NDUMISO NGCOBO | Safa show adds insult to injury

Wanda Sykes is easily in my top 10 favourite stand-up comedians active today. In her second special, Sick and Tired in 2006, she makes the observation that there is something intrinsically mean-spirited about the reality TV singing competition, American Idol. She reckons that making contestants who have just found out that they have been voted out by the public perform one last time is fundamentally cruel.

To quote her, it’s tantamount to telling the young hopefuls: “Before you get out of here, sing for us just one more time. Remind America why they didn’t vote for you!” This memory from a 20-year-old comedy special was triggered by events in the last 10 days.

On May 21, Bafana Bafana coach Hugo Broos announced a 32-man preliminary Fifa World Cup squad to represent the nation at the global football showpiece. On May 27, Broos announced the final 26-man World Cup squad at Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. In the preceding six days, he had trimmed down the squad by six players. Nothing wrong with that. Like cabinet members who serve at the pleasure of the president, players represent us at the pleasure of the head coach. But the normal, palatable part of the whole thing seems to end there.

Dozens of articles by respectable football experts who, unlike this columnist, actually know what they’re talking about, have been written on the distasteful manner in which the whole announcement was handled. In their infinite wisdom, the Safa technical team arranged for all 32 members of the preliminary team to get fully kitted out and paraded in front of the media before the 26 players who made the cut were announced.

This left the Kaizer Chiefs trio of Petersen, Monyane and Maboe; Pirates’ Maswanganyi; Sundowns’ Morena; and Poggenpoel of Durban City in the predicament of being seated at the banquet table, dinner napkins tucked into their collars, knife and fork in hand and platefuls of air.

Sitting there grinning while the winner goes up to collect their statue sucks

It’s possible that everyone is making hurricanes out of a little puff of flatulence. After all, players are used to getting kitted out and spending 90 minutes transferring heat to cold benches with their gluteus maxima. The more sadistic coaches have even been known to instruct players to take off their track tops and warm up for five minutes — and then decide against making a substitution.

But anyone who has ever been nominated for an award knows the feeling all too well. Hollywood actors go through it all the time. The cameras zoom in on them as the nominee list is read out, followed by that pregnant moment: “And the Oscar goes to…” Sitting there grinning while the winner goes up to collect their statue sucks.

Other than the fact that I generally hate awards ceremonies on principle, part of the reason I have retired from attending them was the night I was up for a Nielsen’s Booksellers Choice Award for my first title, Some of my best friends are white, which sold a decent number of copies. I don’t quite remember the category, but I knew as I got on that flight to Cape Town that I wasn’t going to win. I was seated right next to John van de Ruit of the Spud phenomenon, for crying out loud.

The highlight of my entire evening was that they had an open bar and I kept the Castle draughts flowing. I will not swear an oath to the accuracy of my recollection, but I think Spud … ag, I mean John, joined me in this holiest of pastimes. Especially since the winner was Craig White with In Black and White, the Jake White biography.

Back to the Safa story. What truly rubbed me up the wrong way was the bright spark in the Safa comms team who, in the spirit of Idols, said to the six players: “Before you go home and cry, do be good sports and pose for a photograph with the president who banks with First National Sofa Bank.”

Whoever organised that photo op didn’t think it through. That’s like that cruel friend who snaps a picture of you hugging a toilet bowl at the club after an evening of Jager bombs.

Think about it: which of those players is going to have that picture framed so that in 2076, when their grandchildren ask them what the occasion was, they can say: “Well, that was the evening that Broos took all my hopes and dreams and passed them through a meat grinder.”