You have the Right To Win

Munya Vomo

We all love TV game shows, from the fun Friends Like These where groups of friends fight for their honour through some silly games, to the more serious ones like Fear Factor where individuals go through tasks like eating live roaches to jumping off buildings. In general, TV games, especially the South Africans ones, are focused on having fun and nothing beyond that. It’s not like we have Jeopardy or anything like that on local TV. As long as you can sing or dance, you qualify for most of SA’s game shows.

That’s why you need to watch The Right to Win, an alternate show that shows you intelligent South Africans who know what South Africa’s democracy is all about. “What?” you may ask. Well, with all the “mustfall” demonstrations, the “paybackthemoney” saga and eToll defiance, there is a lot of unrest in South Africa today. This, then, begs the question: are we truly in a democratic state? In fact, what is democracy all about and is it something that we can achieve together?

Hosted by Pabi Moloi, The Right to Win hosts contestants who have a good knowledge of the democratic anatomy of South Africa and the local government elections, for example.

In its second season, The Right to Win will feature two celebrity-led teams that will compete for a grand cash prize by testing their knowledge of our democracy today.

The celebrity in each team is the leader and they have two other unknown contestants to help them out. The grand prize – a cool R10 000 – is won by the team that can outscore the opponents.

Some of the celebrities to look out for include actor Terence Bridgett, 5FM DJ Sureshnie Rider and singer Nomsa Mazwai.

This show could have been improved if the celebrities were to do it all by themselves. They are always opinionated and so it would have been great to see how they do in a real ‘know-it-all’ contest.

In the words of the SABC’s Group Communications chief, Kaizer Kganyago: “The SABC has a responsibility to fulfil our mandate of educating the public about our democracy and the importance of heading to the polls, communicating the message through our content. The Right to Win is one of the properties that we have commissioned, aimed at testing the general knowledge of South Africans about our country.”

The Right To Win airs every Saturday at 6.30pm on SABC2.