{"id":9277,"date":"2010-06-06T12:25:07","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T10:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=9277"},"modified":"2010-06-06T16:13:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-06T14:13:19","slug":"world-cup-puts-south-africa-into-focus-some-bad-mostly-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/world-cup-puts-south-africa-into-focus-some-bad-mostly-good\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup puts South Africa into focus, some bad, mostly good!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The World Cup has always been said to have the benefit of showcasing South Africa, and the world’s media are descending on the country to prepare profiles of South Africa.\u00a0 Some of it is negative, but much so far has been positive, especially in showing off the beauty of Cape Town.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0South Africa-based correspondent for SkyNEWS<\/strong> seems to be in the townships every day, negatively reporting about the poverty of these residents, while the\u00a0‘rich’ sector of the country benefits from the World Cup, it is\u00a0highlighted continuously.<\/p>\n

Much more positive reporting is coming from\u00a0ZDF<\/strong>, Germany’s largest TV station,\u00a0which\u00a0is pulling out all the stops to showcase South Africa.\u00a0 Yesterday, for example, the station did a 24 hour broadcast on its online channel, about our country, a conglomeration of various documentaries the station had produced on previous occasions.\u00a0 Unfortunately an on-line broadcast is not as powerful as a television broadcast, but it will have attracted a young audience.\u00a0\u00a0 ZDF put a lot of advertising muscle behind the 24-hour broadcast, so it created strong awareness amongst ZDF viewers.\u00a0\u00a0 The country brand\u00a0‘Suedafrika’ is definitely top of mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However,\u00a090 minutes of the on-line broadcast was broadcast on ZDF TV<\/strong> throughout the day, in three sets of 30 minutes each.\u00a0\u00a0 The programme started with beautiful shots of Table Mountain, and then of Cape Town filmed from Table Mountain.\u00a0\u00a0 It was said that a trip up the mountain by cable car is a must for every visitor.\u00a0\u00a0 Then the\u00a0documentary jumped in contrast to a school in Wuppertal, showing children in a boarding school having to brush their teeth in an irrigation canal, because there are not enough facilities in the hostel for all the children.\u00a0 Then it moved to showing burning tyres, set alight by taxi drivers protesting against the new BRT bus system to be introduced.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A township resident was interviewed, who positively stated that he would never leave his township : ‘I do not want to change my life for anything’, despite the poor facilities in the township.\u00a0\u00a0 Children receiving a swimming lesson in Khayelitsha were filmed, and a sangoma throwing the bones interviewed.\u00a0\u00a0 Then the production team interviewed Pieter-Dirk Uys, who initially spoke in German, but switched to English when he spoke about how dangerous it was for him to have mocked the Government when he first started, and melodramatically stated that had he been black, he would have been imprisoned!\u00a0 (He did not tell the interviewer that he has declared Evita se Perron in Darling soccer-free during the World Cup!).<\/p>\n

Then the action moved to Captain Crash, who chases after stolen cars and minibus taxis in his helicopter\u00a0(I have seen this insert twice already), and then to a Soweto-based\u00a0Event Manager Tshepiso Mohlala, who is involved in the organisation of the World Cup Concert on 10 June.\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of airtime was given to a German wedding co-ordinator from Wedding Concepts, who was organising a\u00a0wedding at Allee Bleue outside Franschhoek.<\/p>\n

Capetonian and ex-Miss South Jo-Ann Strauss features regularly in a\u00a0ZDF TV<\/strong> advert for the World Cup Concert, from which Strauss and revered ZDF talk-show host Thomas Gottschalk will be presenting for ZDF.\u00a0 She speaks near-perfect German, her partner being from Munich, saying: ‘Suedafrika begruesst die Fussballwelt’ (South Africa welcomes the football nations).<\/p>\n

Other programmes, like ‘Traumstaedte’ (Dream Cities), start off positively, with beautiful views of Camps Bay beach, the Promenade, the Bay Hotel, the Waterfront, but soon move to the townships, and interviews are conducted with extremely negative residents, talking about the crime and drug situation in the townships.\u00a0\u00a0 The ZDF<\/strong> reporters talk about\u00a0Cape Town’s ‘Hell and Paradise’ not the lasting impression we would like to create marketing-wise amongst international viewers.<\/p>\n

‘Traumflug durch Afrika:\u00a0Von Kapstadt nach Kenia’ (Dream flight through Africa: from Cape Town to Kenya) was far more positive, documenting a Eurocopter pilot flying over beautiful Cape Town (Table Mountain and\u00a0Cape Point), flying 3 meters above the sea, the Garden Route to George and Knysna for some golf and oysters at the Dry Dock restaurant, to the Addo Park for a safari, to St Francis, Coffee Bay, the Hole in the Wall, and then off to Lesotho, reaching his end destination of\u00a0Kenya.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a cooking program with some of Germany’s top chefs, the cooking stars all wore German soccer jerseys, to show their pride in and support for the German team, indirectly attracting attention to the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Given that Cape Town Tourism has appointed PR companies in Germany and the U K, and in other European countries, we trust that the city’s tourism body will help influence the content of documentaries of our city, and that they show the tourist side of Cape Town, without having to focus so much on the townships.<\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Cup has always been said to have the benefit of showcasing South Africa, and the world’s media are descending on the country to prepare profiles of South Africa.\u00a0 Some of it is negative, but much so far has been positive, especially in showing off the beauty of Cape Town. A\u00a0South Africa-based correspondent for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,124,22,21,11],"tags":[5080,577,114,5063,32370,661,32366,85,5069,32378,5076,5066,5062,5078,5079,5067,32369,5075,864,560,2243,3189,5065,119,5060,683,3576,5081,346,5068,32388,5071,5077,117,4,5073,5,1675,5070,5061,482,5074,32373,531,5072,5064,748],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t