LUCK OF THE IRISH
Playing hardball for SA
JOHN Robbie came to South Africa thanks to a controversy and has never been shy of one ever since. In fact, it played a role in his decision to retire, after a social media storm over his handling of protests by black girls over hair regulations at Pretoria High School for Girls.
His first visit to this country was in 1980 with the British Lions rugby team, when he was called up as a replacement and played in the final test.
The following year he returned to represent Ireland on a tour that proved so controversial that he lost his job as a management trainee at the Guinness brewery in Dublin.
“I look back now with real shame on that tour,” he says. “I cannot believe we came on tours.
“Then I look back on myself at that age when all I cared about was rugby. If I had not come on the tours, not lost my job, I might not have ended up here. I lost my job because of that tour, but it’s ancient history now.”
He and his wife, Jenny, decided to take a year’s break and come to South Africa where he played rugby for Wanderers and Transvaal, from 1982 to 1988.
“I thought I would go back and play for Ireland, but one year led to two, two to more. I fell in love with the country, got involved with Radio 702, became a South African, and our kids grew up here. Now I’m more South African than South Africans.” Rugby led to radio. “I remember vividly driving down Simmonds Street one day to work, and I tuned into this extraordinary programme where someone was encouraging people to phone in and pretend they were beavers mating or something. I had never heard anything like it.
“Of course it was John Berks, and I became a big fan. A couple of times I phoned in, and in those days people didn’t really phone in to radio programmes.
“A few years later 702 had the idea to get sports people in to do guest sports reports. I did it, I loved it, they liked me, and the next year I became full-time. That was 1986 — 30 years ago.”
Robbie started doing a sports report three times a week on the morning show, moving on to become sports editor, then to a Sunday afternoon slot called Sports Talk. It was unusual in that after the interviews and reports on games, listeners were asked to phone in.
When 702 changed to talk radio in 1990 he was one of the few people with a gift for, and experience of, taking calls. He started with Talk at 10.
“Shortly after we started, FW [de Klerk] stood up in parliament and unbanned the ANC and the whole world went bananas. This funny little radio show in the evening talked to everyone and the listenership went through the roof.”
Robbie partly attributes his early success to his being an outsider.
“Nobody could put me in a pigeonhole. I was white, I was a rugby player, I seemed to be fairly progressive, and I was irreverent. ”
He has now been doing the morning drive show for 15 years, and has never been late once. He gets up at 2.15am and gets to work by 3am to prepare for the show.
“We structure our lives accordingly . . . I’ve built up my routine and that’s the way it’s always been. I go to bed by nine, that’s the latest.”
His one regret is that he never interviewed Nelson Mandela, despite meeting him several times.
“But Archbishop Desmond Tutu was always a great favourite, and I became friendly with him, on and off the radio. The fact that he seemed to have an affection for me was always something I was proud of.”
He conducted the first local radio interview, on Talk at 10, with Joe Slovo, along with Raymond Mhlaba after his release from Robben Island. Slovo asked for one of the sponsor’s beers after the show and so they broke into former CEO Stan Katz’s office to raid his supply and drank and chatted until 2am.
Later there was the notorious interview with a certain health minister.
“I had an unfortunate interview with Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, which ended badly.”
When Tshabalala-Msimang refused to spell out whether she believed HIV causes Aids, Robbie said: “Go away. I cannot take that rubbish any longer. Can you believe it? . . . I have never in my life heard such rubbish.”
Now he says: “Looking back it was very unprofessional. I sort of lost my temper, but I’m not embarrassed about the issues we raised.”
It was his later comments about the Sunday Times publishing her medical records that earned him the “Mampara of the Week” title in 2007, labelling him “one of the dullest windbags ever to mug the airwaves”. Robbie had said the paper’s lead story on the health minister’s booze binge in hospital was the lowest form of gutter journalism he had encountered. It hurt, because he felt the citation, usually with a humorous edge, was particularly nasty, but he holds no grudge.
Of course he has sat across the microphone from a number of superstars, and his favourite, “the most incredible and friendly person”, was Lionel Richie: “I could not believe him, or Oprah Winfrey.”
But it is the ordinary people who phone in with extraordinary stories, needing or offering help, that kept Robbie ever optimistic in a way that irritated some listeners.
“This is the most exciting country in the world for talk radio because there so much going on here. It’s one of the reasons I’ve lasted so long in radio.
“A lot of people on radio are putting on a performance, the radio persona. I’m not. What you hear on air is what you get, and I’m an incredibly optimistic person.
“A lot of bad s**t happens in the world, and in South Africa. Yet if you stand back you see that most people are getting on with life and get on incredibly well. Most people are better off than they were and most people’s kids are better off then they were. Most people are optimistic despite their concerns about various things. I think I have the ability to put things into perspective.”
The row over the hair policy at the Pretoria school was a factor in his decision to retire.
“I found myself on the end of a Twitter war,” he says, and it hurt more than anything in his career.
“I had asked a question, and the tone of the question was wrong. I was accused of hectoring someone, and that became very unpleasant. It translated as ‘John Robbie hates all black women, black hair and is racist’. That was one of the most painful things. Over my career I have had people threaten me, I have had people wanting to beat me up — nothing compared to the backlash over that, and it had something to do with me deciding that my career had come to an end.
“I am a passionate hater of social media and Twitter, I think it brings out the worst in just about everybody. Why is it so cowardly and horrible?”
Robbie was even on apartheid-era killer Eugene de Kock’s hit list.
“He was told in the early ’90s to kill me with a crossbow. That came up in the TRC and he told it to me to my face. He told me that he had refused because he did not kill people because of their views, he killed them because they planted bombs. I asked him if that hadn’t been the case, would I be dead? He said absolutely, he would have killed me — but not with a crossbow. It would have looked like a crime.”
Harsh stuff, but then perhaps threats and insults pre-social media were less immediate and personal.
“The one thing I wish I had kept was the book of insults. There were no cellphones in those days so it was all letters and postcards. My favourite one read: ‘John Robbie, I hate you I hate you I hate you . . . I fantasise about pouring petrol over you, setting fire to it, and listening to you scream as you die a horrible death.’ And it was signed ‘A concerned Christian’.
“Looking back I should have been a lot more scared, but experts say that people who make the threats don’t carry them through.
“A lot of people now come up to me and say: ‘Your show prepared us for the new South Africa. Thank you.’ ”
Robbie says he is not retiring to play golf and is open to offers.
“I’m leaving 702 after 30 years. People ask whether I was pushed, or am I sick, but it’s neither. I think the morning drive on 702 is the best job in radio in South Africa. I initiated the move with 702, I went to them about a month ago and said that I feel it’s coming to an end.
“I want to work, maybe not quite as hard, maybe three days a week . . . I would love to do something with tourism in some shape or form . . . I see tourism as a no-brainer.
“When I’m in Ireland I’m the unofficial South African ambassador, when I’m here I’m the unofficial Irish ambassador.”
And he is going nowhere, and is committed to this country.
“I mean, I do not have a bean overseas, I do not own a home in Ireland — I could probably afford to rent a broom cupboard in Dublin or London. I’m a South African.
“The one promise I made my wife, or one of many, is that I will never get into politics.”
As ever, some of his listeners will be relieved to hear that, others not. They might all agree that he’s been in it for 30 years.
I thought I’d go back and play for Ireland. One year led to two . . . I fell in love with the country I am a passionate hater of social media and Twitter. Why is it so cowardly and horrible? When I’m in Ireland I’m the unofficial South African ambassador