Days are dark at SABC

Two-and-a-half years ago, on Christmas Eve, my wife and I went to the Kitty and Puppy Haven, a rescue centre for dogs and cats in Midrand. Keri-Ann wanted a doggie. We came home with two of them. They chose us.

Laddie climbed halfway up the wire fence in his pen to say hello to us, hanging there until the gate was opened. He’s a terrier of sorts, we suspect some Yorkie and bits of other cuteness. He had been found scavenging in a taxi rank. Queenie was spinning around slowly, a little uncertain of me. She had spent the last few years of her life in a puppy mill, locked up in a cage producing litter after litter. She was a dachshund with the face of a Labrador, an act of congress that still seems incomprehensible.

Queenie is the blackest of black dogs. She absorbs light. We could not find her the other night. I walked from the lounge to the bedrooms and then back again. She had been in the lounge the entire time, curled up on a black fleece blanket, black-on-black invisible.

We did not know Queenie could bark before we moved into our new house last year. When we lived in the loft she was a quiet thing. With her own garden to play in, she found her voice. She barks challenges and greetings to dogs being walked past the house. She barks at the pigeons that come down to nick her food. It’s a deep bark, out of sync with her size. It’s a good bark.

Our new home is slightly further away from the SABC than our old loft. Queenie, who loves a walk as long as it is not a long walk for her chunky torso and little legs, could have made it there and back with no fuss. Queenie would have been a good accessory for Black Friday, when journalists stood outside the public broadcaster in sympathy with how their colleagues were being forced to make sunshine out of cloudy weather.

I thought of those I know in the sports departments at the SABC, the hard and tireless workers. Many of them are freelancers. The Durban July coverage a few years ago was put together almost entirely by freelancers, from presenters to camera operators. Despite the madness of their boss, they have kept on working, kept on presenting and kept on informing. Many will not speak out against the daftness. They dare not. They have families to feed.

These are dark days at the SABC. There is fear in the air and blood on the floor. They are locked up as Queenie once was, producing litter after litter. We can only hope that one day soon, they too will find their voices and that they will bark with no fear. - The Star