A Famous Grouse: March 5

Yesterday's Weekend Argus column -- as submitted. -- AD


BACK in the dark days of apartheid, a young woman wrote a weekly column for an Afrikaans newspaper, a column that dwelt on everyday matters that may or may not have been important to people like herself.

On one particular occasion as she prepared to share her thoughts with the world, she found that something was bothering her. It was the light. Directly above her desk, deep in that monolith on the Foreshore, a neon tube buzzed and flickered. It was irritating -- but it also gave her inspiration.

“Except for blind people,” she wrote, “light is very important.”

Her readers were used to such insights. Once, and perhaps more memorably, she had boldly declared that she did not walk in her father’s shadow -- but rather his light.

The comment attracted a great deal of scorn, for the columnist was Rozanne Botha, daughter of PW Botha, the country’s president and a man who was then declaring to his government’s critics, “We have a laager with open doors,” and, more darkly, “I try to be a man of peace, but if people tempt me I can become a Thunderbird.” Clearly the aphorisms were something of a family trait.

Rozanne Botha’s columns were duly collected and published in a book. Shortly afterwards, I was fortunate enough to be a guest at a dinner party where the novelist Andre Brink tore into the collection with some gusto. It was hilarious -- but at the same time a bit unsettling. True, everything about the book was dreadful, and deserved a critical hammering, but watching someone of Brink’s stature doing so was rather like seeing the architect Frank Lloyd Wright kick over children’s sandcastles.

All of which was perhaps nothing compared to the pasting that Kuli Roberts has taken over the column she penned for Sunday World last weekend, and there are several aspects to this controversy which have troubled me.

Firstly, the contents of the column -- the crass and derogatory generalisations about coloured people. Here it has been suggested, by Roberts herself, among others, that this was a failed attempt at satire. One commentator, the Mail & Guardian’s Chris Roper, even claimed that “with a bit of editing it would have been funny”, but frankly, it probably needed something altogether more radical than that. Her editors should have simply spiked it.

But, alleged humour aside, Roberts’ comments about “naai masjiene”, the “closest thing” to being white women with their “long silky hair”, also suggest a racial and sexual self-loathing that is unnerving. She appears to be a deeply insecure person, perhaps in need of professional help. Maybe Ronald Suresh Roberts, the towering intellectual and our very own adopted Frantz Fanon, could have a few words with her.

Perhaps the most distasteful aspect of the controversy has been the hysteria with which the chattering classes have laid into Kuli Roberts.

Those who have clamoured for her head on a spike include presumably hardened journalists and politicians -- the most cynical people in the world. One newspaper editor even claimed that she nearly fainted when she read the column she was that disgusted. Oh dear, but not too weak to crank out the self-righteous moral outrage.

But you’d expect newspaper editors to know better. And, of course, they do. They’re aware, for example, that the real issue here is not the misguided air-headed ravings of a brattish socialite who cannot write and only got the job because she looks good on television and runs with a bunch of chaps who like to wear their baseball caps sideways, but the severe lack of skills and resources in our newsrooms. It’s the elephant in the room here.

Frankly, journalism is in a mess, and this sorry saga is just another indictment of the juniorisation of our newspapers.

What the press needs, of course, are writers of the stature of Trevor Manuel, the minister in the Presidency. Manuel’s piece on his government’s spokesman, Jimmy Manyi -- apparently a proper racist and not some dilettante like Roberts -- should be required reading wherever journalism is taught.

As a column, it was topical, pulled no punches in the withering scorn department, was appropriately witty, cynical and dismissive elsewhere and, more importantly, stressed that the “highest echelons of government” had been infiltrated by Manyi’s racism.

Typically, there were those who had problems with it. The ANC Youth League, for example. But so what? You could tell them bananas are yellow, and they’d argue they’re pink. Nothing new there.

However, some newspapers have accused Manuel and the Democratic Alliance, who are making much of Manyi’s utterances about Indians and coloureds, of political opportunism, particularly with regard to the forthcoming municipal elections.

Imagine that -- politicians behaving like politicians. Whatever next?

A Famous Grouse: January 29

Latest Saturday Weekend Argus column. Unedited, as usual. For those who don't get the paper. -- AD 

SOME years ago, before I settled in the fishing village, I was invited to address journalism students at the University of the Witwatersrand and share with them my thoughts and opinions about the trade. I readily accepted. A captive audience? Who wouldn’t?

However, come the lecture, it was soon apparent that most of my bright-eyed audience all imagined that, within a year or two, they would find themselves beamed into the nation’s sitting rooms on a regular basis and with a flash of perfect teeth they’d kick off the evening news with the inside skinny on some event of vast significance.

Obviously I had to divest them of this silly notion. “Television,” I said gravely, “can do furniture. But it can’t do journalism.”

It was an old joke, but they didn’t seem to know it. So I told them the one about television being a medium because it was not well done or rare. They didn’t seem to know that one either and I left Wits deeply concerned that these youngsters would never come to know, as I have, the beauty and romance of ink and fishwrap.

For them it would all be about tweeting and running around with wires in their ears. Would they ever be able to use a notebook and pen, I wondered.

For some unknown reason I have never been invited back to the university, but I rather hope that those students, wherever they are today, could perhaps reflect on my words, particularly in light of recent events concerning the national broadcaster and the way it reports the news.

Last week, SABC board shortlist nominee Govin Reddy told the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications that SABC journalists were pathetic, untrained and lacked what has been described as “the cutting edge”.

Understandably, Reddy’s comments have ruffled feathers at Auckland Park, and I believe there is much gnashing of teeth in the newsrooms there.

Some have defended the corporation’s lack of edge, arguing that it was unfair to compare the SABC to the BBC, as Reddy did, as the latter had so much more in the way of resources. In other words, as I read it, it’s not that the SABC is worse than the BBC, but rather the BBC is better than the SABC. Or something like that.

But there is no reason why SABC reporters can’t up their game and get edgy like the print media.

Their former managing director of news and current affairs, Snuki Zikalala, certainly showed them how when he checked in to the Harare Sheraton to oversee the SABC’s coverage of the 2005 presidential elections in Zimbabwe.

It was here, in his suite, that he was able to inform his reporters that there was no food shortages in the country because he “had no problem ordering fresh bread rolls, bottled water and whisky through room service” and that those who begged to differ could well find themselves before a disciplinary hearing.

There are those who point out that Zikalala has a PhD in journalism from Sofia University, Bulgaria, and therefore he is an expert and knows what he is doing. There are also those who point out that, etymologically, the term “of Bulgaria” provided the word that perhaps best describes what, in fact, Zikalala was doing to journalism at the SABC.

But then again, you don’t need a doctorate to know that, when they’re out in the field chasing down a story, print journalists always first get drunk in their hotel rooms. True, they perhaps cannot afford to order whisky through room service but that doesn’t mean they haven’t got a bottle or two in their luggage.

In fact, back in the day when I was a young reporter with one of Cape Town’s leading English morning newspapers, we didn’t even have to be in the field to get wasted. There was a well-stocked bar and a cigarette machine next to the sports department, and several sub-editors supplemented their income by selling drugs to the junior staff.

Of course, things have all changed now. Gone, for example, are the days that an ambitious journalist would greatly increase her chances of a salary increase by sleeping with the editor. Newspapers don’t have that kind of budget these days, which is all rather sad for editors. Pathetically, journalists now needing a bit of a leg-up with their careers are reduced to having sex with politicians.

SABC hacks needing that valued cutting edge are advised to get a vigorous drug habit. Something in the horse tranquilizer vein. There’s nothing that earns the respect of your colleagues so much as pawning your cameraman’s equipment to pay the dealer.

And, for a while anyway, viewers will find your work very interesting.