Image: MARK ANDREWS
New singing sensation Zahara, who is currently smashing records with her debut album Loliwe, probably would have not made it through the first round had she entered M-Net's TV reality show, Idols.
But none of the competition's past six winners, no matter how immensely talented some of them may have been, can ever hope to be as successful in the local music industry as the East London-born 23-year-old singer.
If news reports are accurate, Loliwe sold over 100000 units within days of its release and, with the festive season upon us, the album could easily reach half-a-million by year's end.
But Zahara's music style and voice would simply not cut it in the pop-culture format preferred by Idols producers. She is too "traditional", too "ethnic", to make it as an idol.
But that is precisely what is popular with most of South Africa's music-consuming folk. Isn't that what pop music is supposed to be about - popular music?
M-Net has chosen a narrow definition of pop music - one that is more suitable for Europe and the US than South Africa. Hence a budding rock and roll artist is more likely to win Idols rather than, say, an Afro-pop singer.
To M-Net, it obviously makes commercial sense to do so, and audience ratings - the show is apparently among the most popular on DStv - back the station.
Consumers of "ethnic music" - in its various forms - may constitute the majority of South Africans, but they mostly can't afford such luxuries as DStv.
It is testimony to the enduring legacy of our apartheid and colonial past that South Africa's majority remains its economic - and in some respects cultural - minority.
But instead of endlessly lamenting the current state of affairs, and denouncing M-Net viewers for alleged racial prejudices, we should be considering programmes that would make South Africa a more equal and non-racial society.
At The New Age business briefing addressed by President Jacob Zuma on Monday morning, a young black professional - who identified herself as a Nedbank employee - wanted to know from the president what actions were being taken by his government to ensure that corporate South Africa was more representative of the country's demographics.
Therein lies part of the problem with South Africa's painstakingly slow march to a truly non-racial and inclusive future: everybody seems to think it is solely the government's responsibility to get us there.
What is preventing the Nedbank employee and others who share her concern from forming themselves into a lobby group that would push for the kind of transformation they would like to see in business?
City Press columnist and executive editor Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya hit the nail on the head this past weekend when he argued that, instead of slamming AfriForum for representing narrow Afrikaner interests, the majority could learn from this organisation and form its own pressure groups.
A vote alone, which is the power the majority possesses, has proved to be woefully inadequate in fixing the education, health, housing and unemployment crises for township folk.
At the height of apartheid, communities formed organisations to champion various causes and address issues confronting them.
The mistake was for communities to disband these civil society movements at the dawn of liberation, believing that political parties and the democratic government would advance those causes on their behalf.
The result has been a "new" South Africa in which 11 languages are said to be official and one can live wherever one wishes. But if a parent wants her child to be taught in his mother tongue in a suburb she has chosen to live in, she is told that the school does not have qualified teachers.
But who is to blame if parents who want their children to be able to read and write in their indigenous language do not fight for their constitutional right to do so?