Why People Are Missing the Point About the Top Billing Auditions?
So Top Billing is returning, and they took to social media and told South Africans to take to the media and post their audition. Following that, Bonang Matheba encouraged people auditioning for Top Billing to “be themselves” and “be authentic.” However, despite her advice, most of the auditioners ignored the "be authentic" tip, and there has been a lot of backlash surrounding the audition videos people have been posting online.
A lot of people have been criticizing contestants for sounding “too polished,” “too sophisticated,” or for putting on what people are calling a “presenter voice.” The general criticism seems to be that these contestants are not being authentic because “this is not how they speak in real life.”... But I think people are missing the point entirely.
The first thing people are ignoring is that nobody speaks exactly the same way in every environment. People have customer service voices, interview voices, workplace voices, and professional voices. The way somebody answers the phone at work is usually not the same way they speak to their friends. Call centre agents do it. Receptionists do it. Corporate professionals do it. Even the way people structure emails versus text messages is different.
Everybody understands that different spaces require different forms of presentation. So why does that suddenly become “fake” or “performative” when people are auditioning to become presenters on national television?...Especially when the television show they are auditioning for is literally Top Billing.
Top Billing has always built itself around luxury, elegance, sophistication and aspiration. The show has never presented itself as an ordinary reflection of everyday South African life. It is polished homes, expensive aesthetics, designer fashion, wealth, wine estates and curated lifestyles. Even the presenters themselves have historically reflected a certain level of polish, sophistication and professionalism because that is part of the brand identity of the show itself. So contestants changing the way they present themselves is not happening randomly. They are responding to an existing industry standard that the show itself has spent decades establishing and rewarding.
Unfortunately, South Africa still heavily associates English fluency and polished speech with intelligence, professionalism, sophistication, and class. That did not happen by accident. Those standards were built through colonialism, apartheid, and decades of exclusionary social structures that positioned whiteness, private schooling, and proximity to “proper English” as markers of value. So while people online are mocking contestants for changing their accents or sounding more polished, they are also ignoring the reality that the media industry itself still rewards those exact performances.
That does not mean the standard is correct. But pretending the standard does not exist is intellectually dishonest.
A lot of these contestants understand that they are entering a space that already has invisible expectations attached to it. Expectations around speech, presentation, aesthetics and professionalism. So when people adapt themselves to fit that environment, it is not necessarily because they are being fake. Sometimes it is simply because they understand what kind of person historically gets accepted into those spaces.
I also think people are misunderstanding authenticity itself. Authenticity does not mean behaving exactly the same way in every context regardless of environment. If that were true, then professionalism itself would not exist. Media is performative. Television is performative. News anchors perform professionalism. Radio hosts perform charisma. Reality television performs relatability. Lifestyle television performs aspiration. Top Billing is probably one of the clearest examples of aspirational performance in South African media because the entire show is built around selling a polished fantasy of luxury and sophistication.
Even Bonang herself only became publicly more relaxed and openly vernac later in her career once she had already established herself within the industry. Earlier in her career, she also had to conform to the polished media standards that South African television rewarded at the time. That is not criticism. It is simply the reality of how these industries function. Authenticity becomes easier once legitimacy and success have already been secured. Newcomers do not always have the same freedom to do that.
Another thing people are ignoring is that these opportunities are not nearly as equal as they present themselves to be. One contestant may be filming on an old phone in a noisy environment with poor lighting and unstable internet access while another contestant has access to high-quality equipment, polished environments, editing software and media exposure. Presentation itself is influenced by access, money and environment. Yet people reduce the entire conversation down to “you’re forcing your voice” while ignoring all the structural inequalities that shape who appears polished and who does not.
And despite all of that, people still found the courage to stand in front of a camera, record themselves, and publicly try. In a country struggling with unemployment and limited opportunities, I think we have become far too comfortable mocking people for attempting to put themselves out there. South Africans constantly talk about wanting people to be ambitious, entrepreneurial and proactive, but we also contribute to a culture where trying publicly is treated as embarrassing unless success is already guaranteed.
At its core, I think people are criticizing contestants for performing sophistication without acknowledging that South African media has always rewarded that exact performance. The issue is not that contestants are fake. The issue is that people want to pretend these standards no longer exist while still consuming and rewarding the very media spaces that continue to uphold them.
Xoxo
KNirvana(someone studying a BA in Communication Science)