A decidedly el-cheapo 12-page insert in a recent edition of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer was titled “SADC — Part Four”. For those of you who, like English readers, still don’t know, the initials stand for South African Development Community. I haven’t had the privilege of seeing any of the first three of this series; this one was grisly enough.
This fourth part was subtitled “South Africa”, to which was added the ethnically stable slogan of the new South African coat of arms: Strength Through Unity.
Closer examination revealed the 12 pages had been published by an organisation/group/company/ peoples’ committee/university knitting circle/bunch of post- transitional fumblefingers calling themselves “Images, Words Ltd” and who described themselves as “solely responsible for its contents”. A most courageous rider as it turned out.
At face value The Observer insert is nothing but a pathetically crude encouragement to tourists and a forum for some tourism-related advertising. But it also came across as a sort of fool’s gold supplement to the grand Mbeki vision for Africa.
Its introduction reiterated gritty lumps of the ostentatious phrase-ology, all the exhausted platitudes that have become inseparable from the president’s strategies for a renewed continent; it fair throbbed with undertakings of “new commitments”, the closing of “economic gaps”, the initiation of “greater harmonisation of trade tariffs and mutually beneficial joint ventures” and “the urgent need for renewed investment”.
It was the orthodox Mbeki G8 Takeaway Menu. This suspicion was borne out when an inquiry to Images, Words Ltd confirmed that the piece was primarily intended as encouragement for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development reverie.
Where the insert’s introduction scored most points was that, as prolix as it was, it was dimly literate. Which is a lot more than can be said for the rest of what was a superbly amateur product. Images, Words Ltd insists that its SADC inserts have neither the backing nor approval of the South African authorities, which comes as something of a relief. The thing was deeply embarrassing. Presented as a grade six school project it would have scored badly.
Asked who had written or edited the insert, Caterina Alexon of Images, Words Ltd said “many different writers had contributed”. No direct blame could therefore be attributed to a headline proclaiming that visitors to the SADC would be adding more than one country to their “itineries”, or for the buoyant syntactical lulu of: “In some of our casinos we have attracted tourists who are already in the country, such as at Grand West where approximately 15% of our trade comes from customers outside the province.”
Hardly a hundred words go by without insertion of the obligatory A-word. “Following the end of apartheid, more Britons have taken a holiday in South Africa.” Referring to Sun City: “Critics were appalled by its brazen and flashy image at the height of the apartheid era.”
But nowhere does the Big A get more resonant coverage than in an entire article devoted to publicising Solomon and Abe Krok’s apartheid theme park at Gold Reef City. In this piece Images, Words Ltd lets it all hang out. “Joining the ranks [sic] of other recently-built museums around the world depicting some of the darkest moment in mankind’s history, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg is a stark memorial to South Africa’s most inhumane era” and “Visitors also get an immediate sense of the discriminatory nature of the Population Registration Act of 1950 and later they learn how viciously it was enforced”.
Caterina Alexon was most sincere on the phone but professionally vague as to who is actually lurking behind this pathetic exercise. According to her the entire thing was financed by its advertising, in which case SAA and Sun Inter-national and one or two others should stand up and take at least some of the blame. Not least a company dredging the so-called niche market of “Travel Health Tourism”, which flogs anything from dental implants to thoracic surgery for cash-envious Britons.
Perhaps all that Images, Words Ltd is developing is an often under-valued sales platform for tourism.
Can’t you see the slogans if this kind of marketing gets going? Visit Glorious South Africa To Get Your Racist Guilt Overhauled! Two Free Nights (Sharing) In A Genuine South African Home Affairs Deportation Gulag! Get Your Bothersome Drug-Addicted Son Strangled Under Strict Medical Supervision In One Of Our Leading Christian Rehab Centres! Guided Tours Around Apartheid’s Horrendous Death Sites While You Have Your Colonic Polyps Buffed At A Mere Fraction Of The Fee You’d Pay In Harley Street!
No one could seriously believe this sub-literate dross, such shoddy presentation is going to attract visitors, let alone investment? Even the paper on which the insert was printed was seventh grade.
Reading through this mucky little publication you find yourself hoping against hope that official South African tourism structures are really not involved. You also wonder why a newspaper of the undeniable repute of The Observer lets itself be associated with trash like this.
The SADC insert can be read in its vulgar entirety at www.images-words.com/southafrica
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