himself. In a way a superb lesson in the art of subversive interviewing.
Another BBC World series has just begun, well worth latching on to before it’s too late. The inordinately engaging, whimsical and truly droll Michael Palin is off on another eccentric global journey. Full Circle sees him start from the International Date Line at the Diomede Islands in the Bering Straits and, setting off in a walrus-skin boat, going all the way around in whatever other transport he can manage to find. It can be seen on BBC World at various times over weekends. Don’t miss this one, whatever you do.