Award-winning Anele Mdoda is always ‘striving for perfection’

She needs no introduction. Her passion for her craft is evident to the people of Mzansi on television and radio.

Recent South African Film and Television Awards ( Saftas) best talk-show host winner Anele Mdoda says she always strives for perfection and often berates herself.

“When I start something, I do try to be as flawless as possible and I truly berate myself when I dare make a mistake.

“I’m just extremely hard on myself,” Mdoda said, explaining how she manages to captivate the people of South Africa on her SABC 3 show, Real Talk, and her breakfast show on Highveld Stereo.

“When you strive as high as I do, even when you fall, you don’t fall off too far [away] from the excellence,” she said.

The award-winning presenter says her time on television has taught her that “everyone has a story to tell”. Initially she only wanted to have celebrities on a show, but she has learned that ordinary people also have interesting tales to tell.

“You can sit down with someone who was in an abusive relationship for 25 years and ended up killing the abusive husband, or talk to a girl who weighs 300kg and realise that your job is to find the story, not to have someone bring you ready-made meals, where all I do is just heat them up,” she explained.

Mdoda says she has had to hone her confidence throughout her life and that her notions about it have changed several times over the years.

“There was a time when I thought confidence was speaking over everyone and having a ‘you are going to hear what I have to say’ attitude.

“Then there was a time I thought I had to behave like I’m happy in all my circumstances,” she said, adding that she believes most of her ex-boyfriends probably never realised how much she really cared because she often refused to show her hurt.

But her view of confidence has matured over the years and now she views it as an attitude of ‘I’m going to go there, and whether they like me or not, I don’t care’.

Now well recognised and loved by many as the host of Real Talk, Mdoda says her love for the small screen began when she was a contestant on SABC 3’s Strictly Come Dancing, which made her to want to do more television and led to her becoming one of the hosts of talent search show, SA’S Got Talent.

But radio was her first love. “From then on it was just something I liked, and I somehow believe that radio makes me better at TV.

“The more I do radio, the better I become on television, so I view it as an extension of radio.

“With TV you are less in control than you are with radio. With radio it’s me and the microphone, and perhaps the listener.

“With TV it’s the camera, this camera and that camera, you at home watching, my dress, my hair and make-up,” she said.

She adds that “TV is not as instant as radio”, a factor she likes about radio.

“With TV there is a lot more planning than in radio.

“With radio we can change things a bit in a show.”

Mdoda says her busy life, juggling motherhood, radio and television, led her to the realisation that she needed something to help her relax, which led to meditation.

“My friend recently taught me how to meditate. The beauty that meditation taught me is to take myself to a place where I’m really still and immediately everything I’m facing comes up and I plot my way through it,” she said, just as she plots her way through her radio and television shows.

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