Johannesburg — AFTER weeks in the murky depths with "spillcam" in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, prime-time TV has again gone underground, but this time it's "minecam", as the news celebrates the discovery of 33 miners trapped underground, yet alive, at the San Jose silver and gold mine in Copiapo, Chile.

It's the usual wretched story of criminal working conditions, crooked inspectors, dodgy owners and derelict rules and laws, and the workers desperate for their own crumbs of an unlikely Eldorado. Quite a few of the miners and their families are survivors of the February earthquake disaster, and now they're back in the news - incredible because so few people survive being news, even once.

This is playing out in the Atacama desert, about as hospitable a place as an ANC Youth League conference venue if you're not supporting Julius Malema. You wouldn't want to be there above ground, let alone 700m under.

You can be sure the media crews now encamped at Copiapo have settled in nicely, thank you, as we do, and are already doctoring expense chits from assorted whiskeria in the area, and flying in crates of back-up booze and other fortification.

For all the cost of the media effort, though, there's only one little camera bringing us the now familiar blurry images of a bunch of grey-looking guys with hairy stomachs and Olmeca Tequila moustaches. So the networks all have to share this "feed", although they're free to manufacture their own myths at ground level, distorting and exaggerating what the families and friends have to say.

Being mostly Catholic, and like the media themselves, the relatives of the "loved ones" are naturally superstitious, and see this as a "miracle", and little shrines of dead saints attest to their belief. Even the bottle of sparkling wine, that universal symbol of provenance, drained to toast Los 33's "return to life", now adorns the statuary of hope. So there's plenty of "colour" to justify a hack's absence from the newsroom, in the Atacama.

At the centre of the story, though, are the miners themselves. Resembling a session of the ANC's national working committee at Luthuli House during a Joburg power cut, they are similarly cut off from daily reality, and pass their time in observance of equally pointless rituals. They've even been sent down special lights to allow the faking of night and day, like battery chickens.

All type of isolation expert is having his say, including Nasa, and a lot of it further seems relevant to the ANC in "action".

Two broad themes emerge: one, antidepressants, dispatched post haste down the tunnel to alleviate anxiety at the obvious feelings of helplessness and despair; and, two, a blackout on all "bad news", indeed any news whose theme, subliminal or otherwise, is not "hope".

This unwitting pilot study in what life will be like under the ANC's media tribunal and its information act kicked off with keeping the news from the miners themselves that they would be down there for three months. So we all knew days before they did! And when the families sent their little notes down the tunnel, an optimistic tone was made mandatory.

Let's hope it ends well, too, and there's a nice little bonus for us in SA, with our Murray & Roberts getting in on the drilling action, and flying the flag.

We should be doing more, though, and I hope the boys from Imperial Crown Trading have crafted their own, um, deal, with a disaffected faction of the trapped miners. Wouldn't it be a coup for SA if our very own Imperial were to emerge from this drama with the prospecting rights to every metal and shiny bean west of the Andes?

We could even give the world its first African Montezuma!

Bulger has always wanted to be in TV but has been stuck in the print media for 250 years.