Events & Conferencing Forums South Africa

Die Stem played at the Loeries

What is the thinking behind playing the old boer national anthem at an event in 2008 like the Loeries?

Can someone tell me why Die Stem was played at the Loeries as the first piece by the orchestra? That was highly insensitive and highly insulting on a day the SABC was hosting the event!
In addition:
The Editor,
I am worried about SABC being one of the major sponsors of the Loeries together with Media 24. Somebody at the SABC seems to forget that SABC is a public broadcaster, hence the greater African population is the biggest listener of SABC, therefore majority listenership stakeholder, and the black government majority financial stakeholder, therefore need for some transparency on how finances on some of these sponsorships are spent. On one hand, well done with the Loeries this year. My gripe is about the absence of black radio stations being represented to cover the event. Somehow I have a feeling that says black people have nothing to do with advertising as an end product that affects their buyer behaviour and whatever they see fill up the time of television viewing and radio listening. There is huge outcry out there about lack of skills transfer generally, and more specifically, specialised skills such as you find in the fields of advertising in particular, from copy writing, design, animation and filming. This was one great opportunity lost to interest our growing African kids of the vast opportunities found in the advertising business world by covering these events even in the vernacular languages. All the people interviewed even after the event were all whites.
I have a huge problem with that, and SABC should be called to explain why African radio stations per se are not seen as worthy to cover such events like SAfm and Radio 2000, and how much they spent on the event. I would not be surprised to learn that the only black business that benefited from this exercise were only taxi drivers and drum majorites.

Forum created by caleb calthon thondlana
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