Get a Fiks on 2025 — the year of yachts and have-nots in which the people shall endure sewage

Yes, the shit is still running down my street ... but the situation is somewhat ameliorated by the rain. Let me explain.

That’s the question I got a few times after my previous column in these esteemed pages, a column in which I bemoaned the sewage running down my street, apparently unchecked. “And it’s not even my shit,” I said, which seems to have snagged the memories of several folks who, for a while now, have been saying to me: “Happy Christmas! Is the shit still running down your street?” [laughter] or “Happy New Year! Is the shit still running down your street?” [laughter].

It’s good to be able to laugh about things, even shit things. Even shit.

Joburg Water did eventually arrive at the house from which the shit stream appeared to be flowing, the presumption being that the blockage causing the sewer pipe to overflow was somewhere on that property.

The technicians couldn’t gain access to the property, however (“however” always sounds so official), because it is unoccupied. It has recently been sold, it seems, but the new owners have yet to appear.

So Joburg Water did inspect the site, as it likes to say. And a fair number of people living on either side of the unoccupied house emerged to meet the heroes or potential heroes of Joburg Water, and to tell the technicians loudly about the sewage problem, doubtless from two perspectives – above the flow, and below the flow.

There was much noise, which sounded like happy noise, and the whole thing looked like it was about to turn into a joyous social occasion. I half-expected someone to turn up with a case of Black Label quarts, and perhaps someone to park their souped-up skorokoro in someone’s driveway and blast us all with some beat-driven music, which is what some people like to do anyway in our street.

Yet, no... No party. Joburg Water ultimately had to leave, having failed to find the blockage. There should apparently be access to the main sewage pipe at a few points in the street, but those points have been covered up by the roads agency, according to one Joburg Water specialist, so no access. Nothing to be done.

Luckily, Joburg was shortly thereafter hit by monsoon season, which is what follows a very dry heatwave patch in summer, the delayed rains making up for it by dumping about four times the usual quantity of water on the city. So the blessed rain (well, we called it a blessing at first) came and has, daily, been washing away the stream of shit flowing down the street.

Wasn’t there a song about blessing the rains “down” in Africa, or being blessed by the rains? I get annoyed that it’s “down” in Africa that we must bless the rains (plural), but there you go.

Anyway, that’s the shit story, or the story of the shit, and I hope I have further news to report sometime after we all gear up to get back to work and Joburg Water contacts the new owners of the relevant house.

In the meantime, what I should be doing is concocting some kind of view of the new year, the 2025 that is now dragging us into its coils.

Should I be speculating about what I think or fear lies ahead? Should I be thinking of resolutions? I can think of a few resolutions for our leading political figures, Julius Malema for one (“Talk less shit in 2025”), Fikile Mbalula for another (“Talk less shit in 2025”) and so forth, but I can’t think of any resolutions for myself, unless they be: 1. Survive; and 2. Try once more to get that refund from the City of Joburg; I’ve only been waiting three years.

Speaking of ANC secretary-general Mbalula, he really is just the gift that keeps on giving. He not only has the gift of the gab, if you call it a gift and not a disease, and he is a gifted comedian. Just as I was wondering how one might try to forecast what the year ahead holds for our country, our ruling party and government of national unity and so on, I got wind of some Mbalula scandal online.

So I googled “Mbalula” and what popped up, unbidden? Google filled in the phrase for me: “Mbalula yacht,” it said.

So the story is that, as part of the ANC’s anniversary celebrations, there was on Robben Island a solemn gathering of ANC notables commemorating the decades of sacrifice suffered by the last generation of ANC leaders anyone actually admires. But Mbalula punctured all that solemnity by arriving at the island on a million-rand yacht.

The yacht apparently belongs to some ANC-linked mogul, who certainly did not get rich or richer by means of government contracts but is simply a “stakeholder”, like the rest of us who don’t have yachts, according to Mbalula.

He and the ANC later clarified the situation, which means they threw some mud on it and conjured up some dim clouds around it, by saying it was necessary for Big Chief Fiks to get a ride on a yacht because of his finely tuned schedule in this week of the ANC’s anniversary: on that very day, that solemn day, they said, he also had to get to a provincial cake-cutting ceremony.

Of course that was after Gwede “Harrumph” Mantashe, former éminence grise and Obstacle to Progress in the Cyril Ramaphosa administration, vehemently refuted any charges that the ANC leadership had in any way, shape or form been aware of Mbalula’s choice of maritime conveyance, let alone had discussed it in whichever high-powered meeting of high-ups planned such things.

And the ANC certainly did not endorse this flaunting of Fiks’s connections to a millionaire, or perhaps it was the millionaire’s connection to Fiks. We wouldn’t want to associate the ANC, especially on this solemn occasion, with the self-aggrandising pursuit of wealth and power, oh no.

Mbalula certainly refuted any accusation of impropriety, responding staunchly to Mantashe by saying on Xwitter or Xshitter or whatever it’s called, and I quote the Daily Sun’s verbatim record: “He is correct since u are do much interested in the story why don’t ask me?” At least he got the question mark in.

What was more fun was the ANC’s official response. Having “categorically reject[ed] the misrepresentation that the Secretary General’s transport choice was an indulgence in luxury”, and having reaffirmed (as it does every year) that the ANC “remains resolute in its mission to address the socio-economic challenges facing our country”, it reminded us of the party’s theme for 2025, just in case we’d missed it, or perhaps were unable to process it fully.

That theme for 2025, given in resolute title case, and I’m not making this up – I just cut and paste from the PDF – is: “The Year of Renewal to Make the ANC a More Effective Instrument of the People to Achieve the Vision of the Freedom Charter: The People Shall Govern! The People Shall Share in the Country’s Wealth!”

I like that colon. And two exclamation marks! An embarrassment of punctuational riches! And I don’t believe even Gabbymouth Fiks could come up with something snappier and more inspiring. DM

Shaun de Waal is a writer and editor.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.