Scarcely half a decade has passed and research has separated various pesky viral degradations of local content at the broadcaster’s headquarters. Like HIV wrecking havoc on the STD scene, the SABC has seen moments of optimism and others of utter dispair. The pestilence is racking producer body count of the death tsunami proportion, with factionalism to blame together with shit-storms of financial mismanagement consequential of dis-organization now evident. Solutions evangelized by new boards have attempted to alleviate the tensions and offer a glimpse of optimism but to the worst of ends. How will there be room for commissions when the debt includes previous unfinished business? Will the industry practitioners have to wait for another cycle to end before they can receive briefs for new content?
First, ‘get rid of the Black Diamonds’ keeping the tower’s cash coffers under siege instead of brandishing promises of re-organization – I say. But is the SABC truly aiming at empowering the deluge of disgruntled film practitioners it holds at stake? I suspect the answer would be an adamant NO. With the new board ordained, the resultant sentiments border on a premise not unlike humanitarian aid quitting a war-zone when a dictatorship is being inaugurated. No sensible person seems to give 3 shits for the collective reconstruction of the ruins, and audiences are the least considered when bands of do-gooders commissions seem rather chewed up and spat out as black pulp family viewing productions. The corporation’s obsession with mediocrity has furnished our monitors with re-runs, cloned international couch-potato TV-Dinner shows – and that’s the buffet; the tales from the twin towers.
The predominant grub and bark menu of local shows has left murmurs of dissent amongst the perpetually bickering critics of the broadcaster – 40 day fasting protests, talk-shop forums and a thoroughfare of disenfranchised aspirants seem the sole discharge of piety gunned at the new board’s dream machine. But what do I think of twin towers looming in the midst of the radioactive skyline of Auckland Park? Indeed, various commentators have been mouth pieces for the promises uttered since the Mpofu/Zikalala cabal; but are they still blowing the corporation’s horn of digital migration and developmental mandate for its consumer base, now that the garbage in drawn from under the carpets? Will their sense of honor force yet another wave of cover-ups, doctored audits and payment backlogs?
‘They need Al-qaeda style dispensation that would give our shit-fed minds a holiday,’ I say. A total recall of operations and authority is of essence. The nation needs to boycott television for a week through non-viewership, and just flock cinemas and popcorn stands and binge on Western Cinema and slush puppies.
OK, maybe a single plane through Radio Park and a truck crammed with canisters of Ebola driven through the basement of Henley Studios would do the trick – to the extreme. Or, while black suited vigilante groups crowd Artillery Road, a media Hezbollah should have strapped grenades to SUV’s - the SABC Executives’ models of choice.
Forget the alternative channels which are likely to be following the same trend though in secret. Let them bling out the mainly student populace of the country – become cathode-ray tube universities advocating vicarious sensationalism and crude morale when talking anything ‘African’.
And what Koranic justification would suffice the proposed institutional destruction?
The maxims: ‘Don’t violate your neighbor’s nerves,’ or ‘Thou shalt not prostitute they children’ come to mind, though being not entirely certain that such commandments feature in the big book.
Or rather lets throw in the towel when protests are facing the hornet’s nest, billboards reading: ‘Do not disturb, transmission in progress,’ keep us mesmerized. And we all know you can’t disturb or JIKA MAJIKA when SA’s got Talent and billing Top Executives. Besides the corporation’s vengefulness has reached an infernal level, with production crews given pauper’s regard when puffing and huffing for pay cheques.
‘But’ you’d be saying, ‘the SABC is the wolf here.’
Then the question becomes: “Who is in the pig sty?’ The Executives who have learned methods of managing guilt, the producers or the license paying audiences?
