Mandela in a Cringy Accent

Gayle worked in accounting. She  wore plaid skirts and spoke proper english with a gentle lilting brogue. She was one of the most placid people I have ever met – when she became frustrated she’d roll her eyes and sigh, then laugh it off with a shake of her head.  One day she came into the studio nostrils flaring, eyes aflame. She’d just called up a restaurant to make a booking and the owner had done the whole Och Aye Scottish accent thing. Gayle was incandescent. ‘How dare he,’ she raged, ‘people think it’s funny to mock my accent, but it’s just plain rude.’

I haven’t seen Gayle in more than a decade, but she flashed into my mind when I tuned into ‘Mandela in His Own Words ‘ on BBC Radio 4 tonight, not because Fergal Keene, the BBCs African Correspondent who complied the programme, is a countryman of Gayles, but because, for reasons I can’t fathom, they decided to have an actor read entries from Mandela’s personal journals in the most cringe worthy approximation of his accent I have ever heard. It felt like they were mocking him and it made me feel a bit like I did when I watched Lethal Weapon 3 (or was it 4) and the baddies were meant to be South African, but my cringe response was amplified because Mandela is an icon, a hero, and to rip his accent off seemed disrespectful, to say the least.

I know South African comedians rip his accent all the time, but they do it well. They have to, because it’s simply not funny unless its pitch perfect and there’s nothing worse for a stand up comic than to be faced with poker-faced audience. This programme, however, wasn’t meant to be funny. It was deadly serious, though it might have been improved if they’d hired Trevor Noah or Barry Hilton to read out Mandela’s own words in Mandela’s own voice.  But, let’s face facts, our national pride’s voice isn’t the best for oration, it’s kind of croaky, a bit fuzzy around the edges, like a badly tuned radio. At the best of times he sounds like he’s got a hair ball stuck in his larynx. So, all things considered, it might have been better to have his words read out by an actor with a deep powerful voice, like Morgan Freeman (who played him in Invictus – I haven’t seen it, but I believe it’s quite good). Instead, the BBC chose to try (unsuccessfully) to make it sound like Mandela was thinking aloud. Thanks to their piss poor attempt, I missed most of the programme’s content. I spent the entire half and hour resisting the urge to shout,  ‘Just read it in your normal voice, we get it, it’s Mandela’s words, we don’t need the crappy accent, we’re not stupid,’ in a Scottish brogue, but that, in Gayle’s own words, would be just plain rude.