I have received the most elegant letter, written in his private capacity by Dr Vincent Maphai, chairperson of the SABC board of governors. It seems a great pity that journalistic ethics — such faint remnants of which still reside in me — forbid me from quoting the letter in full as its use of English is quite splendid. Dr Maphai has a fine turn of phrase, a restrained but declarative style of expression. More should share it.
That Dr Maphai didn’t like what I had to say in a recent column in which I likened the SABC to a whore, was plain to see. I am sure he will forgive me my impudence in paraphrasing what he had to say about this. His basic argument was that there is long-standing and unworthy tradition by which neo-colonialists use sexual imagery to explain the behaviour of ‘unruly natives”.
He is probably quite right but what really struck me was the sheer generosity Dr Maphai displayed with that argument. Let me explain: when I said that the SABC was a whore, I also said that the corporation was first coerced into its life of political leg-spreading shortly after the 1948 election, which saw the National Party come into power. It was the Nats who, within a matter of a year or two, carefully turned the corporation into the servile political trollop it has been ever since. The SABC lay down meekly for the Nats for about 40 years. The African National Congress has been its pimp for something around nine.
Given the above, some interesting light falls on to Dr Maphai’s position, which is that it would seem he includes Afrikaners under the general term ‘natives”. How the typical Afrikaner would react to such a categorisation is not for me, as a white man, to predict. I imagine that for as many who might resent the description, there would be those Afrikaners well pleased with Dr Maphai’s apparent acceptance that Afrikaners are in fact of established African stock. I suppose that having been on the continent for more than 350 years, many Afrikaners would have got the impression the place is theirs as much as anyone else’s. Whatever the case, the sheer magnanimity of Dr Maphai’s position is very welcome in these times of sometimes harsh racial claims.
As to the SABC, I still hold my own position. As the previous group of NP SABC administrators sadly handed over the handcuffs, spike-heels, whips and crotchless underwear, they must have wondered whether the corporations’s new masters would give the grimy old slag a good bath and shove her on to a few new street corners. No such luck. She’s remained just as slovenly as before — if somewhat less professional.
To another subject. Much congratulation is due to M-Net’s Supersport channel for the fact that it has all but cornered the market for television coverage of international sport. The SABC has been left somewhere on the sidelines, permitted only occasional brief glimpses into Wimbledon, Tri-Nations rugby, international cricket (including the South African matches), golf and all the rest of a truly vast array. All that’s missing is fulsome coverage (one of the Supersport spare channels would be ideal) of the British snooker. Surely this wouldn’t be too expensive, and being as fascinating as snooker is as a sport ideally suited to television, a dedicated viewership would no doubt build in the same way it has in the United Kingdom. Snooker’s poor cousin, pool, is covered extensively on Supersport.
What is always amusing in watching sport is the hypocrisy of the commentators. When a competitor is winning or is an established favourite of the commentators, they refer to him by his first name, otherwise he’s strictly a surname. Thus Schumacher has become Michael to those commentators who want to give the impression they are part of family — to include the embarrassing local yokels sitting in a studio in Randburg believing that if they call him ‘Schumie” everyone will think they’re pit-lane familiars. Most of the rest of the field are Räikkönen or Coulthard or Montoya. Els becomes Ernie whenever he’s near the top of the leader board. Williams becomes Serena, but only when she’s winning.
The truly great curse of current sports commentary is the introduction of former player stars, very few of whom cut the cake. John McEnroe was wonderful on the court. As a commentator he’s a know-all drag and, like his grotesque Australian contemporaries, seems to think that everyone wants to listen in to what are little more than personal conversations with himself. It’s like sitting in a grandstand between two ‘experts” discussing the game across your lap.
Tennis is particularly prone to commentator ruination. In fact, the game doesn’t require any commentary at all. The umpire’s calls, the atmosphere and the clarity of modern television do it all.
M-Net and Supersport have the technical ability to offer alternative coverage of sports events ‘commentator free”. They offer alternatives for language when necessary.
They’d be surprised at how many of their viewers would welcome such a move.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby