Grinch of the Year: Coronavirus – Oh, the places I’ve been!

First published by Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper

Every apex predator on Planet Screwville likes festivals celebrating imaginary friends and ancient fantasies a lot. I, the Grinch who by stealth has invaded every inch of Screwville, do NOT!

Want to know the reason? Could it be that virgin births, the big bang theory set in the Garden of Eden, the angels’ defeat of demons or all manner of celestial revelations are soooo last season?

Nope, it is just that I cannot comprehend the piped sounds of muzak by minstrels who save face by hiding behind noms de plume like Boney M, while throngs of Screw women and men dash about, desperate and surly, with shopping trolleys filled with champagne, fruitcakes, panettone, gammon and turkey. Nor do I grasp how it came to pass that even when only a few still believe in them, imaginary friends benefit from sacrifices that involve the slaughter of beasts … feathered, clawed, webbed or four-footed, cloven-hooved or blessed by priests. And at mass orgies of pudding and beast feasting, the Screws, young and old, stuff themselves till they’re excreting. No animal is spared their voracious appetite. Chickens, goats, cows, sheep, crocodiles, buffalo, sturgeon egg roe, fattened liver from force-fed geese, bats and the long-snouted, scaly ant-eating pangolin meat. It was a direct result of this voracious greed that I came to be, hopping from bat to pangolin, to Screw in a jiffy. Being light and aerodynamic I pretty niftily flew with every cough, aaa-choo! or verbal hullabaloo in every Tower of Babel tongue they spew. It was easy to crash-land and enter Screws of every hue, nationality or magical view. And here I am. With no army. No nuclear warheads. Everywhere. I occupy the Whole Planet Screwville. Indiscriminately. What can I say? Liberté. Fraternité. Égalité. That’s me.

I can never understand how imaginary friends on Planet Screwville are seasonally worshipped, while fellow Screws are treated like slaves and servants, divided into nations north, south, east and west, outdoing each other to see who would be best at screwing over the rest.



I have seen how, driven by the need to be seen to succeed and for that weird construct of ego to feed, feed, feed, they rip out the trees from the forests, choke the air they breathe and the life that once teemed in the sea, recklessly denuding the Earth of every nutrient and seed.

Just like the Once-ler who chopped down the Truffula trees and smogged away the Barbaloots and Swans of Swomee because “business is business and business must grow”, the upper echelons of Screws in Screwville accumulate more and more and more, destroying all in their path to prop up their culture of an elite few haves, multitudes of poor  and score upon scores of the middle class battling to keep the debt collectors from bashing down their doors.

The folly of this inequality eludes those who worship at the altar of individuality, mass-producing junk to fuel an economy that only a few feeds, while the planet that sustains them all is left to bleed.

Never before in the history of Screwville has avarice and myopia seen such a revival. One of their philosophers once did attest that religion is an opiate, but I guess he could not predict that Screwville would regress even further with the Holy Books rich with lyricism, allegory and virtue being replaced by anodyne Twitter, WhatsApp group hysteria, selfies and fake news on social media.

This is something I like least of all. Every Screw in Screwville, the tall and the small, has stopped having casual conversations while they sit on top of each other at restaurants in the mall. Instead they stare at their smartphone screens, vicariously sharing in someone else’s dull life and memes. Then they text and text and text till their fingers fall. They stare at the small screen! They stare, stare, stare, stare. Totally unaware that I am there. They touch their faces, let their masks hang under their noses. They don’t wash their hands. Just one Screw coughs. And exposes. Seventy-two million cases across the globe. More than a million deaths, I’m told.

Prophets with mass followers on YouTube say I am a conspiracy theory. A hoax invented by Big Pharma to prey on the unheedy. Others with an excess of magical reality belief in their bones think vaccines invented to flush me out are the mark of the devil in tomes.

The thing is, Dear Judges, Dear Karens and Dear Friars Tuck, I don’t give a fuck. You Screws are screwed by your inflated sense of your Apex Predator longevity and your antiquated superstitious interpretations of reality.

Call me what you like. I am not the Grim Reaper or a Dementor from JK Rowling’s imagination, who suck the joy out of life as an occupation.

I don’t give a damn about whether you are a wizard scar face or a patsy, whether you drive a Porsche or catch a taxi. I am not your imaginary friend or fantasy. I am a virus. And unlike the Grinch from Dr Seuss’s book, for now and the near future I have no uplifting hook. I have no small heart to grow three sizes one day. And I am not going to whizz through the night with a load of heavenly delights. Nor will I bring back your Christmas, Diwali, Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah or Chinese New Year cheer in the early morning light. It’s YOUR hearts and minds that need to grow and grow. Because I won’t go until you do so. DM16

(Here Tic is the pseudonym of a Daily Maverick staffer who is grateful to have learnt to read through the playful play on words and challenging of orthodoxies by Dr Seuss. An agnostic who once dutifully attended mass and asked for forgiveness of the Pope and Holy Ghost, the satirist has deep respect for the rigour of science and all religious beliefs which teach love, humility, caring for one another in community, respect and nurture of nature and the Earth that sustains us.)