Carole Charlewood: TV host who stood up to SABC’s bullies

1934-2015

CAROLE Charlewood, who has died at the age of 81 in Noordhoek, Cape Town, was the Oprah Winfrey of South Africa in the ’80s.

Her SABC TV show was called The Human Factor, and for 10 years she tackled subjects that had been taboo locally until she came along and aired them on national TV: death and dying, abortion, gay rights, transvestism, prostitution, dwarfism, active birth, cross-culturalism, race relations and smoking, to name but a few.

As long as she believed it was in the public interest, no subject was off limits as far as she was concerned.

Apart from the professionalism and expertise she brought to her shows, her greatest achievement was surviving the constant attempts by the grey-shoe brigade that ran Auckland Park to censor or soften her work.

The fact that The Human Factor was broadcast every month for 10 years was testimony as much to her toughness and resilience in the face of bureaucratic bullying as it was to her popularity.

When push came to shove, as it often did, the SABC had the good sense to know that in Charlewood it had a winner. She was ideally suited for TV: good-looking, tall, classy and aspirational to many people.

Her compassion played well and was very seductive. Her audience ratings were among the highest and her appeal crossed all boundaries.

“Hi there, Mrs Charlie Carolewood!’ cried a beggar on a Hillbrow pavement when she was doing a programme on hobos.

One of her most controversial shows, and certainly the one that came closest to ending her run at the SABC, was an anti-smoking programme that she did in the teeth of furious objections by the tobacco industry.

SABC management

called Charlewood in, pointed out that cigarette companies were among its biggest advertisers and in effect paid her salary and therefore they could not possibly countenance an anti-smoking programme.

She said she would not be dictated to by vested interests. This was about public health, she said. It was in the public interest to do the programme and as far as she was concerned that was that.

They said OK, but she must make certain changes. She refused. Just before the programme was due to be aired they got cold feet and tried to pull it. She threatened to resign. By then her name was big enough to make them pause. They backed down. The first anti-smoking programme broadcast in South Africa went ahead uncensored.

Many of her programmes trod a thin line between sensationalism and profound analysis of the human condition.

She frequently brought her audience very close to the edge, but never over it.

Having qualified as a clinical psychologist as well as being an extremely good journalist, she was able to explore emotionally fraught terrain with a mixture of unsentimental professionalism, understanding and compassion that had enormous appeal.

She spoke to a man who was terminally ill with cancer and asked him what it was like to die. She interviewed the Swiss-American psychiatrist and pioneer in near-death studies, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, on death and dying. PUBLIC INTEREST: Carole Charlewood was admired by many for her ground-breaking SABC TV show ’The Human Factor’

She spoke to the American psychologist Carl Rogers, one of the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology, shortly before his death in 1987, about crosscultural challenges in South Africa.

She interviewed Auschwitz survivor and world-famous Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, about why some people seem to have the ability to survive and rise above the misfortunes of life and others do not.

If the subjects were traumatic for her viewers they were hardly less so for Charlewood herself. Being the ultimate professional she never showed it, but afterwards, behind the closed doors of her office, she would sometimes break down.

She said later that she believed the severe emotional stress of these years contributed to the Parkinson’s disease that hit her in her early 60s.

By 1989, after 15 years at the SABC, she had had enough of the constant conflict and attempts to influence her work.

She went into politics, becoming the Democratic Party’s MP for Umbilo, Natal. She said that what she loved about being an MP was that she was often able to help ordinary people with their problems in a practical way. What she hated was the bureaucracy, which she found unbearably frustrating. It took such a long time for things to happen, she said.

She left politics at the time of the first democratic elections in 1994.

Charlewood (née Brink) was born on February 1 1934 in Bloemfontein. She matriculated at St Anne’s College in Hilton.

After she completed a BA degree at the University of the Witwatersrand her father took her to the Rand Daily Mail and asked them to give her a job as a cadet reporter. She was 19. By the age of 23 she was women’s editor.

In her late 20s she went to Canada for three years where she worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1975, she became one of the first producers hired by SABC TV.

She was called the Barbara Walters of South Africa, but did not have the hard edge that the famous American broadcaster had.

She was gracious and refined. So refined, wrote Sunday Times columnist Jani Allan, that “she eats candyfloss with a fork”.

Charlewood, who married Johannesburg gynaecologist Dr Godfrey Charlewood in 1963, is survived by three children. — Chris Barron

Hi there, Mrs Charlie Carolewood!’ cried a Hillbrow beggar during a programme on hobos