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29 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
Heita mense vannie Kaap, welcome to Jou Ma’s round up of the sporting figures and facts that you need to know about… Sport is still big business in SA it seems, with some of our slim economic pundits skeeming that the IPL, the Lions Tour, and the Confederations Cup have all played a moerse role [...]
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Heita mense vannie Kaap, welcome to Jou Ma’s round up of the sporting figures and facts that you need to know about…
Sport is still big business in SA it seems, with some of our slim economic pundits skeeming that the IPL, the Lions Tour, and the Confederations Cup have all played a moerse role in South Africa staving off some of the effects of the global recession.
If you were watching the rugby on TV over the weekend, you’d have been forgiven for thinking there were lank empty seats at Ellis Park. The red wasn’t the colour of the seats – it was the colour of all the Lions supporters. Tickets for the British & Irish Lions series were fixed at R1140 per ticket, which is klomp geld for your gewone South African. Come on SA Rugby! How can we ensure home ground advantage when you’re pricing us out of our stadiums?
The explanation being given by the organizers of the Confed Cup for the empty seats at the ‘sold out’ games is that they were block bookings by corporates who didn’t pitch to collect their tickets on the day.
Jou Ma was at the Bafana vs Brazil game and saw so many soccer-mad laities hanging around the ticket office ahead of the game, hoping for a ticket. It’s a disgrace that our footballing powers that be haven’t yet devised a system that sees uncollected tickets going on sale for cheap just before the start of the game.
Our stadiums should be full to capacity with local fans in the build up to 2010. Everyone should get a smaak of soccer in our country. When Paul Simon played in SA in the early 90s, people thought that music could unify our nation. However it was victory at the Rugby World in SA in ’95 – and then victory in the African Cup of Nations at home a year later – that cemented sport as the unifying, ‘feel good’ factor all of us in the Rainbow Nation schmaak the most to share and enjoy together.
Next year the Rainbow Nation will soon find its pot of gold, thanks to FIFA and the global affirmation that our country is safe enough to host the 2010 World Cup. The Confed Cup has been a moerse learning curve for Danny Jordaan’s Local Organizing Committee (LOC), our government, and the South African public at large.
Along with security, transport is the biggest headache that needs to be solved ahead of 2010. Forget about Jozi’s Gautrain and the Rapid Transit System in Cape Town – even just the ‘Park & Ride’ busses to the Confed Cup stadiums was a joke. So many mense missed the start of some of the games, and were then left stranded in long queues at the end.
So ja, our 2010 pot of gold must be protected so that any money we do make (once FIFA has flown home to Sweden with all of the loot from the TV rights) is spent on real ‘legacy’ stuff, like a proper transport infrastructure and better stadiums that will actually get used in the future.
Ah yes, ‘the future’. Most of us South Africans haven’t even thought of a future beyond 2010. We’re too busy blowing our own vuvuzelas to hear the warning sounds coming from a world being radically affected by global climate change.
Already ouens here are talking about how JZ has underwritten our sporting bids to host either the 2015 or 2019 Rugby World Cups to the tune of R1 billion and R1.2 billion respectively. And while Jou Ma is just as sports verskrik as the next ‘Saffer’ (the dubious abbreviated nickname we’ve earned overseas), I can’t help being reminded of how Julius Caesar used to distract the citizens of Rome from the poor job he was doing by constantly organizing gladiatorial battles and chariot races in the Colosseum.
Cape Town’s most controversial coloured, Herschelle Gibbs, calmed down for long enough to ensure his IPL franchise, the Deccan Chargers, won the tournament we hosted at full houses around the country. Then Bafana Bafana restored some more pride with a committed performance in front of plenty of fans during the Confed Cup.
On the weekend the Springboks saw red in the stands at Loftus, but still managed to klap the Lions in the Second Test, thus taking the series. We have a lot to be proud of as a sports-loving nation. That doesn’t mean we can afford to take our eye off the ball that is the economic and social reality of our lives.
Petrol is going up by 40 cents per litre this week. The third and fourth cases of the H1N1 ‘swine flu’ virus were reported on our shores. Sport may be big business and even better nation building, but we also belong to a global community increasingly at odds with its planet. The bigger picture may not be the one showing on the big screen at the stadium.
22 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
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22 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
James Myburgh 19 June 2009 James Myburgh asks whether it is right to transpose American concerns over the future of journalism to our situation Over the past few weeks two of our most foremost media commentators, Anton Harber and Guy Berger, have looked at the calamitous state of the United States newspaper industry (or what [...]
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James Myburgh
19 June 2009
James Myburgh asks whether it is right to transpose American concerns over the future of journalism to our situation
Over the past few weeks two of our most foremost media commentators, Anton Harber and Guy Berger, have looked at the calamitous state of the United States newspaper industry (or what is left of it) and asked – is it going to happen in South Africa and what can be done about it?
Like sailors discussing the coming storm at sea their analyses are underpinned by a sense of fear and foreboding. Harber headed a recent lecture on the topic “Journalism: A profession under siege.” If there is reason for hope it is only because, thanks to Telkom, the South African press has time to prepare. People in the industry here are right to be nervous, Berger writes, “but our pre-broadband era provides some breathing pace to avoid a similar fate.”
As these and other commentators have pointed out the old newspaper model was able, in the US, to finance extensive and sophisticated news gathering organisations. Thus, while American newspapers were privately owned concerns they served a clear public interest. Their demise thus comes at a cost greater than the financial loss to their shareholders.
The problem with both analyses is that they simply transpose American concerns – at what the demise of newspapers will do to journalism in that country – to the very different South African reality. Harber is not wrong to argue that if newspapers die, journalism suffers, but in a sense the worst has already happened to our metropolitan English-language broadsheets.
Over the past fifteen years the general trend has been towards appointing politically inoffensive editors, shedding talented journalists, ‘juniorising’ newsrooms, prioritising racial quotas, dropping controversial columnists, and cutting back on real investigative reporting. If New York Times journalists could see the future of their newspaper – and it was The Star of today – I think many would lose the will to live.
The advertising revenues of the Independent group of newspapers were spent not on supporting South African newsgathering but – as Paul Trewhela notes -on sustaining the loss-making Independent of London (Tony O’Reilly’s so-called ‘calling card’.) It was this kind of relationship, incidentally, which gave colonialism a bad name.
Yet, despite the general running down of the English papers the Sunday Times and Independent group still made, as Harber notes, “stupendous profits” up until recently. That they could do so, while producing a product of steadily declining quality, was only because there was (and still is) so little competition.
Given how far we have already fallen, it is difficult to see the downside of the internet revolution for our media. In a previous essay I argued that, in developing countries at least, electronic communication provides powerful protections against the age old threat of tyranny (see here).
Newspapers used to be – and no doubt still are – the institutions best able to challenge and expose wrongdoing by the powerful. But they have been vulnerable to political influence and control. One of the means by which the PRI of Mexico exerted influence over the press – during its seven decades of dominance – was through the monopoly it exerted over the supply of newsprint. Controlling the flow of information in the electronic age is – as the Iranian regime has recently discovered – like trying to clutch water.
I suspect too that contrary to the fears of Harber and Berger the challenge of online media will be good for the quality of our press. In a recent essay in the Christian Science Monitor Robert G. Picard, an expert on media economics makes the point that across the Western news industry there is an “extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation.” In the internet age such information is of very little real value – given that something similar can be easily found elsewhere for free. In this context journalists “must add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available elsewhere, or in forms that are more useable by and relevant to their audiences.”
If Picard is right then the English-language newspapers in South Africa have been going in precisely the wrong direction for far too long. What the media should fear is not the coming storm, but the late arrival of the rains.
15 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
DEUR Julian Jansen Op die Maart-kalender van die media-maatskappy Laugh it Off (LIO) se satiriese “Corpowit 2010″-kalender sit ‘n kaalkop-man wat baie na die land se president, mnr. Jacob Zuma, lyk, agter ‘n lessenaar. Bo sy kop is ‘n groot stortkop. Voor hom staan ‘n bottel J&Z- whisky en op twee rusbanke lê twee vroue [...]
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DEUR Julian Jansen
Op die Maart-kalender van die media-maatskappy Laugh it Off (LIO) se satiriese “Corpowit 2010″-kalender sit ‘n kaalkop-man wat baie na die land se president, mnr. Jacob Zuma, lyk, agter ‘n lessenaar.
Bo sy kop is ‘n groot stortkop. Voor hom staan ‘n bottel J&Z- whisky en op twee rusbanke lê twee vroue met kort rokke. Die borg vir dié maand? “Zuma”.
LIO het die kalender, deurspek met satire oor groot name in die sakewêreld, Vrydag by hul “Skop skiet en donner”-partytjie in Kaapstad bekend gestel.
Die Mail & Guardian het toe reeds Vrydag die stortkopfoto op sy voorblad gepubliseer, maar nie voordat ‘n brief van die presidensie se prokureurs glo geëis het dat die foto nie gepubliseer moet word nie.
Volgens Nic Dawes van die Mail & Guardian het dit later geblyk dat nie die president of sy senior amptenare enige interdik teen die publikasie beoog nie.
Die komediepaar Corné en Twakkie het LIO se gaste in die Tafelberg Tavern uit hul mae laat lag.
Hulle wou onder meer van ‘n laggende Jonathan Shapiro, die bekende spotprenttekenaar, weet: “Was jy in die presidentswedloop of het jy weggehardloop van die president?”
Op die Julie-kalender is ‘n man wat baie na mnr. Julius Malema, leier van die ANC-jeugliga, lyk, besig om blatjang te maak. Agter hom knetter die vuur in ‘n kaggel.
Die borg? “Mr Ballache – original recipe chatterbox”.
Die spot word elke maand met bekende en groot maatskappye gedryf.
Daar is onder meer (of is dit?) die nasionale lugdiens (Substance Abuse Airways), bekende bierhandelsmerke (I’m still Lagered), ‘n telekommunikasiemaatskappy (Tellsome1), ‘n selfoonverskaffer (Aikona), ‘n gewilde studente-rooiwyn (Tossabergie), bekende skopdop (Captain Moron), ‘n brandstofverskaffer (Hell Ultra Shitty) en ‘n gewilde braaihoender (KFR).
Ironies genoeg het SA Brouerye volgens die gashere kiste Black Label-bier vir die aand geborg.
Mnr. Justin Nurse van LIO het vroeër ‘n konstitusionele hofbeslissing in sy guns verkry toe SA Brouerye hom voor die hof gedaag het omdat hy hul bierproduk “Black Labour” in plaas van Black Label genoem het. Die kalender noem dit nou “Black Neighbour”.
Volgens Nurse plaas humor die probleme waarmee Suid-Afrikaners worstel in konteks.
15 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
12 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
11 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
The Presidency is threatening to interdict the M&G from printing March’s spoof photo from LiO’s Corpowit Calendar. But they’re not threatening us just yet, so here it is for all to see. You can buy the calendar online at: www.liomarket.com/pCORPOWIT CALENDAR/Corpowit-Calendar-2010.aspx
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The Presidency is threatening to interdict the M&G from printing March’s spoof photo from LiO’s Corpowit Calendar. But they’re not threatening us just yet, so here it is for all to see. You can buy the calendar online at:
www.liomarket.com/pCORPOWIT CALENDAR/Corpowit-Calendar-2010.aspx
Click image to preview
11 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
Only one day to go before the launch of the Corpowit Calendar at the Skop, Skiet en Donner party. Be the first to order. Click here to buy online.
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Only one day to go before the launch of the Corpowit Calendar at the Skop, Skiet en Donner party.
Be the first to order. Click here to buy online.
11 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
Laugh it Off goes on the offensive: launches hard-hitting ‘Corpowit’ 2010 Calendar and throws a ‘Skop, Skiet & Donner’ party – all in the sacrilegious name of Satire! Laugh it Off isn’t going to wait in line to get sued by the ANC. So while JZ finishes off all 25 cows from his hometown party, [...]
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Laugh it Off goes on the offensive: launches hard-hitting ‘Corpowit’ 2010 Calendar and throws a ‘Skop, Skiet & Donner’ party – all in the sacrilegious name of Satire!
Laugh it Off isn’t going to wait in line to get sued by the ANC. So while JZ finishes off all 25 cows from his hometown party, Laugh it Off and Jacana Media are throwing a satirically splendid shindig of their own… An evening of hilarious entertainment that will proudly showcase South African satire’s resilience against increasing government censorship, legal strong-arming, and thinly-skinned politicians.
Laugh it Off and Jacana Media are rounding up the troops this Friday evening for a Skop (awesome dance party with DJ Fletcher [DOPE], Skiet (hilarious entertainment from The Most Amazing Show’s Corne & Twakkie, MC David Levinsohn, Zapiro Q&A, Freedom of Speechathon), and Donner (Medieval Tenpin Bowling where you get to knock down your least favourite politician!)
The venue for Friday’s funny festivities will be the Tafelberg Tavern. (Where? Roodehek Terrace, off the top end of Hope Street, 100m down from Gardens Centre). Doors open at 8pm. Entrance is R30.
There will also be a graphic exhibition featuring images from Laugh it Off’s controversial new Corpowit Calendar (photos by Obie Oberholzer), plus kif creative stuff from The Western Nostril and Jeremy Nell – as well as any aspiring artists/satirists/cartoonists who wish to display their work. The Most Amazing Show’s Corne & Twakkie will also be interviewing Zapiro about the state of satire in South Africa.
Books, calendars and merchandise will be on sale, and prizes galore will be up for grabs. For more info call (021) 788 3226 or e-mail info@laughitoff.co.za Please tell all of your tjommies and come and show your support for humour in South Africa!
10 June 09
Categories: Laugh it Off
