channel vision
Robert Kirby
Last week’s Special Assignment on the subject of child prostitution opened with a real stinger. In her usual soulful tones, Annaliese Burgess announced that permission to have themselves filmed, interviewed and transmitted had been granted by a collection of child prostitutes. What seems not to have struck Annaliese or her reporters or for that matter, the SABC legal department is that minors do not have the legal right to grant this or any other sort of civil permission. Minors are not competent legal entities. Permission to film and interview them may only be granted by their parents or legal guardians perhaps the courts? If these permissions and exceptions were not engaged, then, in filming and interviewing these children, the SABC was acting in blatant violation of the law and the children’s constitutional rights.
More especially would adult permission be necessary when children are being interviewed about activities that are not only illegal, but also of the leery order of prostitution. And where, might I ask Ms Burgess and her reporters, was the competent adult adviser to keep an eye on the children? Where was the lawyer to oversee their legal rights? Or did Ms Burgess and her reporters award to themselves these responsibilities, on behalf of parents or guardians lawyers, social workers? If so, who gave them permission to do this?
In her usually mawkish style, Burgess’s introduction to the programme said that, “Special Assignment spent many weeks on the streets gaining the trust of these children” a guarantee added, no doubt, to assure us to what generous lengths the Special Assignment team would go in order to ratify the moral authenticity of its mission. But to what end was all this kindly effort expended? So that Special Assignment could dump some abandoned and abused children in front of its cameras and persuade them to talk about how much they charge for blow jobs?
Better: is this what the SABC means when it speaks of “responsible television programming”? About all that emerged in the way of information or background to this grossly lazy piece was some thrown-together sensationalism going as relevant television. The programme was utterly bad in all senses. Scant background, little supporting script. Slapping a bunch of displaced children in front of cameras and letting them talk about their terrible lives is scarcely acceptable documentary technique. What is more, the black strips that were supposed to shield the children’s identities were totally inadequate. What with the unsheltered three-quarter shots, the kids could easily be identified.
All that remains to be asked is whether Special Assignment actually paid these child prostitutes for their contributions to its programme. If they were in fact rewarded, it would place the Special Assignment crew on more or less the same footing as the child prostitutes’ more regular clients.
Last weekend’s political television was at its usual abysmal best, made noticeably worse by the inclusion of lengthy interviews with the leader and deputy leader of the beleagured Democratic Misalliance as it’s now affectionately being called. First up, in Sunday morning’s Newsmaker, was Marthinus “Kortbroek” van Schalkwyk, representing the residual National Party.
What can one say about Van Schalkwyk’s smarmy fibre? He has all the charisma of a deceased jockstrap, what with his “Yes, Vuyo, well you see, Vuyo, what you will no doubt understand, Vuyo …” Why does Kortbroek feel he has to suck so diligently at his interviewer? And there is something desperately obscene about hearing a latter-day National Party stalwart bragging about how his party has been the first to draw the “coloured and white people together” when one of the first political acts of the same party, when they got into power back in the Forties, was to boot the coloured people off the voter’s roll?
In the course of all this, Kortbroek did come out with a humdinger worthy of the Mixed Metaphor of the Month Award. Talking about the political long knives being wielded by the Tony Leon faction of the Democratic Alliance, Kortbroek cracked a brackish grin and said, “The trouble with political long knives is that they can turn into double-edged swords”. I fear he’s been reading too much Harry Potter.
Tosspot the Leonheart was to get his turn later on the Sunday when, in Newshour, he got to fulminate about the divisions in his ranks brought about by the antics of Cape Town mayor Peter Marais. Someone should instruct Leon in how to answer the questions put to him, instead of using every one as an excuse to go wanking on about the eagerness of his democratic responsibilities and how fucking wonderful he’s being in sharing them with us.
If anything, these two interviews blew a loud warning siren. If this couple of dead-eyed bojos are the best available, the prime political bosuns of the official opposition, then God only help us should either of them ever take over the helm.