Neil Sonnekus
Portuguese involvement in Southern Africa dates back to the mid-1500s. Bartholemeu Dias is credited as the first white man to kill an indigene in these parts and he did so with a crossbow at present-day Mossel Bay.
The seafarers, however, preferred the calmer landing waters of Angola and Mozambique to our Cape of Good Hope, so named because King Joo II thought it sounded more positive than Dias’s reported naming of it as the Cape of Storms. So even then there were allegations.
Five centuries later a section of the local Portuguese community marched on the Union Buildings to protest against the violent personal crime perpetrated against them in newly democratic South Africa. This in turn gave rise to a vitriolic response from Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete, who accused all Portuguese speakers of never marching on the apartheid government, therefore alleging they were all racists.
Tshwete had perhaps forgotten that names like Maria Ramos and Carlos Queiroz, South Africa’s director-general of the National Treasury and Bafana Bafana coach respectively, are also very Portuguese. The whole affair nearly ended in a diplomatic withdrawal of that country’s ambassador, Manuel Fernandes Pereira.
It is this same soft-spoken man who, thanks to weather that resembled that of the Cape of Storms, arrived apologetically late to launch Multichoice Africa’s two new Portuguese channels recently.
Although RTPi (Radio Television Portugal international) is already broadcasting on DStv, SIC International from Portugal and TV Globo from Brazil have been added to the mix. Both stations were already available in Angola and Mozambique where, because of the large Portuguese-speaking populations, they earned their keep through subscriptions.
According to Multichoice Africa’s general manager of corporate affairs Lebogang Hashatse, it was now viable to add the two stations to the local, oddly-named “bouquet”. A bouquet in this sense is a cluster of programmes concentrated on and designed specifically for a certain community’s needs and is broadcast to it via digital satellite.
There are also Hindi, French, Italian, Chinese and, of course, English bouquets.
Both SIC and TV Globo feature news, sport, entertainment and that specialist form of Latin drama, the passionate telenovella that made Brazilian actress Sonia Braga globally famous and Robert Redford weak at the ego. According to Pereira Portuguese TV covers Africa more extensively than any other European channel.
Apart from watching the truly democratic game of soccer from the lands of the fado and the samba, local Mozambican-born filmmaker Helena Noguera says these two stations’ programmes will also help second-generation kids relearn their mother tongue.
Most local Portuguese speakers come from Madeira, but the consulate in Johannesburg could only confirm the registered existence of “over 100 000” people of Portuguese descent. It’s popularly accepted to be closer to a million.
According to Minister in the Office of the President Dr Essop Pahad Multichoice Africa is not a form of electronic colonialism but a contributor towards the “African renaissance”.
But with rising stars like Portuguese-Canadian rock prodigy Nelly Furtado internationally and Mozambican Choppa (see main story) locally, it seems to have a port-like bouquet.