"BLACK FEMALE RAGE IS SABC'S BURDEN ?"

SABC board approved despite bitter protests
Michael Hamlyn | Cape Town, South Africa
I3 September 2007 04:10

Dene Smuts (DA) was especially upset by the inclusion of Christine Qunta.

"She's the long-standing Africanist associate of our president," Smuts said. "We cannot support her. We have never supported the racial prism through which she views all criticism -- criticism of the president, criticism of corruption against black South Africans covered in the general media and now, upon our questioning, all criticism of the SABC."

Under two hours of questioning by the committee, Qunta confirmed that all criticism of the SABC by the commercial media had a racial bias, Smuts said.

"Further she confirmed ... her confidence in the man we are convinced is the source of much of the trouble at the SABC, the news head, Mr Snuki Zikalala."

This is a better board, Smuts admitted, but to include Qunta in it is to deny the crisis at the SABC.

"It is our fear that the honourable sitting president will appoint her as the chair, and in doing so will perpetuate some of the crisis," Smuts said.



FIX THE FXI writes:
The odds are that Christine Qunta (Mbeki sycophant) will get a second term as chair of The ANCB (African National Congress Broadcasting).

Whatever you think of the following article, it is undeniable that we are, as Qunta writes " living in truly interesting times."

Like Manto, Qunta is contemptuous of The TAC, but I suppose that is just a bizarre feature of our.... "truly interesting times."

So.. for those of you who missed it first time round, here is the heroine of The ANCB....

WHITE MALES' RAGE IS BLACKS' BURDEN
By Christine Qunta (Business Day, 23 May 2003)

WATCHING white male rage is a truly unedifying spectacle. Being a victim of such rage is even worse.
And it seems as if unrestrained white male rage is back in vogue. All one has to do is to open a newspaper or listen to a radio station.
Health Minister Manto TshabalalaMsimang recently had a taste of some righteous white male rage, courtesy of one German businessman.
After verbally abusing her, he rushes from the plane and contacts a radio station and speaks to another white male whose greatest contribution to this country was breaking the sports boycott as an Irish rugby player during the wonderful old days when everyone knew their place and life was much simpler than now.
Our brave and fearless German man was lucky. He could have ended up with a bloodied nose if it had been a white male or for that matter an African male no doubt a fact that he was keenly aware of at the time of choosing his victim.
Then we have Mark Heywood and Nathan Geffen of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), current media darlings who seem congenitally angry and quite excited about the prospect of doing outrageous things while trying to get Zackie Achmat declared an international martyr with a little help from the University of Natal and Time magazine.
It seems as if white male rage is the black man's (and woman's) burden.
My apologies to those white males who are positive and are rolling up their sleeves to fashion a new society from the ashes of the old. They are, of course, too boring to be courted by the media.
Sometimes amid the anguish and rage about affirmative action and the numerous bogeys white males terrorise themselves with, even I feel some stirrings of compassion.
That is, until I am reminded of the reality we live in when I read, as I did about two weeks ago, about the labour department's employment equity report for 2001 and 2002. It shows that 75% of top management positions in companies in SA are occupied by white males.
At one level one can sympathise with the culture shock they have had to go through since 1994. One minute the only black women they interact with are those who clean their houses and the next minute they have to share their workplace with them, sit next to them in business class, have them make policies that affect their lives and, even worse, have them as bosses.
However, if the black middle class can observe white male rage at close quarters, the poor people of this country are in the paradoxical situation of suddenly having acquired white male champions in Parliament, at Afrikaans universities and on the streets.
As to the cause of the poverty and their role in creating it, they assume black people's memories are short and their hearts big.
It's interesting seeing these recent converts to the cause of poverty get their three minutes of fame, sometimes with Africans in the background like extras on a movie set. They do not speak. They are spoken for in the proud white liberal tradition of this country.
If the issues facing poor people in this country were not so serious, the situation would be quite comical.
As the election gets closer we might even see some stranger sights, such as Tony Leon and Douglas Gibson of the Democratic Alliance toyi-toying. Who knows, the TAC might even become a political party and join forces with Patricia de Lille.
The real business of managing SA and attending to the needs of the poor in a serious, systematic way will go on regardless of these entertaining sideshows.
If you are white and male, you can scream marginalisation, even extinction, while holding sway in the economy and smiling all the way to the top of the corporate ladder (and the bank). This can be done all at once, with a straight face. We are living in truly interesting times.