Many of you will have probably been harassed by the SABC over the past few weeks. It's time to pay our TV licences. Our troubled Public Broadcaster is never shy to come asking for more cash Yet the quality of public TV these days, complete with mind numbing news, bottom-of-the-barrel variety shows, ancient series and movies so bad they were more than likely donated to the SABC out of sympathy. So with a hypothetical virtual swagger and beaming arrogance via threatening smses, e-mail spam and brainless advertising campaigns redolent of Gestapo PR ploys ('You have nussing to vorry about. Ve are only vatching you') the broadcaster has come to collect 'what is rightfully ours' they argue. They'll do almost anything to force you to pay that R250. I've already been threatened with credit blacklisting. Through clenched teeth I paid over what is rightfully mine and carried on channelling hopping through DSTV. I'm very lucky to have that option of avoiding SABC programing. But many people out there have no choice.
We're led to believe our adherence to the law of the Corporation is closely policed with surreptitious vans, tinted windows, fitted with aerials, TV dishes and flickering lights lurk our streets, desperate to bust one of us... watching TV without a licence! Alarms will howl in the streets. We will be rounded up, curfews will be imposed and we'll be made to march in lines towards camps, where the latest CEO will set the thought police on our brains. Torture could follow. But there's no need for that. It's already torturous watching SABC TV. Sounds really weird when you say it. You need a licence to enjoy the stagnant pedestrianism and sub-standard television foisetd on us. They should be paying us to watch the drivel we see on telly. Anyway. So, the 800th text has bleeped to life on your mobile. You've had to open a whole new folder on your desktop to store the foreboding e-mails ('You will be blacklisted and then no one will like you you, and you'll died alone, with only the company of Rian Cruywagen' these mails should read).The SABC is calling on us to do the right thing. Pay up your R250. Is it really the right thing to do? Yes, maybe to pay for the right to our money being used properly: to inform in the absence of enforced bias; to entertain with good quality movies; to educate with the wealth of resources available to it, which it seems is the only thing the the SABC is managing to do, in all fairness. That's all the average viewer really wants - just a bit of quality in the programming and an end to ongoing drama at the corporation so that our money is not squandered yet againI doubt it's the right thing for Solly Mokoetle to have just been allowed to scurry off in the wake of the gravy train into the horizon of the fat, all because of a sweaty golden (more like bloody) handshake aimed at palming him off. Our Public Broadcaster has dished out, seemingly with little question as to it's real agenda, more than R17 million rand in settling the messy affairs of two Group CEOs in less than 3-years. Apart from burning taxpayers money, the SABC must generate a helluva cell phone bill haranguing us for our R250 each to keep the SABC afloat. That's a lot of R250s which will be deposited into the company's dirty bank account. I bet anybody R250, this time next year, our TV licence moola will be in its moer, stuffed into a cushy off shore account by yet another useless CEO. If I'm wrong, I give the 'TV Licence Enforcement Squad' permission to come and confiscate my television.
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