Media faces spotlight

Media - society’s conscience
Media generally sees itself as a watchdog in society, whether exposing uncouth celebrities or corrupt government officials or unethical white collar criminals, media always sees itself as the custodian of right and wrong. In any normal society poets and other artists are generally seen as the conscience of that society through the truth and honesty with which they portray that particular society. Writers as well, who are sometimes poets after hours.

Who edits what
As a mini-media practitioner myself, I was saddened to learn something of an injustice happening within the media industry. The Sunday Times, Mzansi’s largest weekly, employs an editor to run the paper. His name is Mondli Makhanya and he used to be the editor of Mail & Guardian just before he took over at Sunday Times from Mathatha Tsedu, who has been doing an awesome job at City Press since taking over from Vusi Mona. Keep up now: Makhanya is at Sunday Times, Tsedu at City Press (now promoted to Editor-in-Chief) and Mona is no longer in mainstream media. All these men, are, well, men, and yes black. Back to that later.

Mzansi’s biggest newspapers
Now, in the corporate environment, logic says the biggest pays the best, which means Makhanya should theoretically be the highest paid editor in the land, right next to the guy that edits Daily Sun. Don’t forget now, Daily Sun sells around 500 000 copies DAILY, the same as what Sunday Times sells WEEKLY. That means over 10 million Daily Sun papers go through the masses every month, while about 2 million Sunday Times copies are read each month. These are VERY big numbers. Very very big.

Who earns what?
Makhanya then, gets the fattest cheque right? Nope. That goes to Peter Bruce. Peter who? Bruce. He edits Business Day. BD has a daily circulation of around 42 000, amounting to 840 000 monthly. What’s wrong with this picture? Clearly Makhanya should be asking “wait a minute, where’s my loot?”. Especially since Business Day and Sunday Times are owned by the same publishing company Johnncom. Do you smell a rat? I do. A guy like me who runs a tiny little blog in a blade of grass at FNB Stadium, that goes out to 760 people (up from 500 three weeks ago by the way), doesn’t expect to get paid R60 000 a month. But hell, if I were editing the Sunday Times I’d really ask some BIG questions like “hey, how come that guy next door whose paper is only 42% odd the size of mine, gets a bigger cheque than mine?” Does that make cents to you? Imagine President Mbeki demanding a yearly salary the size of Angela Merkel’s, Germany’s Chancellor (R2.5 million) or Shinzo Abe’s of Japan (R2.6 million). Doesn’t make sense.

Where the ladies at?
Did you notice though, that all the names I mentioned are men? Which woman edits a major newspaper eMzansi? Just two. Phylicia Oppelt of Daily Dispatch in East London and Ferial Haffajee, editor of the Mail & Guardian. Women run newsrooms all over the country, and of course they make excellent journalists. But often when it comes to promotions to the big league, their bosses, the publishers, look over their shoulders and often headhunt from outside, or worse, appoint juniors to those positions. Now can you imagine what these two said ladies are getting paid? It must surely be pathetic. Reminds me of that old joke that went: “God looked at my work and smiled. Then he looked at my pay slip and wept”.

The usual BEE rant
While it may be true that Mzansi’s major newspapers are headed by black men (Sunday Tribune, Sunday World, Sunday Sun, Sowetan, Sunday Times, City Press, Isolezwe, The Star), ownership is still either in white or foreign or both hands. None of the above-mentioned newspapers are majority-owned by black people. I excluded the Daily Sun because its editor is really its visionary owner/publisher, and not the black face he put “in charge”. So, what are YOU doing to help advance yourself and fellow women in the media field, if you are in the media? Are you falling for the stereotypical scenario of women always bringing each other down, or are you helping other sistas move up in the world? Catch a wake up man! I’ve painted you a picture here, take a close look at it!

Criminals, kaizers and catfights

Hail Kaizer the new chief?
Like a syringe needle through the bum of a baby, Kaizer Motaung the young has been piercing through defenseless defenses in the PSL since he finally got the nod to get off the bench last season. After a few seasons of planting his bumprints on reserve benches, coach Ernst Middendorp saw the value this young man could bring to the Chiefs team and started him often. His faith is now being paid back. Tenfold. Carlos Alberto Parreira is still not convinced as evidenced by the boy’s exclusion from the Bafana lineup that drew against Swaziland and won against Chad a few months ago. Not a problem. Eventually he will be a disciple as well, I do believe this. Meanwhile, jnr faces a bigger challenge in the form of old daddy. Why now? Well, international scouts are a sleepless bunch who scour every field possible looking for new talent to exploit. Kaizer will soon be getting calls asking for his son’s foot in trial. Will the grand master allow his prodigy son to be lost to SA football so soon after finding his own foot? Could he really stand in his way, or will he practise what Chiefs always preaches, that the team never stands in the way of a player who wants to leave? And who will play agent in that transaction? Does jnr even have a manager, or do daddy and big brother Bobby represent him in such matters? Another matter that could complicate things further is the return of Muhsin Ertugral, who is one of the coaches that kept the young star on the bench for so long. I have an inkling that one of the deal-breakers to him returning to Chiefs was a clause that stipulated that he has to play junior in the starting eleven, or at least give him a fair and serious look. No way is senior going to let his young one’s value depreciate over a season after the season he’s just had. No way.

Catfight off the ramps
So one the organisers of Cape Town Fashion Week were not too happy with Mrs Precious Motsepe’s company creating its own fashion week in partnership with Audi? I ask because she is stunning and interesting on the next cover of TRIBUTE magazine. Anywho, said organisers quickly told the philanthropic Motsepe, a trained medical practitioner, to stick to healing people’s bodies and not try to dress them up as well. Fashion designers are obviously chaffed with this development since it gives their work more exposure to the market. Sour grapes? Jealousy? Or is it just normal catfights on the catwalk?




Smooth criminal
Vaseline Blue Seal’s massive free public relations, thanks to one notorious Mr Ananias Mathe (remember him of slip persuasion), turned out to be phantom. The slippery substance, made from petroleum, on which we all grew up, was not enough to slip Mathe through C-MAX bars on his way to freedom. The answer then, as obvious as it was at the start of Minister Balfour’s enquiry, was that Err Mathe simply forfeited some of the cash he earned by robbing and killing, to some greedy prison officials in exchange for a few months’ freedom. By the way, I do apologise if his picture offends you!

Gero loses her voice
I laughed the other day listening to an ad from the Department of Public Service and Administration. The gist of the radio ad was that the minister, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, was thankful that the strike we experienced a few weeks ago is over. She thanks all of those who helped out during the strike etc. Funny thing is, it is not actually the minister speaking on the voice over. How can the minister send a message of such importance, paying hundreds of thousands of rands to several radio stations, and not speak personally on it? Eish eish eish.




Heineken comes to party
I guess it helps to know people who know people sometimes. Following my non-party with Heineken at the Durban July, the Dutch brewer decided to flood my house with Heineken. At first I was afraid, I was petrified…ok. In the end it turns out they quite know what they are doing, those Heinie people in Holland. The stuff is very good to the tongue and it goes down quite well after a long day at the office. So now I’ve started dabbling in beer, more specifically Heineken.

Some BEE talk
The following terms have been approved and become popular in places heavily populated by black people:
- BEE phone = Nokia 9000 and N series cell phones (because BEE types are always seen to be clicking and chatting away on these at trendy spots)
- Tender car = Range Rover Sport (once you get a multi million-rand government tender it is said you immediately purchase one of these)

Five things I hate about dinner parties
- Small talk
- Smiling at people we don’t like
- Limited menu options
- B or C-class and has-been hired entertainers
- Self appointed ‘aunties’ who ask you to line up for them at the buffet table.

Mzansi! Oh we love you!

If you are old enough you’ll remember the “mielies” lady on television, with her bag of mielies balanced on her head, shouting all over the show for attention. Of course for those who grew up in the township or are still living there, she was no extraordinary sight; mielie and grass-broom ladies in the township are as common as hip young people who expose their underwear under baggy and saggy pants. Those ladies are in fact, a pointer to a country obsessed with enterprise. We sell any and everything, to any and everyone. People sell African soil to homesick expats living in the US and UK. We sell grass (as per proper dictionary definition people!) to each other, broken cars to our in-laws, and chicken kebabs outside of clubs at night.

In South Africa anyone can be an entrepreneur, anyone can literally stand at a corner and sell something, be it a newspaper, a sandal, fruit or the nation’s favourite, hangers. The one thing I’ve always wondered about as far as hanger merchants are concerned, apart from the question of who their wholesale supplier is, is how do they pick their preferred spots of trade? I mean, you’ll be approaching an intersection and see one with two packs of hangers on either arm. Plastic hangers, steel wire hangers, blue coloured, white, yellow, red, all sorts. Now I understand about keeping your clothes shapely after ironing, but hangers? Is this all we are able to source and sell? Next thing there’s another guy with exactly the same merchandise right next to the first guy. And another one, and another. A whole street full of hanger traders with only one thing on their minds; selling you as many hangers as they possibly can. Mind you, hangers are not exactly perishable. You buy a set and 23 years later chances are you’ll still be using the exact same ones. It could be that you are part of a cult that collects hangers. Or perhaps you buy and also sell hangers at a profit in your spare time when you leave the suburbian office park where you ply your trade from 9 to 5.

I have seen similar from fruit vendors who line up the same type of fruit along a stretch of road without any sort of differentiation whatsoever. Mangoes? “I’ve got a pile over here, so does the guy sitting next to me. And the guy sitting next to him. We bought our fruit boxes from the same market, and apart from the fact that he is slightly shorter than me, we are basically trying to sell you the same thing at the same price. I guess if you like the look of my pants better than his t-shirt you’ll buy my mangoes instead of his.” It’s like petrol stations, except there, the difference lies in the quickness and accuracy of service. Like I said before, if you can find a friendly corner where no one will “compete” against you, you have a shop. In some upmarket streets of Johannesburg for example, traders sell mirrors. Not small, make-up in my handbag type mirrors but full-sized, fit-in-the-lounge framed mirrors. Mirrors are not cheap mind you. So you drive down the road and suddenly feel this sensation as if the whole of NASA is looking at you. Brightness like you'd only see inside Einstein's brain. Mirrors all around. How do you know which one to choose? In fact, what will make me leave a shop at a mall that specialises in selling mirrors, to go and buy one on the street where it may have been sitting for two days in the sun and rain (some traders don’t take them home with, they just chain them up for the next day)? And spend what, upwards of R950? I don’t know. Do the guys accept IOUs, cheques, credit cards or debit cards? Can I apply for credit and pay it off monthly?

In most metro cities in Mzansi you can pretty much buy anything on the street. The usual include food, clothes, small pieces of furniture, black rubbish bags, cell phone accessories, DVDs, newspapers and so on. Salons have cropped up under makeshift tents on pavements in city centres where ladies get their braids done or have their fingernails cut and polished. Sure some of the stuff is not exactly legit, but any streetwise consumer should be able to tell a genuine Rolex from a “made in a chop shop” Bolex. I see a day when you can even buy a house on the street! I suppose you can already do that if you have a laptop and a wireless connection, and you are having coffee outside a restaurant. That's Mzansi for you.

Where were you eDurban July?

Unlike half of Jozi, I came down to warm Durban this past weekend like a tonne of feathers; quietly, quickly and without much fanfare. Our lovely hosts Heineken organised a nice automatic Mercedes-Benz C-Class for us to drive while down at the races for the weekend, which was very nice of them. However, I have not tasted a Heineken. More on this later.

Durban people aren’t used to temperatures in teens so as soon as the air drops to under 20, Durbanites run for the nearest Eskimo import shop to stock up. Goodness gracious me, I had left a Jozi reeling at 12 degrees on Friday evening!

Most people (read “famous”) showed up in creative outfits as expected. Businesspeople, famous people, politicians who are both, plebs trying to spot a celeb or three, overalled workers making sure everyone got their horse on the track on time, traffic staff etc. Of course yours truly got a chance to rub shoulders with some of these prominent folks, most notably my old friend Ms Unathi Nkayi, her partner Thomas Msengana both of Metro FM, and Lupi the hot-shot producer of Thomas’ breakfast show. Gang of Instrumentals, DJ Tira, Dineo from Yfm… Wait. I’m falling for it now. Let me talk about the horses.

The winner was Hunting Tower, a 4-year old gelding (I understand “gelding” means a castrated horse, which basically means no one thought he’d have the balls to win) owned by Bridgette Oppenheimer of THE Oppenheimers. It made me wonder when black people especially, will ever get to a stage where they aren’t just feeding and walking the animals but they own them to race as well. Always the usual suspects. It reminds me of something asked by someone while we were walking around Greyville – that is the name of the race track folks – which went something like this: “I wonder where xxx xxxxx is. He doesn’t come to these things anymore, maybe he wasn’t invited.” To which I replied “see that’s what happens when you’re a celeb. The minute someone decides you’re not so hot anymore you’re off their lists. No more cool freebies, no more VIPs, no more.” Ayi, how cruel this world is! But can xxx xxxxx not form a consortium, buy a horse and race it instead of waiting for a free VIP invite to attend the Durban July? I mean, who spent and who made money off this race? The usual suspects of course.

So anyway, Hunting Tower draped in the number 5, under veteran jockey Anthony Marcus, took it by a head. Hunting Tower really came out of nowhere and was only prominent from the last 150m or so. He was on 8:1 odds, which if I’m not mistaken, means if you put in R5 on him you would have walked away with R40.

Back at the Heineken marquee Dineo from Yfm hit the dance floor hard, almost literally too as she moved to the live sounds that were provided for the guests. Some people thought she’d had a bit too much Heinie. Who cares, it was a party and it was the Vodacom Durban July man! I still have not drunk Heineken. I reckon there was a fair amount of overbooking there by Heineken, either that or a good number of gatecrashers, ‘cause when we got there and asked for the complimentary drinks vouchers as suggested, there were none to be found. “Sorry sir, we’ve run out” said the two angels at the gate. Strange enough the latecomers who sauntered in after us got their drinks on without a problem. See, it’s really WHO you know man, not WHAT you know! Normally the invited guests are counted and matched to their vouchers so that such things don’t happen. Otherwise the voucher tags are included with your air ticket pack before you leave the Jozi and so on. We had a lovely supper at the marquee, lots of different curries – Durban duh – and left ever so swiftly, thirstier than ever. Still no Heineken for me.

Overall a great occasion won by the best horse of the day. Vodacom has done very well after taking over from Rothmans as the sponsor of the Durban July races. It also makes it even more difficult to choose between the Vodacom July in Durban and the J&B Met in Cape Town. At least there I had the privilege of having some J&B at the J&B marquee. Mmhh…

What is the colour of money?

If you know anything about aeroplanes you’ll know how big they sometimes can be. The biggest of the lot so far has been the 747 “Jumbo Jet” designed and built by Boeing in Washington, USA. Now there’s a new giant kid on the block that can carry in excess of 500 passengers if configured a certain way. It is called the A380, it costs R1.7 billion each and is made by Boeing’s main rival in the world of plane-making, Airbus. Airbus is based in France, Europe. Now what is 500 people? That is the same number as the people who regularly receive mzansindaba. It’s 8 full busses, or 36 minibus taxis (carrying 14 passengers now, NOT 24!) or a sizeable stage theatre. It is so big they have to manufacture its parts in over 5 different countries around the world!

So the other day I was told about a private buyer who has bought this thing for his own use. No one could say who it was of course, but from what I understand, it’s a Middle-East based gentleman who no doubt will chop off a few parts, put in some beds, bars, Jacuzzis, plasma TVs and all sorts of other bling material so his 12 hour trips across the oceans don’t seem that long anymore. The A380 can do speeds of up to 1077km/h, meaning flying from Jozi to Cape Town, normally a two-hour exodus, would take roughly an hour.

Why am I even talking about this? Well our BEE boys and girls are beginning to live in excess as well, whether they are buying property or “investing” in expensive automobile machinery. We’ve all seen Mr Motsepe’s BMWs, all registered as DOWNS # GP, with the # standing for a number. I’ve seen up to DOWNS 8 GP! He is also said to have a private jet, which I can entirely believe. Private jets are cheap, coming in at around R100 million each. Mr Cyril Ramaphosa has farms that produce the oddest goods like wine, so does Mr Tokyo Sexwale. Ramaphosa is known also as a very private person who is quite shy of showing off his vast wealth (remember that whole Maybach incident 3 years ago?). I know a black guy who owns, among other cool stuff, a helicopter. Black folk with millions to spend on whatever nice things they want. I did some research in 2004 to find out how many of these folks were in South Africa and discovered that in total, there were 25 000 dollar millionaires in this country in 2003. By 2006 that figure had risen to about 38 000, with about 25% of those being black. That’s about 9 500 people worth R7 million or more. Pre-1990 that figure probably stood at 5!

Again, my point is? The point is; people who make money are the same all over the world. They make it in order to spend it, and if it happens that they give it away, they will not give ALL of it away, in fact they probably spend less than 10% on charitable donations. Of course if you are Bill and Melinda Gates then you can afford to spend over R7 billion on charity. It’s not a lot really. At the Jozi edition of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, President Mbeki said: "A global human society based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable" As a BEE cat or kitten, how are you spreading your wealth? Are you at all or do you feel you still need more? Do you have to spread it? Given the history of the country and the fact that 85% of the economy is in the hands of 5% of people, is it such a bad thing for people to make millions, even billions of rands? Should they feel guilty about it?

Black people have never had millions before, let alone billions sitting with individuals. Therefore when they start making such kinds of money and begin to feel guilty about it, it means they are now joining a certain class of people in whose mind only figures count, not colour, race or creed. They therefore become a class on their own, meaning they aren’t just rich, but they are black and rich too. Does it become their duty now to help the rest of the 95% in uplifting themselves? Are they morally bound?