Actor Calls The SABC Useless

In an interview reported by Daily Sun yesterday, prolific actor Hamilton Dlamini lashed out at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The unhappy actor told the paper that he's had with the organisation. 

The actor is gatvol with the SABC and does not mince his words in lambasting the organisation for incompetence, going as far as to call its directors clueless!

These are some of the quotes from the interview:

“Management are only window dressers. It’s all about making money. They don’t care about what happens next,” 

“During the apartheid years, they used to complain about budgets – and it is still about budgets, while producers pocket the money.”

After more than 20 years in the business the star informed the Daily Sun that TV has made no difference to his life. 

“All television did for me was to pay some bills here and there,”

So does this mean Hamilton is done with television? 

“I don’t want to go back to television acting. But if I do, I will do my own thing. It will certainly not be with the SABC. I’d rather go to Mzansi Magic.”

“These people don’t care about quality. They just rush through the script – they think a second take is a waste of tape!” 

“They mess up careers and they don’t understand their mandate. If it was up to me, I would never go back to TV!”

According to him, theatre is the way to go if you want to grow as an actor in this country. He told the paper: 

“For now, I am in theatre and I love it. They pay you in theatre, they protect you and help you develop you as an actor,” 

Naturally SABC had to defend itself against his scathing comments. The organisation's spokesman Kaizer Kganyago told the paper that the corporation doesn’t employ actors so they cannot be accountable for them.

“SABC employs and pays production companies that hire and pay the actors. That’s why you will never find an actor’s payslip made out by the SABC,”  

“We are not a profit-making organisation. We can’t be worried about one actor who is angry or bitter about whatever. We produce a quality product for the public. He is being subjective.”

Phew! you gotta give it to Hamilton for standing up for what he believes in. It is not easy to take on a big corporation like SABC especially if your livelihood depends on it. What he raises are same sentiments that are shared by almost 80% of the artists in this country but few of them have the guts to say it publicly. 

Of course laying all the blame on the SABC is not fair as the organisation has to deal with a culture that is not willing to evolve and get out of the tendencies of putting money before producing good service. 

On the other hand actors are also partly to blame as I stated here. If they all came together and became a unit they could demand better service from the channel or any organisation that works with them. 

Unfortunately, people just like talking but when it come to take action, very few are willing to put their preach in closed doors to practice.