Has racism marred
SA Idols? (Wed 26 June 2002)
Cape Town - SA's Idol Heinz Winckler has made the pages of the BBC website. Not with his amazing voice finally reaching distant shores, but with the whole racism issue that has marred South Africa's Idols after obviously talented contestants were voted out one by one.
South Africa's first Idols programme had no short supply of controversy. Constant allegations of racism, vote-rigging and syndicates voting for certain contestants were rife over the past few months.
According to the article on the BBC website one of the contestants even constantly voted for herself, ringing up a bill of R7 000.
Back home, some of the judges like Penny Lebyane and Randal Abrahams
were accused of being racist when they criticised the white contestants.
Viewers in turn were accused of racism when they kept voting off the most
talented contestants - who just happened to be black.
This article was taken off the news24 website
