Some years ago — 1969 I think — in a revue called Finger Trouble, I had a sketch entitled The Ten Commandments of the SABC. I introduced the sketch by explaining how Dr Piet Meyer, then chairman of the SABC board, would go into the wilderness once a year.
Weighed down by the crippling moral burden of being chief enforcer of apartheid’s most exuberant mouthpiece, Piet Meyer would stagger up Monumentkoppie and commune with the spirit of Robey Leibbrandt, who would appear before him, speaking out of a swastika-shaped cloud. Robie Leibbrandt would reveal unto Piet Meyer the Ten Commandments of the SABC, which Piet Meyer would write down carefully on the side of a koeksister. These commandments would be submitted to the SABC board, who would take them for approval and expansion by the über-Broederbond. The commandments were then passed down to all those with access to SABC microphones.
This revue sketch didn’t go down at all well with the SABC. I remember my feeling of surprise one Sunday morning when – coming out the foyer of the Edward Hotel in Durban (where the show was playing in dinner theatre) and heading off to take my terrific Aunt Winnie for a flip in a gleaming Cherokee Arrow — I was stopped in my happy tracks by the sight of a Sunday Times poster announcing in large red letters: SABC SLAMS KIRBY.
Using its most indignant language, the SABC referred to the commandments sketch as “scandalously blasphemous”. The SABC didn’t speak of any retribution but, for the next 15 or so years, every attempt to get publicity for one of my shows on the radio proved fruitless. There was always some excuse. I’d do interviews, but somehow they never got broadcast, calls weren’t answered. With one silly sketch I had been elevated to a list of the SABC’s non-persons. I felt quite chuffed.
But enough of such cheerful thoughts. Recent events in and around the SABC have suggested that with political transformation in South Africa has come an analogous transformation of the corporation. Some ungenerous souls say this isn’t surprising as the SABC is eternally malleable, an accommodating prostitute who’ll get up to whatever kinky tricks her paymaster clients desire. I disagree. The SABC is not some noisome trollop hawking her pearlie up and down Empire Road. The SABC answers to no carnal petitions. Her congress is with loftier masters.
This is how it goes these days. Every now and then, whoever happens to be Chairman of the SABC Board, gets the urge to emulate the compelling First Testament traditions of Piet Meyer. The Chairman gets himself delivered by helicopter into the wilderness. During a few hours of hardship and revelation, the chairman communes with the spirit of Essop the Indescribable who speaks to him out of a burning ambition. The chairman of the SABC board carefully takes down on his Blackberry what Essop the Indescribable commands, then SMSs the text to Thami Mazwai for approval. These are the Ten Commandments of the SABC de nos jours. (What amused me was that, in updating the sketch, how little I had to change its 1969 version. It could have been written yesterday.)
And we did get to take a wonderful flight, along the ramparts of the Drakensberg above Sani Pass, on a champagne morning. Aunt Winnie loved it.
The Ten Commandments
1. We are the voice of the ANC and which is the same ANC that brought you forth from out of the land of bondage. Thou shalt not fairly honour the opinions, images or icons of any others than ourselves, your liberators and democratic pedagogues.
2. Thou shalt not fail to make craven images unto all that inhabit the House of the ANC which are the Lord thy Masterpersons. We are jealous Masterpersons and will visit sore iniquity upon any that despise or dare to question our wisdoms even unto the third or fourth generations of hallowed advisory committees or numberless commissions of enquiry.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of our beloved leader, Thabo the Immaculate, in vain. Neither shalt thou broadcast coverage of Cosatu/SACP congresses where the name of our beloved leader, Thabo the Immaculate, is frequently taken in vain.
4. For six days shall the collected wisdoms, utterances, cavernous promises, poetic misquotations, contemplations and uplifting speeches of Thabo the Immaculate constitute a minimum of 30% of all thy radio or television news bulletins and shall be broadcast. On the seventh day they shall be re-broadcast.
5. Thou shalt honour thy Snuki Zikalala above all others, denying with all the force and cunning thou control any criticism or grievance against his perfections.
6. Thou shalt not fail in consigning to silence all those whose views offend or conflict in any way with those of the Lord Thy Masterpersons.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery other than by screwing within thine own privacies.
8. Thou shalt not steal thy grammar from e.tv.
9. Thou shalt not bear false testimony, especially to Business Day.
10. Thou shalt not let be revealed to the public any testimony which conflicts with or questions the purity, principle or probity which are the ANC, thy Lord and Masterpersons.