"But I Digress ..." (5 page)

Starship Election: Space 1999

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 6 JUNE 1999

T
HE DEVIL HAS
all the best tunes, M-Net has all the best sport, but the SABC – bless 'em – had the 1999 elections. I woke at 7.45 on Tuesday morning and turned on the telly, just in time to hear Vuyo Mbuli say: “The time is now 6.45.”

Vuyo, looking neat and shiny as a newly peeled egg, was the left prong of the Election '99 broadcasting trident; Nadia Levin, looking confidently bouffant, was the right: but the real star of the show was the IEC centre, lurking in the background with screens flickering and counters turning, like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. It has been a long time since an SABC production had such a lavish set, and Vuyo and Nadia weren't about to let the moment pass unnoticed.

“Here we are in the very hub of the elections,” said Vuyo, for the first of many times.

“Yes, Vuyo, this is indeed the very hub,” agreed Nadia.

“Everyone here has a chair,” marvelled Vuyo, as the camera panned over rows of empty seating.

It was true: even Graeme Hart, the weather guy, had his own chair. Unfortunately, he didn't have his own microphone. His voice was like the faraway grumble of an approaching drought. When they did manage to mike him up, his voice was sombre in its appreciation of the magnitude of his meteorological contribution to democracy. Bereft of visuals, he was forced to make the climate come alive with facial expressions.

Fortunately for Graeme and viewer alike, the weather was fine. He hunched unhappily in his chair, blazer ruffling about his neck. There is nothing more poignant than a weather guy without his synoptic chart.

Nor was Vuyo inclined to let the humiliation end there. “I've been watching Graeme for years,” he announced jovially, “and he always does it standing up. Maybe Nadia can discuss with him what it's like to do it sitting down.” If she had, I would have lodged an official complaint with the IEC. Wisely, the broken Hart made subsequent appearances squarely on two feet.

The SABC's was an ambitious operation, with outside units, roving reporters, even the odd bar graph. Yet more impressively, the presenters have picked up an international tip or two: they shrewdly adopted the CNN strategy of spending far more time telling us what in-depth coverage we're getting, than actually providing coverage itself.

Mind you, there wasn't much coverage to give. To the great satisfaction of everyone who isn't a journalist, the elections were as marrow-achingly boring as elections should be. Still, Vuyo soldiered forth undaunted.

“We've had some exciting moments already,” he enthused. “Just now we saw Bantu Holomisa cast his vote!” As a highlight, it was meagre pickings, but we watched it over and again throughout the next hour, in glorious slow motion. Oh, wait a minute, that's not slow motion, that's the normal speed at which people vote. I can think of very few people who could make the act of dropping a slip of paper into a cardboard box look interesting. Grethe Fox, maybe, and Walter Matthau. John Cleese, if he did that funny walk. Marthinus van Schalkwyk and Bantu Holomisa? No.

For variety, the studio kept optimistically crossing to Jessica Pitchford in a helicopter. “What does election day look like from the air?” Nadia asked from the very hub of the elections. Jessica chattered away, but she must have been borrowing Graeme Hart's microphone. We sat staring at the skyline of Pretoria, hearing only the mocking whirr of rotor blades. From that vantage point, election day looked much like any other. A cloud drifted by, but I was inclined to ignore it.

Eventually Jessica's voice crackled into life: “We're flying over the IEC, the very hub of the elections …” Down in the very nerve centre, Vuyo and Nadia had developed the unpleasant habit of crossing for regional updates.

That left those of us in Gauteng in the company of what appeared to be a pair of dressmaker's dummies in air-stewardess's uniforms. They were identified as Paula Slier and Noxolo Grootboom. Noxolo was the one whose lips had to be manually operated by the sound engineer; Paula was the one with the pop-eyed manner of a trout who'd been stunned by a blow from a grizzly bear. They eyed the camera in rubbery silence, as though afraid it might make an improper advance.

Embarrassingly, due to a technical glitch, the viewers could hear all the instructions the producer was murmuring into Paula and Noxolo's earpieces. Political analyst Sheila Meintjies stopped speaking. Paula goggled at her piscatorially.

“Thank you, Sheila,” crackled the producer's voice.

“Thank you, Sheila,” wobbled Paula.

“Now you, Noxolo.”

“Thank you, Sheila.”

Finally they could take it no more. “Let's cross to Jessica Pitchford, our eye in the sky.”

There followed the familiar sound of rotor blades, then: “Yes, hi, we're flying over the IEC, the very hub of the elections.”

Every so often, a music video was played. It was always a song called “The Rainbow Nation”, rendered by two Spur waiters in black pullovers. Their accompaniment was a reedy tune picked out on an E-Zee-Play Organola. Their names, if you can believe it, were Bobo and Kellam. “The world is awakening,” they crooned, as though masked intruders were tampering with their ingrown toenails, “to a global fee-ee-dom!” By all that's holy, who could like that song?

Back to the studio. “I really like that song,” said Nadia.

Oh, there were wondrous times in the very hub of the elections, but by the time Vuyo and Nadia moved over to make space for Alyce Chavunduka, the fun was draining away. Without Vuyo's shiny dome to light the way, it all became a little dreary. There was simply no news worth reporting. By Friday, the circus had left town. “Welcome again from the IEC,” said Vuyo, “a very hive of activity.” I could take a hint.

When a hub is no longer a hub, it's time to leave.

I am Wat Siam – TV in Thailand

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 9 JANUARY 2000

O
N THE NIGHT
before Christmas I hired a high-prowed wooden fishing boat and put out through the breakers, skimming fast across the surface of the Andaman Sea, as warm and dark as a glass of mulled red wine. The wake swirled and gleamed with faint phosphorescence, like the distant glimmer of the lights from a department-store Christmas tree that had slipped overboard and lay unravelled across the sea-bed. The moonlight danced on the sea like tinsel. After an hour I arrived at Buddha Island, a tiny, unlit dot off the west coast of Thailand. I made my gift of bottled water and loaves of rye bread and a small tub of Philadelphia cream cheese to the head monk. He spoke no English, and my Thai should be punished with a coconut-husk flail and sharpened length of bamboo, so the boatman translated as we stood under the rushing, swaying hurricane palms in the uncanny glow of a tropical full moon.

It is a tradition in these parts to bring gifts to the monastery, and to ask the head monk, who has a reputation for knowledge beyond ordinary ken, questions of the future. My principal curiosity concerned the cricket score, but while the Buddha was undoubtedly wise and good and even fun-loving, there was no suggestion He was a cricket fan.

“What can I expect from the new year?” I asked instead. The head monk looked at me narrowly, and pulled his saffron robes close about him. “Is it new year already?” he said. He was perhaps 60, but his muscles were taut and alive, like a school of fast-swimming ocean fish in a surgical glove. He was a persuasive advertisement for the clean life, or at least the life lived far from other people. He placed a hand on my upper arm and frowned. “Beware,” he said, “of lawsuits.”

It was an alarming thing to hear, so far from Jani Allan and the SABC, but southeast Asia is a place of surprises. It is also a good place for Yule-phobes such as myself to spend the season. The only sign of Christmas against which I stubbed my toe was a tinny album of carols playing in a department store in Kuala Lumpur.

The album was recorded by a Thai pub band specialising in Western music, which perhaps explained why it sounded as though a plantation of annoyed dwarfs were yelling “Sirent night! Hory night!” I bought my souvenir gift hamper of Malaysian rubber and fled. Behind me the dwarfs were building to a frenzy: “I'll pray my dlum for him, pa-lum-pa-pum-pum!”

It has been quite some journey to the east, but by the time you read this I shall be home. As I write, a water buffalo grazes in a rice paddy outside my window, and if I look to the left I can see a clipper in white sail following the current down to the Straits of Malacca and into the China Seas. I came in search of television, but I found the footprints of authors.

In the Bangkok Oriental hotel I took tea in the suite in which Somerset Maugham nearly died of malaria, and stood on the spot where Joseph Conrad slumped to the ground after too many rum toddies. In Singapore's Raffles I drank a gin sling on the porch where Noel Coward sat shuddering with dengue fever. I rode the same rails as Graham Greene up the Malaysian peninsula, and slept in the same compartment of the Orient Express that Wilbur Smith once infested. I tried to change compartments, but nothing doing.

Which is not to say that I entirely neglected my television duties. TV, unlike the portions served in local restaurants, is big in the Orient. On the River Kwai, barely 500m downstream from the infamous and strangely unimpressive bridge, a nearby settlement is visible only by the tangled thicket of television aerials rising above the bamboo and banana fronds. In the villages and farmsteads lining the railway through the Malaysian jungle, every small stilted shack housing rubber tappers and dirt-scrabble palm growers has a rickety aerial receiving all that local television has to offer.

In Thailand, that consists principally of the same overpitched game show that followed me about like a hungry mutt. Wherever there was television, there was that green and purple stage design, those seven Thais in animated conversation, that cheering, whistling audience. I spent many hours trying to puzzle it out, but I still haven't any idea how the game is played. All I could gather, by the succession of groans and crumpled facial expressions, was that no one had yet triumphed. Finally, after 10 days of such torture, the grand prize was won. I wasn't watching when it happened, I'm happy to say, but Dam, my driver, told me it had been a motorbike.

Dam was a font of invaluable information. When buying cobra's blood from a street vendor, he cautioned, always make sure it's fresh. “Watch the snake be kill,” said Dam earnestly, “with own eyes.” Apparently unscrupulous cobra-blood merchants will substitute the pre-packaged blood of the more common tree snake. Dam tutted at the depths of man's depravity.

Two days later I stood in a narrow Chinatown alley, carefully watching as my cobra was sliced open. The blood was decanted into a small plastic packet, such as you would use to wrap your child's sandwiches for school. I looked around eagerly, savouring the exoticness of the moment, but the vendors weren't watching me. They were peering through a half-open door at a flickering TV screen. I looked over their shoulders. A Barbara Cartland movie was showing.

Hugh Grant stood proud in Regency wig and ruffles. He appeared to be defending, or perhaps defiling, the honour of a simple country lass in blonde curls. He said something in Thai, and the snake vendors hissed approvingly. I sighed and sipped my blood. Everyone wants to be a critic.

White male TV columnists overthrow the world

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 6 FEBRUARY 2000

T
HERE ARE MANY
ways of insulting someone. One way that is surprisingly common is to give them a bunch of carnations on Valentine's Day. (Don't ask why, buddy, just don't do it.)

Another popular means of insult is to call someone nasty names. “Shane” is a nasty name, and so is “Gary”, and I'm not crazy about “Dwayne” either.

The important thing about insulting someone, if you want the insult to sting, is to ensure that it is accurate and to the point. “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things” has pleasing iambic pentameter, but it is not going to cause a roomful of
Simunye
presenters to burst into tears.

Similarly, when Steven Kenton the class bully took to calling Lance Denman “Four-Eyes” when we were all cruel youths, it caused more puzzlement than pain, since Lance Denman never wore glasses. Steven Kenton tried to explain that he was referring to Lance Denman's stammer, but once you have to explain an insult, you are lost.

“I-I-I-I don't know what you mean,” Lance Denman would simply say smugly, and Steven Kenton would be nonplussed, if nonplussed is the word I'm looking for.

An ill-directed insult causes more mirth than soul-searching. Just the other day, for instance, someone hissed, not without venom, that I belong to something called “the white male media conspiracy”.

Unless you're white, male and working in the media, it is hard to understand just how funny this is. Take a good look at the next white male media worker you bump into while returning your empties down at the bottle store – he can scarcely co-ordinate his own clothing, far less a sinister counter-revolutionary movement. We can't even put together a Sunday league cricket team, let alone conspire to overthrow the world with our white, male TV columns.

On the whole, conspiracies require a great deal more application, intelligence and energy than most human beings (white, male or otherwise) can bring to the job. If we have learnt anything from the past century, it should be that history unfolds not through planning and co-ordination, but through the unravelling of chance and circumstance, and the relentless dialectic of opportunity and opportunism.

The Nazis: A Warning from History
(SABC3, Sunday, 9pm) should be compulsory viewing for everyone who complains there is nothing decent on television, and everyone who likes to abnegate his own responsibilities by pointing an indignant finger outwards. The idea of ordinary people being helpless before the hidden face of implacable power is perversely comforting, but it is a myth.

The West has long been made uncomfortable by the very fact of Hitler and his Nazis. How could such a man, and such a machine, exist in a civilised world? The easiest answer is to accept, at least partially, Hitler's own publicity: the Nazis must have been supermen, or supermonsters, cold-blooded and calculating, working tirelessly to achieve their diabolical masterplan.

The truth, as
A Warning from History
so strikingly demonstrates, is less dramatic and far more frightening. With extraordinary research and dazzling footage, the show brought Hitler snuffling and harrumphing to life. He emerged not as the dynamic Führer of legend – sleepless, burning with the inner flame of an infernal mission – but a lazy, rather stupid opportunist, who slept late, liked a pint, and even during the height of the war was most enthusiastically exercised by the prospect of a good meal and a movie.

Hang about
, I realised with a lurch, watching footage of Hitler dozing on his couch while outside all the world was ablaze.
Take away the comical moustache, the jodhpurs and Nazi convictions, and that could be me
.

The machinery of Nazi government, which in retrospect looks such a model of fascist order and discipline, was revealed to be a bumbling and uncoordinated hive of jealousy and insecurity. Hitler was portrayed as a vague dreamer of bad dreams, an inspirational leader with scant grasp of the pragmatics or technicalities of dictatorship, who would speak aloud his visions for his squabbling acolytes and toadies to seize on random thoughts and half-ideas, and bring them to terrible fruition.

Worse, the documentary revealed the German people not as a brutalised, brainwashed people in the grip of jackbooted power, still less a community of Aryan devils with murder in their hearts, but as that sight so familiar to local eyes – a nation of ordinary people whose darker urges were encouraged by authority.

In a powerful piece of television, one Rezi Kraus, now a sweet-looking old lady of gentle habits and tender disposition, was confronted with a letter she had written to the Gestapo 50 years earlier, which had helped send a neighbour to the camps. She recognised her signature on the statement, but she could remember nothing of the letter itself.

She brooded awhile then burst out: “You know, I didn't kill anyone! I didn't even join the BDM, the girls' Hitler Youth!”

“Oh?” said the interviewer, expecting some burst of ideology, some impassioned self-defence.

“No,” said Rezi Kraus, “there was no way my father would let his daughters travel all the way into town after dark to go to the meetings.”

This is how the history of the world and of individuals lurches forward through a mixture of the political and the recognisably human, the horrific and the domestic. It is not the paranoiac world of conspirators and powerful cabals that we need fear in our dim apprehensions of power, but the libidinal world of power allowed to flow free, following the fault lines, seeking the low ground like water rushing toward the sea, our baser nature given space to flex and exercise and find its own path. In the history of the modern world, more harm has been done by weakness than by strength.