On the back of the South African national anthem being so breathtakingly butchered before Friday night’s Test match in France, Contributing Editor Dan Nicholl speaks ‘exclusively’ to the President of the French Rugby Federation, Pierre Camou, about just how Nkosi Sikilel’ iAfrika came to be savaged on global television.

Dan: Congratulations on Friday’s victory; well deserved win, and you were the better team, so we can’t complain. But what on earth happened with the South African anthem? It was atrocious!

Pierre Camou: I know, and we are very embarrassed. But the intentions were good, I assure you. We wanted to draw from Africa’s culture, and also to help someone to have the opportunity to do something special. And that’s why we ran the competition.

Dan: You ran a competition for the right to sing the anthem?

Pierre Camou: Correct. We knew what we wanted: someone who looked vaguely African, sort of knew the words, and could sing quite well. We had a lot of street people, homeless people, immigrants, all coming to try out. To be honest, though, it wasn’t going well, and I thought we would have to use our South African option.

Dan: You had a South African option?

Pierre Camou: Yes, a guy called Kurt Darren. But we played a CD of his music that Oregan Hoskins had sent me, and it made my children cry and the cat run away. So we had to find someone here.

Dan: Kurt will be delighted... So how did you finally find the aberration who performed on Friday?

Pierre Camou: It seemed like a miracle; perhaps I should have known it was too good to be true. One of the homeless people who arrived at the trials had brought his own tape recorder, and performed flawlessly. He told us he was a street vendor from Kenya, and that when he was much younger he’d won a number of karaoke championships in Nairobi; he also said he was shortlisted to be a contestant on Ugandan Idols early next year. He sounded great, and we were convinced we had our singer, especially when he told us that he’d visited the same Eastern Cape village where Bob Marley grew up. If only I’d known then...

Dan: Known what? That you were about to pay a homeless person €50 to perform drunken karaoke in front of millions of people?

Pierre Camou: We’d actually budgeted €100, but we didn’t pay him, not when we found out who he really was.

Dan: So he wasn’t a Kenyan street vendor, then?

Pierre Camou: No, although I wish he had been. Turned out he was one half of the old Milli Vanilli, and the tape he’d brought along had the words on already. He lip-synched the whole way through his audition, and we didn’t pick it up at all; it was only when the anthems started that we realised he couldn’t sing at all. I haven’t been that embarrassed since the nude photos of Michalak hit the internet.

Dan: Unbelievable. So an unqualified apology to the South African people, then?

Pierre Camou: Completely. Sebastian Chabal offered to eat him after the game, but he’d already disappeared, so there’s nothing we can do but ask for forgiveness. Apology accepted?

Dan: Apology accepted. And we can’t wait to see you for your next Test match in South Africa. Breyton Paulse released an album towards the end of his rugby career, and it sold literally dozens of copies. He’s the perfect man to sing La Marseillaise before the game...

This column is a parody and is not intended to offend or belittle the persons depicted.

RSS

Digg

de.li.cious

facebook

LATEST FEATURES

The anthem explained In a global 'exclusive' Dan Nicholl discovers how the SA anthem came to be savaged on television.

An open letter to Benni! iafrica.com’s Khaya Ndubane pens an open letter to the unfit Bafana star Benni McCarthy.

Sports wrap Spend the weekend taking singing lessons? Catch up on all the sporting action right here!