So it’s farewell to the Vuyo Mbuli Show on SAfm. I was about to start tearing the roof off my car at the sheer numbing mediocrity of Vuyo’s show when the integrity of my personal means of transport was saved by the news that Vuyo would shortly be off the air, and replaced by Xolani Gwala — who had been standing in for him with increasing regularity over the past few months.
It was always a relief to hear that Xolani would be the stand-in. No doubt his has been a long apprenticeship while the powers that be at the state broadcaster scratched their chins and other, less mentionable parts of their bodies and finally decided that Vuyo’s time was up.
Vuyo was an unlikely choice to take over the Tim Modise Show once Tim was successfully headhunted by Radio 702, and his thought-provoking morning show moved on from Auckland Park to Sandton, and a different listenership. It showed a sad lack of foresight on the part of SABC management that Tim’s intelligent, spiky exchanges with the South African public on the radio waves should be allowed to disappear from peak listening hour. It made even less sense that his ultimate replacement should have been Vuyo, who could be seen rushing from the Morning Live television studio, briefcase (full of sandwiches) in hand, and settling breathlessly into the SAfm radio studio in the basement.
Vuyo on air has the mildly engaging presence of a teddy bear. That is probably why he was chosen for the job in the first place. Nothing is ever at risk in his bland, smiling voice. His job seems to have been to let the country know that all was well, and that there was nothing to be alarmed about — even when there were alarm bells going off all over the place. Such seems to be the present state of affairs, from where we sit.
It’s not that I spend all my time listening to the radio, but it is a tempting companion on a car journey through Johannesburg in morning rush-hour traffic. But the thing is, as I said at the beginning, I was in danger of taking out my rising animosity to Vuyo’s oily delivery on the steering wheel and windscreen in front of me with my bare hands, and possibly adding to the already high levels of road rage and carnage on the city’s streets.
Of course, it is not Vuyo’s fault alone. His bosses in the newsroom and the general public are all complicit in what went on in his show.
For a long time I was beginning to think the problem was me. The way the exchanges on the Vuyo Mbuli Show proceeded made it seem that there was something very wrong with his health, and that, rather than feeling angered at the meandering hours that he was on the air, I should feel compassion for his ailing condition, whatever it might be.
A typical exchange would go like this:
Vuyo: ”Fred in Port Elizabeth, good morning.”
Fred: ”Good morning Vuyo, how are you?”
Vuyo: ”I’m fine, Fred, how are you?”
Fred would then proceed to voice his or her opinions about the state of the nation without Vuyo interrogating any of the sometimes outrageous assumptions Fred would be articulating. Vuyo would let the caller ramble on and close the conversation with a non-committal, ”Okay.”
The next caller would be Dimakatso from Orange Farm. The exchange would go like this:
Dimakatso: ”Morning Vuyo, how are you?”
Vuyo: ”Morning, Dimakatso.”
Dimakatso: ”I’m fine. And you?”
It did not matter that Vuyo had not enquired after the caller’s health. The caller took the trouble to let Vuyo know that she was fine. The real issue was whether Vuyo himself was fine, regardless of the fact that listeners calling in for the previous two hours had all established from the horse’s mouth, live on air, that the Vuyo in question was in perfect health. Caller after anxious caller had to satisfy themselves that the cuddly Mbuli was fit and well.
So you can see why, in the buzzing silence of my moving automobile, I felt that I was somehow out of the loop, and that there must, after all, be something terribly wrong with Vuyo. Why else would everyone, from Loskop Dam to Thabazimbi, deem it so important to ask how he was?
The matter was exacerbated by the fact that opinions aired on the show, even the most offensive, were met with Vuyo’s comforting, smiling, teddy bear refrain. ”Okay.” ”Okay.” almost became a hypnotic morning anthem, designed to put you to sleep. Vuyo would scarcely dare to engage the caller in any kind of repartee or challenge their point of view, as Tim would have done in the good old days, but left things at that: ”Okay.”
So I say ”okay” to the fact that we now have a new, springy, wide-awake morning host with a solid, punchy voice and alert opinions to make the morning traffic sit up and listen, and give the proto-fascists and black liberals out in the hinterland a run for their money. This is what radio should be about. It should have been about that long ago. But, no doubt, Snuki Zikalala, the ZCC and the Rhema Church had other ideas, which have prevailed up till now.
Farewell, Vuyo. I hope you continue to find happiness, whatever it is that you will be doing next.