by Thinus Ferreira
While the board members and top executives of the South African public broadcaster constantly pleads poverty in front of the country's parliament that didn't stop the cash-strapped SABC from throwing a highly distasteful and morally wrong in-person party during a Covid-19 pandemic on Monday evening.
Lovingly broadcast to the nation, complete with an expensive, three-tier designer-ordered cake, the SABC decided to show South Africa how its top execs, presenters, politicians, actors and even some hanger-on socialites just there for selfies, ate, drank and celebrated as if Covid-19 is a distant memory and not the dangerous current-day pandemic that is engulfing the country.
Like Animal Farm, the South African public broadcaster wants viewers and its audience not to do as it does but as it says.
While the SABC showed millions of viewers on Monday night how it partied up a no-socially distanced storm in a studio, the SABC wants you to do as it says in its Covid-19 public service announcements and to stay home, not attend gatherings and to wear a mask.
Keeping your distance, wearing a mask and not having unnecessary public gatherings of any kind are however not rules that apparently apply to the South African public broadcaster. Those are just for you, dear reader sitting at home watching.
Pity that the SABC can't even seem to try and follow its own PSAs.
The SABC will feed, drink and be merry maskless as its staffers recklessly entertain the masses with money that the broadcaster doesn't have and shouldn't be spending.
You eat bread. Let them - and watch them - eat (designer) cake.
Earlier this year the SABC fired and got rid of 621 staffers from its bloated payroll by the end of March because the broadcaster said it can't afford to pay them all anymore.
The SABC owes millions of rand in unpaid royalties to recording artists and collection agencies that it's simply not paying.
Production companies have been suffering with the SABC that has told parliament it's been unable and has problems paying all of its suppliers.
This is how the South African public broadcaster's properties across South Africa looks from the outside:
But let's order three-tier designer cake and make merry, hugging and literally rubbing shoulders with each other during Covid-19 and then broadcast that to our viewers who we are struggling to persuade to pay their SABC TV Licences.
As a thankful nation, viewers should be grateful to the SABC for the party content they're getting and being shown.
At least viewers can see that some people are not restricted by Covid-19 safety regulations like the rest of us and will get together and party up a callously dangerous "superspreader" Delta-storm for the delight of all of those stuck at home.
Who at the SABC okay'ed this utter disgraceful mess of an in-person arbitrary party and a non-essential event to celebrate the SABC's random 85th anniversary?
Why was it held in-person instead of organising a small studio-based, professional broadcast with minimum headcount?
Why is the SABC once again wasting SABC TV Licence fee payers' money on drinks and food and a shocking Marie Antoinette-like designer cake when staffers in provincial bureaus are told that the SABC doesn't have money to fix roofs or chairs or to buy basic broadcast equipment?
How much did this shameful, irresponsible, in-person money-waste event, done during Covid, cost? How tone-deaf, irresponsible, disgusting and shockingly distasteful.
However that expensive SABC 85th anniversary cake tasted, be sure of one thing: The SABC's latest distasteful mess made a very bad impression and leaves a very bad taste behind.
