Remember the bad old days

Remember Sundays in the old South Africa with no TV, no sport, shops all closed, minds all closed and the only thing to stop you contemplating suicide was the prospect of Monday morning’s newspapers to see how many of the volk had been caught breaking the Immorality Act.

Those were the days when you could set your watch by those four o’clock in the afternoon thunderstorms that used to roll in over the highveld, drop their loads and disappear by half past four, leaving brilliant, good-and-clean-and-fresh evenings in which to enjoy sundowners.

That doesn’t happen anymore, because there’s a newfangled climatic thing called tropical air that comes in from over Zambia, Zimbabwe and the erstwhile Zaire to produce continuous cloud cover and rain at all hours of the day.

Sundowners have been replaced by midsummer bowls of hot soup in front of the television set.

Everything has changed, hasn’t it? Especially television. Quite apart from having access to about 80 channels, we can now watch sport on a Sunday without being struck by lightning, and we can even watch the BBC news without fear of the devil or a communist infecting us with information. We even get Catholic Mass celebrated by the pope, broadcast live from the Vatican (and not from behind a bush). It’s all a far cry from that apartheid era minister of communication calling TV the work of the devil and the Catholic Church a lot worse than that.

And unlike 30 years ago, when we had a foreign white person presenting the news in impeccable Oxbridge English, we now have a foreign black person presenting the news in impeccable Oxbridge English.

And talking about the news on the telly, remember those days of yore when, after two solid hours of a Lewe Onder Die See documentary, we’d get that lavatory seat SABC symbol and the only news bulletin of the day with poker-faced presenters telling us with all the solemnity usually accorded to the outbreak of a world war that South Africa had lost a cricket test against a rebel Australian eleven and that subsequently “a Bantu” had been detained?

No matter what happened in South Africa in those days, somehow the upshot was “a Bantu” being detained. From blowing up an electricity pylon to Gary Player missing a putt at the British Open, the consequence was always the same.

At one stage South Africa held the world record for detaining people at the drop of a hat. In fact, if anyone did drop a hat, somewhere, someplace, somebody would pay the price with instant detention.

Remember the SABC news then: “The price of gold dropped by one dollar an ounce yesterday and as a result the petrol price will increase by 80 cents and SAA domestic air fares by a further 25%. The minister was not available for comment. A Bantu has been detained.”

Well, except for petrol price hikes, things are very different these days. “Bantu”, thank God, are no longer being detained on principle and ministers (or at least their spokespeople) are often known to be available for comment.

SABC news now: “In a cash-in-transit heist outside Boksburg today, 15 armed men in stolen bakkies forced a security vehicle off the road, shot and killed the five guards and sprayed passing motorists with AK-47 gunfire, causing a further 12 deaths, before escaping with R80 million. No-one has been arrested and the minister said that cash-in-transit heists were unacceptable and that the whole issue of crime needed to be addressed.”

South Africa now holds the world record for addressing issues without actually doing anything about them.

And remember all those years ago when just about every second news bulletin would carry an item about a Putco bus crashing and killing all 50 passengers?

Nothing has changed. Only nowadays it’s a minibus taxi crashing and killing all 50 passengers. No-one is ever arrested of course.

Weather reports all those years ago were a lot more accurate than our modern computer and satellite-assisted boffins. I remember a Zambian TV weatherman standing confidently in front of the weather map and pronouncing with a completely straight face: “There will be weather all over the country tomorrow…”

But in spite of the fact that the weather has gone berserk, crime is rampant and that the country seems to be run by a petulant kindergarten, it’s still a lot better than it was.

Frankly I’d much rather take my chances with crime and corruption than go back to those boring old days of the SABC and listening to incessant bulletins about people being detained for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever.