Desert Island Discs

 

Subject: Desert Island Disks



Desert Island Discs is a doyen of BBC broadcasting, it’s a program which goes back to 1942 devised by Roy Plomley, it’s nearly as old as I am and has graced the airwaves for all those years relatively unchanged in a tried and simple format in which a personality chooses eight records they would chose to have with them if they were ship wrecked on a desert island. The records are interspersed with anecdotes of the interviewees life story, it’s simple, uncontrived and very effective and for those reasons  it’s still a joy to listen to after 79 years. This mornings personality was Prue Reith the South African who took over the role Mary Berry held on the television program “Great British Bake Off.”

The people who are asked to appear on the program come from all walks of life, from science to music from literature to, in this case a celebrity cook. The charm of the program is its wide breadth of individual talent, their life story’s and their choice of music is a simple mix. The program starts with  ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ a sort of hypnotic tune which represents the melodic sound of a slow rhythmic sea breaking on the the shore of this wistful, mythological desert island. It’s a peaceful, unadulterated repose from the hurly burly of our hectic lives and the sound of the opening bars is a signal for the nation to set aside what it’s doing, sit down and simply listen.

Prue Reith’s choice of music and her eclectic memories bridged her growing up in Cape Town to the strictures of Apartheid, from which she was separated by the families wealth and private schooling and importantly, being white. Her mother was an active member of ‘Black Sash‘ the liberals attempt to show the government not everyone accepted their ideological injustice and instead were, to different degrees, sympathetic to the black cause but not necessarily their empowerment.

In 1962 she and I crossed paths, she heading for the UK and me for Cape Town.  I, naively uninformed about the perverse racial containment policies of Mr Vorster, she no doubt shocked by the flower power age of sexual freedom so at odds with the Calvinistic idealism emanating from Pretoria.

Her music reflected the music of the 50s and 60s and echoed the sound of the Beatles/ Rolling Stone era with a touch of Aretha Franklin and Tennessee Ford, and  a piece of  Chopin thrown in for good measure. Her memories were of someone privileged and well educated with a rounded view of life which came from having money and living in the era of white exclusivity in sunny South Africa. This sense of entitlement and an objectivity which power brought  builds with it  a sense of emotional security which many South Africans had in those days. They were Southern Africa’s ‘chosen people’  much as the Israeli sees himself entitled through a biblical context, to be ‘gods chosen people’ which can lead to a sense of arrogance, vis a vis others. This arrogance or implied right to dictate events has historically been shown to bring trouble on the heads of those who feel that way. In South Africa white people now play second fiddle to the power of the democratic vote which only shows the implausibility of equating everyone as the same through a ballot box. The literacy rate in the townships is extremely  low, as is employment, both fundamental in determining the security and objectivity in the voting process. Its the source of the ANCs power in a democracy which is defined, as all democracies are, by a head count. There are never any tests such as obtaining a driving licence for your suitability to drive, X marks your choice, its a binary, one or the other but of course common sense tells you it’s not binary but shaded into many considerations.

All voting systems use many assumptions, not least the fitness to appraise but it isn’t so long ago that I would have been excluded, as would all women, only the landed gentry assured their place on the voters roll.  

Fairness and hard fought emancipation won the day and it’s sad to see so many people refuse to turn out on polling bay sighting the corruption of the political class.  It was just so when the gentry were totally in charge and we have come a long way from then.