Meet Hlaudi, the deathless villain
What are the chances that Motsoeneng will resurface?
There’s death and taxes. And then for real certainty there is the SABC television licence fee. In an era when cryogenics enables some people to trick death and tax havens provide an escape for millions of enormously wealthy people, there’s something almost comforting about the unrelenting certainty of an SABC fee. Not even death or poverty ensures relief.
A friend inherited his TV licence obligation; it’s not in his name, but it knows where he lives and eventually it will track him down with something more than a faux-threatening “final demand”.
For years he ignored the reminders and threats, mainly because he didn’t own a television, but also because he knew how wretched SABC’S fare was. It wasn’t the 90% local content music he minded so much as the news programmes, so many of which were underpinned by appallingly dull ANC propaganda.
The SABC, it seems, had learnt nothing from the days it spouted National Party propaganda. Then his kind landlord provided him with free access to Dstv, which he reckons is often so shockingly bad that even free seems too expensive. All he needed was a TV set.
Unfortunately buying a TV set required paying off a hefty accumulated licence fee. He reluctantly paid up. And paid for the next year or so.
Later, my friend began to use Hlaudi Motsoeneng as his excuse for not paying the fee, perhaps after deciding he needed some sort of protest outlet.
He wasn’t rich enough to avoid tax and was hesitant about participating in raucous protest against a governing party for which he still has some respect. Not paying his TV licence fee gave him a giddy sense of empowerment.
The fact that there seemed to be no real consequences certainly emboldened him. I doubt he’d have risked even 10 minutes behind bars to make this statement. With Motsoeneng at the helm of the SABC circus, who could be expected to pay up?
But then the interim SABC board fires Motsoeneng. Just like that.
There was only one thing my friend could do. Last week he trundled sheepishly into his local post office and paid his outstanding fees. This was probably quite rash. Motsoeneng only seems to have gone. The chances are he will be like the baddy in a longdrawn-out action movie who doesn’t actually die after being shot 22 times and pushed off a 20-storey building.
Just as the audience relaxes and thinks, “Whew, thank goodness that’s over, now the goodies will make everything better,” the baddy reemerges from the shadows seemingly undeterred by all the bullet holes and dents in his body.
My friend told me that as he handed over all the money and considered the chances of Motsoeneng re-surfacing, he also thought that for all its challenges, the SABC does turn out some remarkably good news programmes. Even in the darkest days of Motsoeneng there was a spark of integrity that suggested an editorial staff determined to serve its real bosses, the viewing public — at least one more of whom is now paying.
The SABC, it seems, had learnt nothing from the days it spouted NP propaganda