Media and radio personality Robert Marawa’s sacking from SABC sport broke the internet last week Friday whereby everyone in South Africa was caught by surprise. I do get why they were surprised by the move because Marawa is the stalwart of this country’s talk radio and sport.
As someone who watches, study radio and media trends, a person like Robert Marawa’s reputation, he’s not supposed to work for a radio station it should be the other way round. Radio stations should come to him to buy sports content and he must host a syndicated radio. His radio show must be on every radio station across the country and some parts of our African continent. We live in the digital age or digital abundance whereby the internet is borderless and you can reach everyone across the globe.
As futurist and trends analyst, entrepreneur and author John Sanei states, as South Africans we suffer from ‘South Africanism’, we think small of ourselves and we only focus here at home instead of beyond borders. John said he was once invited to speak in Germany, he was petrified but he ended up as one of the best speakers of the conference. Today, John is one of the sought after speakers in the world and is dominating the speaking game across the globe, his based in Cape Town and Dubai.
Robert is fucken damn good at doing what he does on radio and sports. His one of the best radio personalities this country ever produced. However, I’m not sure if he knows that he’s the KING in this game because he keeps scoring his own goals.
I don’t want to be misquoted here, I think I should explain what I mean by scoring his own goals. Here is my point, when you’re the King/Queen… you must own the entire ecosystem of the game like a Knoxman in the game of DICE. I called it Diddy the game, like what former rapper and now businessman Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs has done in music business and entrepreneurship by owning every facet of the game. Robert should do this in sports across this continent. He’s got the talent, capabilities plus the internet is on his side, it gives him a competitive advantage edge.
If Puff Daddy’s playbook is a bit farfetched for Robert, he can take notes from Mzansi businessman buddies Given Mkhari, Gareth Cliff and DJ Sbu’s playbook and study what this South African business and radio pioneers did to own and secure their future by creating their platforms. We can all argue whether their businesses are successful or not, but the key lesson here is these guys bet on themselves while their peers are busy chasing crumbs and played by the so-called mainstream media houses.
Mkhari as a former talk radio host taught us that you can graduate from being a talent and become a boss by starting and running 2 radio stations. While on the other hand Gareth and Sbu taught us that you can be a talent and a boss at the same damn fucken time by creating your own digital platform.
It is funny all this man I had mentioned above used to be at the same station/company that Marawa found himself at. I’m watching this story with a keen interest and I can’t wait to see Robert’s next move. I know he’s a smart man hopefully he will make a smart move start scoring more goals instead of his own goals.
The bottom line is don’t expect too much where politicians and bureaucrats are in charge, because they don’t play by the rules of the game and to them the rules of engagement are different.
Writes Rethabile Mohlala – the Founder and Editor of TechDailyPost and NoJokesComedy and Podcaster at TheMcDaddyOfRadio. Follow me on @Rethabilem and email me at Rethabile@TechDailyPost.co.za
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