Generations' Queen Sophie Ndaba.
The
chaos at Generations has put a blinding spotlight on the fact that the biggest problem for actors in South Africa is that there is no proper actors' union. I've been snooping around to find out more about the current situation and discovered that an actor's union exists but it lacks clout because there are no industry standards that are regulated.
As a result there's no effective national body that represents actors, their fees, working conditions, royalties and other important matters so there's an inevitability to what's happened on Generations.
My investigations have revealed that there are standard base/weekly rates that actors have to be paid but there's nothing else that stipulates what should happen after that. Everything else is up to negotiations between the agent and the production company who take an actor's experience into account when negotiating fees.
As you can see, it's all too subjective. The actors are at the mercy of criteria that have no specifics at all, nothing based on specific numbers or concrete policies or regulations. Without these there's too much room for salaries to be unfair and conditions to be dramatically different from one production to another.
America has national unions and guilds that regulate things to ensure this doesn't happen and Generations has revealed that we
definitely need such a body too.
One of the grievances of the Generations cast is that actors on other SABC shows are receiving larger salaries than theirs despite the fact that Generations is watched by more viewers. This is the direct result of the fact that there are no norms in place.
If the union stipulated that fees are paid according to the size of the role for example, everyone would know what the parameters are that apply to everyone i.e. if you're a lead in a soapie you need to receive a salary within a particular scale.
If the union established that viewership should be a factor in how much actors are paid, then they could ensure fair practice and standards around this too. This way everyone would know what the situation is and they'd feel peace of mind - actors, agents, broadcasters and production houses would be on the same page.
Yesterday I caught up with agent Wesley Mark Gainer at Moonyeenn Lee's agency
MLA, who represents four of the fired Generations cast including Menzi Ngubane and Mandla Gaduka. I asked Wesley about the lack of standards, he confirmed it's a problem and had other interesting things to say:
Wesley: We're not really unionised in this country. Our actors do have a union but it's not as powerful as in America. That's the thing that sort of makes the industry in the States - it works well for them even though it can be to an actor's disadvantage because it's so controlled. It restricts a lot of things because you cannot just walk up to someone and offer them a script - you have to follow methods of getting into the business - that's why it's so hard to get into the business there so there are pros and cons.
The Generations issues are a lot - it has to do with a lot of things. Money just happens to be one of the things that everyone seems to be highlighting.
The fact that there is no standard here opens up the door for exploitation. Norms and standards are not completely solid and written in stone which opens up the door for a lot of cans of worms.