My Final Answer

By Jeremy Maggs

Jeremy Maggs has been a journalist and a television and radio presenter for over 30 years, with a front-row seat to major news events in the run-up to and during the birth of South Africa’s democracy and beyond. He was also the host of the hugely successful television show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and so became a household name.

He has worked with some of the country’s most respected journalists, interviewed many famous people from around the world, and been at the forefront of developments as the craft morphed into a social media hydra. From Nelson Mandela’s release from prison to his death in 2013, and throughout the many political and news events that have gripped South Africans, Jeremy has been in the thick of the newsrooms that covered the stories.

Written in an engaging and self-deprecating style, this book is an unexpectedly funny and candid, behind-the-scenes account of what was unfolding in those newsrooms as the stories broke, peppered with anecdotes around those involved in making those stories happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Release date: May 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781770107779

Book preview

‘A pithy, insightful and often hilarious glimpse behind the scenes of modern newsrooms, as told by South Africa’s best-known TV news anchor.’

– SALLY BURDETT, Anchor of SA Tonight, eNCA

‘Jeremy captures the standard nuttiness of the newsroom with wit, self-deprecating observations and unvarnished honesty. My Final Answer is a funny, wry and often-poignant wander through a truly spectacular career – recommended reading for would-be media types.’

– CHARLOTTE KILBANE, editor of Eyewitness News, Cape Town

‘If Jeremy hadn’t explicitly prohibited the phrase, I would call this the first draft of his personal history. He brings us ringside, behind the camera lens, and shares his unique vantage point overlooking South Africa’s extraordinary post-apartheid journey. But this isn’t just a soaring and sometimes searing book about news and the people who broadcast it. If you’re interested in big business, public relations, quiz shows, world travel and food (much of it free), Jeremy will satisfy your appetites with a page-turning memoir that holds all of us – himself included – to account. It’s a gripping read, just as you’d expect from one of the world’s great broadcasting legends.’

– SIMON MARKS, president and chief correspondent, Feature Story News

For Dad, who didn’t force me into a banking career.

For Mom, who took me to the library. A lot.

First published in 2021

by Pan Macmillan South Africa

Private Bag X19

Northlands

Johannesburg

2116

www.panmacmillan.co.za

ISBN 978-1-77010-776-2

e-ISBN 978-1-77010-777-9

Text © Jeremy Maggs 2021

Foreword © Iman Rappetti 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Editing by Sean Fraser

Proofreading by Sally Hines

Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg

Cover design by publicide

Cover photograph by Gareth Edwards

..... Foreword.

‘… nothing in life shall sever,

The chain that is round us now.’

This opening quote is from the sixth stanza of the famous ‘Eton Boating Song’, which is now over 150 years old. It will forever be part of the opening soundtrack to my broadcasting relationship with Jeremy Maggs. Each night before the camera jib expertly swooped down and our executive producer cued us into News Night , Jeremy and I would do a little pre-show mood-setter. For him it was the British college hymnal with its rousing choir, and for me it was the church of rap with a preacher by the name of Tupac Shakur, much to the amusement of our floor and gallery crew. And while our music preferences represented extreme opposites, we managed to create a broadcasting symphony.

I first encountered Jeremy while watching him on television as he mouthed the iconic words ‘Is that your final answer?’, while I was pregnant with my second child and miserable with sickness. At the time, I remember wondering what his life must be like as the host of one of the most famous game shows in the country.

Then I met him for real, at the now-infamous ANC national conference in Polokwane in 2007. Jeremy was leaning against a wire fence bordering the sprawling estate that was the SABC’s broadcast nerve centre, which dwarfed eNCA’s humble Greyhound city liner-looking outside broadcast bus. We struck up a brief conversation about the underlying machinations of the conference and wished each other well.

I could not have anticipated that not long afterwards we would be hosting eNCA’s prime-time news programme together, a relationship that one industry commentator described as follows: ‘the beloved duos’ on-air chemistry in the age of 24-hour TV news channels was exceptionally rare …’ I certainly hope that sentiment rang true for many viewers because Jeremy and I resolved right at the start that our only competition would be to make each other look and sound better. This included doing hair checks and straightening collars and ties to ensure that there were no unnecessary distractions to the viewers. But deeper than that, we supported each other through five years of sometimes very difficult interviews by not trying to ‘outclever’ one other, an unfortunate and cringeworthy trait in so many on-air pairings.

In this book, which I couldn’t help reading in Jeremy’s voice, you may have questions about his time in the military, you may be incredulous at how he is able to weave so many big themes together with a storytelling skill that unfolds with such ease, and you may be curious about what his dreams and nightmares are made of considering the sheer span of his career and the arc of events he has covered.

You will see a side of Jeremy that, like Clark Kent, bursts through the buttons of his collared shirt and reveals the naughty wit and humour that only fleetingly peeps through his on-air news persona. And you will experience an inspiring walk through so many big, euphoric and tragic moments that set the architecture for the country South Africa would become after apartheid.

For journalists and media practitioners, this book is a refresher course in daring, caring and remaining a true ally to ‘the story’. And it is also a tender thank you to his beloved Anne, Alex, Laura and Jameson (the Easter Roast Burglar).

My friend, the chain is round us now. Thank you. Broadcasting with you was always a sheer delight.

Iman Rappetti

Johannesburg, March 2021

..... A short

navigation guide.

I feel it’s only fair to warn you that on occasion the timeline of this narrative jumps around a little. One minute you might be in the sunny South of France, the next minute back in South Africa. What tended to happen was that one recollection prompted another, and so down the rabbit hole we tumble – until I remember how we got there in the first place. And then we have to turn around and go back. If you think that’s exhausting and confusing, imagine how I feel. So, let’s begin with a handy timeline that should steer you off the side streets and back onto the highway of the story.

1961 – The South African rand replaces the pound; South Africa becomes a republic; Umkhonto we Sizwe is established; and Jeremy Maggs is born.

1966 – South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd is assassinated in parliament by Dimitri Tsafendas; he is replaced by another tyrant, John Vorster; and Jeremy Maggs starts primary school.

1968 – The Marylebone Cricket Club tour of South Africa is cancelled when South Africa refuses to accept the presence of South African-born Basil D’Oliveira in the English side; and Jeremy Maggs triumphantly wins the sack race at his first sports day.

1972 – Actor Burt Reynolds poses nude for the centrefold of the April edition of Cosmopolitan; and Jeremy Maggs wins a school prize for ‘diligence and application’ (the last time that will ever happen).

1974 – New Zealand imposes a blanket ban on sports teams from South Africa; Anneline Kriel is crowned Miss World; and Jeremy Maggs starts high school, where he will perform poorly at maths and fail to make either the first or second XI cricket teams.

1979 – Following the Information Scandal, John Vorster resigns as state president of South Africa; and Jeremy Maggs leaves for Chicago on a year-long student exchange programme, where he will meet a future president and start considering a career in radio.

1984 – Archbishop Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; and Jeremy Maggs joins the Eastern Province Herald in Port Elizabeth, where he will get his first newspaper byline for what he thought was a Pulitzer Prize-winning story.

1986 – Pay television channel M-Net is launched; and Jeremy Maggs joins the Sunday Tribune newspaper in Durban, where he will pose nude for an art class.

1988 – Al-Qaeda is formed by Osama bin Laden; singer PJ Powers performs at a charity event in Zimbabwe with Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte, upsets the National Party government and is banned from radio and television for a year; and Jeremy Maggs joins Radio 702 and adjusts badly to waking at 2.30 am to write news bulletins.

1993 – FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; the interim South African Constitution is approved by parliament; and Jeremy Maggs leaves journalism for what he thinks will be the wonderful, highly lucrative world of public relations (he lasts about 11 months before returning to radio).

1999 – Thabo Mbeki becomes the second democratic president of South Africa; South African Cathy O’Dowd becomes the first woman to summit Mount Everest from both the north and south sides; and Jeremy Maggs becomes the co-lead presenter of am2day, a three-hour television breakfast show on SABC 2 (that will flame out after a year).

2000 – Nicky Boje, Hansie Cronje and Herschelle Gibbs, along with other international cricket players and Indian bookmakers, are accused by the New Delhi police of cheating, fraud and criminal conspiracy in alleged match-fixing; and Jeremy Maggs becomes the presenter of the hit television show Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and learns that the phrase ‘My Final Answer’ will follow him all his life.

2008 – The ANC recalls President Thabo Mbeki; and Jeremy Maggs, along with Redi Tlhabi, launches News Night and the new 24-hour news channel eNews Channel Africa, later to become eNCA.

2020 – COVID-19 cuts a swathe of destruction and death across the world; and Jeremy Maggs still finds himself behind the television news camera, albeit with less hair.

And so, as we begin our trip through media land, let’s start with a short story about a pilot.

..... 1.

Many people have far grander stories as to how they found themselves in their chosen profession. I know someone who flies intercontinental jets for a living and talks teary-eyed about a heroic relative who was shot down over Korea and emerged, engulfed in flames from his crippled F-86 Sabre fighter plane, clutching a singed picture of his pregnant wife before dropping stone dead.

This person tells me that the story was his career loadstar, the one that eventually guided him to the captain’s seat of a 747. I must stress that I sense this story may have been mightily tweaked and massaged – as an old news editor of mine used to say – because it is inevitably related after six Peronis around a summer Sunday braai (barbecue). When he’s not flying the next day, he begged me to add.

But the tale has a certain je ne sais quoi, does it not? Especially when you compare it to mine, which involves a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea tumbling onto my Speedo-encased teenage crotch, causing as much searing pain as I imagine experienced by the aforementioned hero-pilot who crash-landed near the Suwon Air Base in 1954.

We all have teachers we loved and hated. I loathed one particular mathematics teacher with undiluted vitriol. He was a mean-spirited little man who doubled as the senior school cricket coach. Given that I was appalling at both his vocational disciplines, he treated me with sarcasm and scorn – not advisable teaching methods for serial underachievers such as me.

His big thing every year was to run the Comrades Marathon long before the Nike Air Max era made the slog a little more bearable, and the sight of him wincing and hobbling up a flight of stairs after the event filled me with so much joy that I was given to loud, impolite observations designed to be heard.

His final revenge was to give me an ‘I’ grade for algebra – at the time, the lowest mark ever recorded in the South African schooling system. It still is, I think. At a parent evening, he told mine I would never amount to anything, either in the classroom or on the sports field.

An English teacher, who said the same thing to my parents, was a raging alcoholic with an unhealthy fondness for the cane. On a single excruciating occasion, I was made to bend over and touch my toes and I could have sworn I heard a mewling of pleasure. Although that could also have been the school cat that liked to watch, so let me not cast a stone of perversion on the grave of a weak man.

Interestingly, he also told my parents that the best I could hope for was to teach. Now would that not be a fine example of irony? I don’t know. I never became an English teacher.

But occupying the classroom next door was Sue Krige, a fresh-out-of-Wits activist and rebellious history teacher, who managed with deft aplomb and graphic storytelling to weave in the evils of apartheid and the outrage of unequal education to a classroom of white youths, all being forcibly and quietly indoctrinated by a system known as Christian National Education. And that was in 1976.

It’s worth mentioning that while teachers were trying to convince us that racial separation was a fine strategy and that young men should be looking forward to national service, at the Morris Isaacson High School, some 40 kilometres away in Soweto, a young man with the most solid moral compass I have ever encountered in a human being was having a diametrically different experience to mine as he fought the injustice of an imposed language of education. He was also being taught to fear and loathe the army I was being so well prepared for.

Years later our paths would cross at Talk Radio 702 and then at eNCA, where we currently and proudly hold the titles of oldest presen­ters at the station. I must point out, though, that while Dan Moyane might be a little older than me, he’s in far better shape and has a better taste in suits and ties than I do.

But back to Sue Krige . . . On occasion, Sue would invite a coterie of pupils to her house, telling our parents it was to prepare for examinations but, in reality, to lead a spirited conversation around politics and current affairs. I was never quite sure why I cracked the nod, given that I was a straight-C student in her class. But just as well I was included.

It was when a scalding mug of tea took leave of my hand and headed south, much to the mirth of the others who revelled in my pain and embarrassment, that my life-direction was set. In writhing agony, I frantically tried to weave a story as to how this had happened, citing made-up references to the poor state of the global wicker-chair industry and whether it wasn’t time to investigate the corrupt supply chains of all retail outlets. And a career epiphany occurred.

‘Maggs,’ I recall Sue saying, ‘that’s a fine story. Have you thought of journalism?’

I hadn’t, in fact, given it a thought. Instead, I felt I had a chance of playing professional cricket in England, if only I could hit the damn ball. But the seed was planted.

Years later, Sue confided that she knew I was destined for the media because of my innate ability to make up essay quotes and attribute them to important but imaginary people. Apparently, I was bust at my first attempt, but she had let me run with a long fishing line of deceit, purely for her own amusement.

Come on, who wouldn’t believe this gem on the abolition of slavery in the Cape in 1834: ‘As Lord Belvedere of Merrydown said, It is now time for all right-minded men to say enough is enough and cast aside the imprisonment of these grim and downtrodden souls.’ And to think that was only worth a C!

But, like all good teachers, Sue lit a small fire, seeded an idea, and it was up to me to follow through. And, of course, I did absolutely nothing at all. My ability to weave a clever narrative on the fly had resulted in me winning a post-matric, exchange-student scholarship to the United States, and Chicago, Illinois, beckoned.

Now, when you are 17 and thrust into a new culture – and by new culture I mean beer (Coors), baseball (The Cubs) and cheerleaders (Mary Mazinsky) – very little thought is given to your long-term future. I diligently frittered away 12 months as a senior at Barrington High, where my only notable accomplishment was to take an English elective called Modern Humour and educate a group of Midwestern idiots on the subtleties of Monty Python. I also took to Top 40 music radio in a big way. The station of choice was WLS – The Big 89 – and I recall writing to my long-suffering mother and informing her that when I returned to South Africa I planned on being a disc jockey. She, in turn, confused this with an equestrian career and kindly pointed out in the way only mothers can that did I not think I was a little heavy for a racehorse? We never returned to the subject but I like to think it helped shape a later career decision that resulted in 10 years at Radio 702, eventually ending up as director of news.

Like most white men of my age, I prefer to gloss over two years of national service. Suffice to say that had I engaged in any real form of violent combat against the so-called Swart Gevaar, I would have been of far more use to the enemy than my own platoon.

I was simply unable to shoot at a target without wincing and shrieking like a Saturday-night drag queen, which meant a round of ammunition aimed at a target was more likely to hit an instructor or a passing tank.

And, to compound my ineptitude, I said whimsically one night to an overbearing gauleiter of an instructor that I didn’t think the nutria brown uniform was my best colour. I was immediately marked as either subversive, crazy or homosexual, or all three, and spent the next year filing forms at Defence headquarters in Pretoria – I assume, to keep everyone out of harm’s way and to keep an eye on me.

The complicated clerical task, I discovered, was best aided by copious amounts of marijuana, smoked in the company of my closest childhood friend, Kevin Carter, who also found himself in uniform.

Many years later Kevin would take his own life after winning a Pulitzer for photography for a haunting image of a vulture stalking a starving toddler in famine-ravaged Sudan. Kevin and I would also work professionally together when I joined the Johannesburg bureau of the Sunday Tribune in the late eighties. By then he was a revered member of the so-called Bang Bang Club – a troupe of embedded township war photographers who documented the agony and tragedy of South Africa’s pre-democracy civil war.

As stoned and reluctant soldiers, on rare nights or weekends off, Kevin and I would imagine we were journalists, pile into my green Mini Clubman and cruise Hillbrow looking for stories and photographs. I was among the first to pick up on Kevin’s precise eye for an image and his rare ability to find real emotion in a single frame.

On one seminal night at a dive in Rocky Street in Yeoville in Johannesburg, I recall telling him that I thought I should pursue this reporting dream of mine. It was either that or a career in financial services, where my father – a Nedbank lifer – had told me if I worked really hard and took all my exams, I could be the branch manager in suburban Edenvale by the time I was 50.

In journalism, I had found my métier. My future. My destiny.

‘Best you study it,’ said Kevin, ‘otherwise it’s the bank for you, Boet, and you know you can’t do maths for shit.’

..... 2.

Among white, middle-class, English-speaking households in the Johannesburg of the seventies, there was a distinct daily newspaper divide. As my father said, you were either an Argus man ( The Star ) or a South African Associated Newspapers man (the Rand Daily Mail ).

I was brought up firmly with the former – a safe, conservative with a small ‘c’ afternoon read that my dad would bring home from work. Naturally I paged first to the classified English