The second awards night of the National Film and Video Foundation's (NFVF) once again badly organised and flawed 12th South African Film and Television Awards (Saftas) will be taking place this evening at Sun City and broadcast on SABC2 as a live event starting at 20:00.
The Saftas' first awards night for "technical awards" - once again with mind-boggling winners in categories they don't belong in - took place on Thursday night at Sun City.
It wasn't shown on television nor live-streamed on social media, online or through any commercial video-on-demand (VOD) services available in South Africa, with talent working behind-the-scenes literally kept away from viewers and behind the scenes, and with absolutely no progression made by the NFVF to try and show this night's winners to people.
As in the past people not physically attending couldn't hear acceptance speeches, see people accepting awards, or hear what the South Africans actually making film and television had to say to their peers in the local industry.
The NFVF's communications coordinator Neo Moretlwe and its roped-in PR agency Mason Communications to handle the media for the Saftas didn't respond with answers to a media enquiry asking what production company is responsible for producing the 12th Saftas show this year, who designed and built and stage that viewers will see on Saturday night, why viewers should be tuning in to watch, or how many people the Saftas are preparing for to attend the awards show this year.
There's also been no quotable from Zama Mkosi, the NFVF chairperson in the pre-show press release. Choosing who get Golden Horn trophies are 262 judges under chairpersons Firdoze Bulbulia and Thembi Mtshali-Jones.
On Thursday the Saftas judges were once again responsible for bestowing several headscratcher trophies to category winners.
The Cheeky Media produced Wingin' It, broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101), for instance won as Best Reality show while its actually a travel magazine show.
"Enviroserv: Kicking Up a Stink" from Nguni TV was handed a Saftas trophy as Best Current Affairs Programme while it was actually an insert that aired in SABC2's 50/50 environmental affairs magazine show. As in the past there were several other weird Saftas winners.
Once again the NFVF and the Saftas are also completely ignoring large swathes of programming genres and categories like news, current affairs programming genres and magazine shows who are not able to enter.
The 12th Saftas are also again suffering from an ongoing boycott by South African production companies and shows damaging the award show's credibility with the winner of the Most Popular TV Soap that will once again be a hollow victory since the NFVF and Saftas locked out companies from all other categories over their refusal to enter.
The credibility of the 12th Saftas are once again tarnished as Generations on SABC1 produced by Morula Pictures and Muvhango on SABC2 produced by Word of Mouth Productions - two of the most watched shows on South African television - are both boycotting the Saftas over ongoing problems with the judging process, transparency and other grievances.
As in previous years, the winner of the Most Popular Soap category at the 12th Saftas - as voted for by viewers - will this year once again not be a true reflection of what the viewers' choice really might be since the NFVF and the Saftas blocked viewers who wanted to vote for Generations or Muvhango from being able to.
The co-hosts for the 12th South African Film and Television Awards will be Phat Joe and Thando Thabethe.
The 12th Saftas will be doing a red carpet pre-show broadcast at 19:30 on SABC2 with Kuli Roberts from SABC3's Trending SA show, with Rorisang Thandekiso.
