Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
As I begin writing this I await a call from the SABC’s ever helpful Marj Murray, who is busy finding out who was responsible for the bizarre pageant-cum- circus-cum-Sun City Showtime extravaganza which attended the formal opening of the Aids 2000 conference in Durban. The SABC itself didn’t bother to supply its viewers with any such unimportant details.
The piece was called Break the Silence – which means they couldn’t even get the last word of the title right. It was about as inapposite and tasteless a display of garish effects as you could imagine. Maudlin lyrics, no matter how dressed up and bellowed out they are, remain maudlin lyrics. Stunningly sentimental “poetry” mouthed in a trembling voice to subtle touch-screen graphics does not alter the flabby banality of its content. Whoever said that the disciplines of fascist display-art died with the fhrer was very wrong.
Remember when Adolf had about 10E000 bare- breasted Wagnerian maidens paraded around a Berlin square on top of floats and tanks in enforcement of the Teutonic ideal of a slightly overweight tight-curled blonde womankind? The Aids opening extravaganza was in the same vein.
You would hope that after all the controversy, after all the monstrous, the grotesque mismanagement by the South African government of the HIV/Aids scourge, after all the lies and the misdirection, the whole cruel disaster, someone with a little discretion, a soupon of good taste and reserve, would have decided that enough was enough: that a serious international conference about one of mankind’s worst plagues should be afforded an equally serious opening formality. Not some mega-kitsch display of Las Vegas bojo effects and gymnast-and-veil routines. This was the opening to an international science conference, not a soccer tournament. All it lacked was a fireworks display and some parachutists.
Not that the thing didn’t have a funny side. The opening song was hollered in front of a clustered group of what looked like giant half-deflated condoms. Perhaps in the upbeat spirit of the piece they were intended to look like half-inflated condoms – this metaphysical construction was left to the viewers to work out for themselves.
Best of all was the sight of several Zulu warriors clanking around with vast upturned dustbins attached to their feet. What a trendy way to show solidarity with Parks.
The SABC never lets style interfere with practicality. About 10 minutes into the show, just as the thing was beginning its first crescendo, they suddenly cut away to a toothpaste commercial. Part of the show? When the viruses rain down let a smile be your umbrella?
In lieu of the fireworks, it was left to Mr Thabo Mbeki to self-ignite. After all, he had to live up to the week of undiluted SABC encomia which had preceded this, his most recent visit to South Africa. Mr Mbeki spoke movingly on the matter of poverty and how poverty is a condition entirely blamable on erosive Western capitalism. At which point the screen gave a little cough and went black.
For a terrible moment I wondered whether this was the deployment of some innovative televisual expressionism, but it turned out to be just a power failure. When we got back to Thabo he was still being statesmanlike about poverty. He was so moving and sincere, for a second or two I thought that, as an inspiring gesture, he was about to throw his R300-million airliner and three of four of Jacob Zuma’s wives’ limousines into the poverty relief pot. No such luck.
What a wank. What an ostentatious display of sleazy commercial values. Who decides on these things? I was about to take a guess when Marj phoned back and set me back on my heels. It turns out the opening ceremony commission came from the SABC news department – a career move into the road- show business? As of deadline I couldn’t get hold of the SABC’s Nicky Scott to ask her about what this enterprise cost and whither camest the boodle.
A few further calls and it is revealed the basic ticket was around R5-million – paid for in unknown ratios by LoveLife, Aids 2000 and the SABC. Mr Steve Moffett, a senior figure in the production, tells me that the ceremony was also meant to be a platform for the Aids Awareness Campaign and to give it some needed credibility. It would seem that at long last Sarafina III has ruptured into being.