I've said it many times before and I'll say it again: The Saftas is little more than a sad sham; very badly organised, amateurly run - and a disappointing attempt at a local South African awards ceremony trying to honour the country's struggling television and film industry which it is effectively just dividing, damaging, and destroying with disheartening embarrassement even more.
South Africa's television and film industry deserves better. South Africa's television and film industry deserves more than the ridiculous and perpetually controversial ''annual'' (although it hasn't happened every year since it started)
South African Film and Television Awards which basically in my view has as much credibility as the voting in North Korea and Zimbabwe.
Why the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) which runs this sad mess of an awards show and ''annually'' botches it, steadfastly refuse to do the right things to make the Saftas truly independent, credible and a real asset for South Africa's film and TV industry, continues to defy belief.
The NFVF refuses to sit down with all broadcasters and create a round robin multi-year agreement where all broadcasters get to take turns to show the Saftas. If it works for the Oscars and the Emmys, why not for us? A multi-year agreement will make all the broadcasters buy-in and play fair since they know and can plan and will be ensured that they all gets a turn.
The NFVF and Saftas refuse to get judges who are ''outside'' of the system - like truly independent TV and film critics who actually
watch these things anyway and not because they have to - people who actually knows what is good movies and shows and who's job it is to critique these mediums.
Instead this Miss South Africa type competition has Miss South African contestants on the stage being judged by Miss South African contestants who were on the stage just five minutes ago - people actually working alongside the people nominated, people working for rival production companies and broadcasters (all of it creating huge tension) and leading to major credibility problems.
And how clever are these judges really and how amateur are the rules when
Jam Alley is both nominated as a reality show and as a music show at the same time? When
Carte Blanche on M-Net is nominated as a magazine show but should have been moved over by the judges to the news and current affairs category where it possibly actually belongs?
Is it really that hard to book and find a venue in time so that the broadcaster doesn't need to be told that the ceremony has to be moved up because the show needs to be packed up earlier than you anticipated and which makes a live broadcast now impossible?
Is it too difficult to reach out to the 20 or so longtime TV and film critics in this country, get them together and ask them if they would mind watching and judging - impartially - the best of what South Africa produces in film and television? We would have been able to come up with nominees for best actress in film this year - the whole category dumped from this year's
Saftas.
We actually watch more than three episodes of the soaps -
7de Laan,
Rhythm City and
Scandal! which are not part of this year's
6th Saftas after
7de Laan is strangely ''ineligible'' and e.tv just pulled all of its shows and soaps. Do you hear the criticism NFVF about soaps saying its impossible to enter based on three episodes when they run hundreds of episodes a year?
We would be able to tell you who
really deserve lifetime achievement awards at the Saftas. We would definitely give more attention that you do NFVF to those ''invisible'' categories and ''non-fiction'' night write-down where writers, editors, directors and all the people behind-the-scenes are treated like second class citizens in your sad set-up. How ironic that the Saftas purports to honour people who are shunted to a literally no-show night not televised.
In short, we'll be fair.
We won't allow
Shona Ferguson to be a nominee this year for best actor in a soap for
Scandal! while he's already been seen on M-Net's
The Wild for more than a year. We'll be clever enough to weed out the ...
madness. We will certainly not let one show have more than one final nominee in a category like SABC1's
Intersextions where all three actors for best actor in a drama are all from that one show with no other nominees.
Best Soap implies quality, yet you do a public vote by SMS. If we ran it, we'd call it Most Popular Soap or People's Choice Award for Soap Opera. Do the Emmys or the Oscars allow people to vote for the show or film that's the best without having the expertise of what really constitutes remarkable work?
Of course there's an only whispered co-dependency at work here too. The industry knows the Saftas are wrong, skewed and not credible. But the film and television community - rightly so - deserves and desperately wants recognition (since there's so little anyway).
The sad thing about the Saftas is how the industry keeps quiet; unwilling to speak out, lest it loses or falls out of favour with the judges. With e.tv - which did the right thing and the only thing it possibly actually can - by pulling its shows and soaps from what in my opinion amounts to an ongoing shamfest, it's sadly the nominees who could possibly have won, who will be losing recognition. A tough tactic but at least e.tv is refusing to be silent anymore.
South Africa's television and film industry needs an annual awards ceremony that is a proud reflection of our country's work in these fields, make us proud, is well-organised and put together, comes with impeccable credibility to make a win a deserving win; and is a true showcase for what those in the film and television community create through hard work, persistence and non-existent budgets.
Sadly the shoddy and half-baked
South African Film and Television Awards is and shows not of this. Yet.
