Big Brother Amplified: Karen,Wendall Win Big!

Big Brother Amplified may be over, but the drama isn’t!

South African fans particularly are up in arms over the final result, which saw Karen Igho from Nigeria and Wendall Parsons from Zimbabwe walk off with a cool US$200 000 – about N$1,3 million – each during Sunday night’s live finale in Johannesburg.They’re outraged that South Africa’s housemate, Clayton ‘Luclay’ Misoya didn’t bag one of the prizes. Dissatisfied fans feel that he entertained far more than the Zimbabwean housemate, who was alternatively nicknamed WenDull and Wendall Walker by some fans, as he seemed to be forever walking to clock up kilometres on his pedometer in the hope of winning Biggie’s iPod challenge.Luclay was the opposite. At times a raging bull, at other times showing a soft heart, as he shed tears when someone or something touched, or moved him.South African fans couldn’t contain their rage on Sunday night when live show host IK announced that Luclay, who made the final three, was out of the competition.The Sowetan newspaper in South Africa reported that one fan immediately jumped on the stage and had to be removed by security personnel.It was the spark for the crowd to become amplified. They grumbled and rumbled, and even booed Wendall. That’s so not on in my books. Even if you don’t agree, or think it’s unfair, there’s no need to boo. Just stay silent. That’s also protesting.Later, police had to calm rowdy fans struggling to come to terms with the outcome.Meanwhile, anger, outrage and one-upmanship erupted in cyber space.Such was the volume of posts that both the official and unofficial Big Brother websites crashed – more than once.Angry tweets were the order of the day on Twitter, resulting in around 10 Big Brother topics trending on the South African trendsmap, including ‘Mugabe’, ‘rigging’ and ‘Wendall’.’Wendall’ and ‘Big Brother’ were still trending at the time of writing this. Zimbabwean fans did not take the situation lying down, and hit back with some ‘eina’ missives of their own.Meanwhile, the Luclay Fan Page admin say they have taken the issue to the ANC Youth League. Eish.Controversy is nothing new to Big Brother Africa, nor are conspiracy theories! It goes with the territory.At the end of the day, you win some, you lose some. A favourite’s not going to win unless the voters turn up. It’s as simple as that. Congratulations to both Karen and Wendall!!And a big up to the producers and all who worked on this year’s show – it’s one to remember.* Fellow BBA writer Natasha Uys was meant to bring you some of the highlights today, but got hijacked by technical issues. We hope to have more for you tomorrow.