by Herman Manson (@marklives) I’m trying to figure out what the two, ahem, balls attached to the front of the fluffy pink bunny suit could 
possibly indicate.
“Oh – that was for our Halloween edition. It’s a penis and we put Justin Bieber in it,” says a voice from somewhere to my right.
I’m in the costume room of the only in show in SA that would feature a giant penis sporting the Bieber’s face on air – or as the ZANews website puts it ” the only news show more ghastly than the SABC.” It’s ZANews producer Thierry Cassuto and his teams’ literal take on the boy-man as an over-exposed sex symbol.
ZANews is the satirical puppet show produced online and for TopTV by Cassuto and his team. Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro) is a business partner in the venture. The day before this interview ZANews won the ‘Best Editorial Team’ category, amongst others, at the digital industry award show the Bookmarks Awards.
Further on in our impromptu tour of the studio and production facility I read “I kissed a boer and I liked it” written on the white board in the room the writers use to come up with each satirical gem.
“I kissed a boer and I liked it, the taste of his Castle lager, I kissed a boer just to try it, I hope the ANC Youth League won’t mind it,” sings the puppet version of Malema in an episode broadcast a couple of days after my visit.
Cassuto, who immigrated to South Africa from France in ’98, had wanted to do a show based on the British hit show Spitting Image. SA seemed the perfect place for political satire. “Here you have every shade of good and evil on the political spectrum,” says Cassuto.
Cassuto, who had launched his own production company, Both Worlds Pictures, wanted a collaborator punched into the nuances of South African politics and put in a call to Shapiro, who signed up, and so began the long, long, obstacle strewn road to a pilot episode.
With long, long road, Cassuto means 10 years, and with obstacle strewn, he means mostly the SABC, but also the old school business practices of the uncompetitive local TV industry.
He made it to ‘the top of Auckland Park (SABC HQ)’ three times just to be told by one senior government lackey exec after another that ‘our people are not ready for this.’
It’s an argument Cassuto passionately refutes. He says Spitting Image helped reignite interest and engagement in politics amongst the youth in the UK. Deals with ETV and M-Net also failed to materialise.
In 2009 the SABC finally agreed to finance a pilot episode but then backed out without airing it, trying to destroy the tapes in the process, and pulling an episode off its news actually programme Special Assignment covering ZANews twice, but ZANews had managed to retain IP on the puppets and concept (a point on which, he hints, deals with other broadcasters failed).
The pilot was finally leaked to the Mail & Guardian newspaper which broadcast it via its website. The TV show that never made it to TV became a web hit. Budget airline Kulula, known for its irreverent advertising, stepped in to back a daily web based show. For the next year and half they provided the team with 90% of their income. Then Kulula pulled the plug.
Cassuto crowd funded the business while trying (and failing) to secure new sponsors. “At some point every business is connected to government in corporate SA,” says Thierry. “They are applying self-censorship in a bid to ruffle no feathers.”
Today a large part of its revenue comes from TopTV which picked up the show in late 2011 (and which just went into business rescue) and broadcasts it on Sunday evenings on Top One. The deal with TopTV, and because ZANews owns its own IP, allows the company can claim the Film and TV rebate on production costs from the DTI, helping to make the project sustainable.
The business rescue is a point of concern for Cassuto, but he says the show will go on, in part thanks to support from NGOs like The Open Society Foundation and the Africa Technology and Transparency Initiative prepared to invest in media with social goals, and through a diversified revenue stream including subscriptions, events and even DVDs (before the market for DVDs collapsed).
Looking ahead ZANews is building its online platform out to become a hub for satire in the South African market. The aim is to take the puppet show daily all year round (it currently works on 26 week seasons) and to build an online network which pulls in cartoonists and writers to become a destination for news “that’s news without the depression that usually follows”.
The expanded ZANews Network combines text, video and images beyond those produced by the talented ZANews production and writing team. Columnists include Ndumiso Ncgobo, Chester Missing, Rebecca Davis, Marianne Thamm and Andrew Donaldson. Cassuto hints the team is working on a concept for a radio show.
The company currently employs 14 members of staff by as many as 50 can work on an episode of the puppet show. This includes puppeteers, voice artists, recording crews etc. The writing team consists of Thamm, a widely respected journalist, comedian and stand-up performer Anne Hirsch, journalist Andrew Donaldson as well as Cassuto.
Cassuto hopes South African brands will embrace the new network. “It’s not divisive, it brings people together, we have tens of thousands of people liking us on Facebook, and you won’t find angry comments on our work there,” says Cassuto. “We just don’t believe in holy cows and our show reflects the conversation South Africans are already having amongst themselves.”
ZANews is a uniquely South African product and worthy of support. It’s a multi-platform media site that can push campaigns into all sorts of interesting channels and maybe most importantly South Africans deserve the opportunity to engage on its unique political and social challenges using media that isn’t intimidating, or that lulls the kids to sleep.
And any case – you haven’t made it until you’ve been made into a puppet. And who could deny a comrade that?
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