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couldn’t have won best actress too. It was fun counting how many different people in her speech she loved “more than anything in the world”, but it did become a little morbid when she thanked her cousin Keith, who’d been dead these past years. “I miss you, Keith,” she declared into the cameras, which raised the inevitable questions about whether the dearly departed watch the Oscars, and if so, whether M-Net or SABC3’s coverage is favoured in the afterlife. I am inclined towards M-Net – it may be more long-winded than the SABC’s edited highlights, but you’ve got to pass the time in eternity somehow.

Starship Election: Space 1999
    SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 6 JUNE 1999
    T HE DEVIL HAS all the best tunes, M-Net has all the best sport, but the SABC – bless ’em – had the 1999 elections. I woke at 7.45 on Tuesday morning and turned on the telly, just in time to hear Vuyo Mbuli say: “The time is now 6.45.”
    Vuyo, looking neat and shiny as a newly peeled egg, was the left prong of the Election ’99 broadcasting trident; Nadia Levin, looking confidently bouffant, was the right: but the real star of the show was the IEC centre, lurking in the background with screens flickering and counters turning, like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. It has been a long time since an SABC production had such a lavish set, and Vuyo and Nadia weren’t about to let the moment pass unnoticed.
    â€œHere we are in the very hub of the elections,” said Vuyo, for the first of many times.
    â€œYes, Vuyo, this is indeed the very hub,” agreed Nadia.
    â€œEveryone here has a chair,” marvelled Vuyo, as the camera panned over rows of empty seating.
    It was true: even Graeme Hart, the weather guy, had his own chair. Unfortunately, he didn’t have his own microphone. His voice was like the faraway grumble of an approaching drought. When they did manage to mike him up, his voice was sombre in its appreciation of the magnitude of his meteorological contribution to democracy. Bereft of visuals, he was forced to make the climate come alive with facial expressions.
    Fortunately for Graeme and viewer alike, the weather was fine. He hunched unhappily in his chair, blazer ruffling about his neck. There is nothing more poignant than a weather guy without his synoptic chart.
    Nor was Vuyo inclined to let the humiliation end there. “I’ve been watching Graeme for years,” he announced jovially, “and he always does it standing up. Maybe Nadia can discuss with him what it’s like to do it sitting down.” If she had, I would have lodged an official complaint with the IEC. Wisely, the broken Hart made subsequent appearances squarely on two feet.
    The SABC’s was an ambitious operation, with outside units, roving reporters, even the odd bar graph. Yet more impressively, the presenters have picked up an international tip or two: they shrewdly adopted the CNN strategy of spending far more time telling us what in-depth coverage we’re getting, than actually providing coverage itself.
    Mind you, there wasn’t much coverage to give. To the great satisfaction of everyone who isn’t a journalist, the elections were as marrow-achingly boring as elections should be. Still, Vuyo soldiered forth undaunted.
    â€œWe’ve had some exciting moments already,” he enthused. “Just now we saw Bantu Holomisa cast his vote!” As a highlight, it was meagre pickings, but we watched it over and again throughout the next hour, in glorious slow motion. Oh, wait a minute, that’s not slow motion, that’s the normal speed at which people vote. I can think of very few people who could make the act of dropping a slip of paper into a cardboard box look interesting. Grethe Fox, maybe, and Walter Matthau. John Cleese, if he did that funny walk. Marthinus van Schalkwyk and Bantu Holomisa? No.
    For variety, the studio kept optimistically crossing