They’ve captured State Capture. Do something!

Dear Editor,

I trust this email finds you unbothered as usual.

I hereby submit my notice of resignation effective immediately. I can no longer stand by while you neglect our duty to our readers, that is, to DEFEND TRUTH. Over the past few weeks, I have written you numerous times, asking that you to allocate one of our investigative journalists to look into what is no doubt one of the most astounding cases of intercontinental plagiarism the world has ever seen; the egregious theft of no less than our greatest intellectual property (IP), State Capture!

As this country’s most epic and most phenomenal and possibly most gifted and undoubtedly most sagacious film critic, I have written many times in these pages about the incredibly original imagination of the writers behind the groundbreaking South Africa S**t Show (Sass). And over the past few weeks, I have demonstrated to you time and again, how the western writers behind the America S**t Show (Ass), have straight up plagiarised, and at times tried to outdo our Sass.

For ***k’s sake, they literally stole State Capture!!! Even you know that in film, the contemporary exploration of the theme of foreign tycoons bankrolling a president, taking over a country and gutting its institutions for personal gain, is our IP; our writers came up with that s**t. Yet not only did the Ass writers steal that, but to add insult to injury; and to leave no doubt that they were stealing OUR intellectual property and running with it, they rubbed it on our faces by creating a South African male to replace our Gupta characters. 

Also, RACISM!!!! In their never-ending racist purge all things diversity, equity and inclusion, they’ve pretty much replaced all our lead characters with white men. Gone are the rotund immigrant tycoons of colour (TOCs) who once captured our State and our hearts, and in their place Ass has Apartheid Clyde, who also happens to be the richest man on Earth. So typical of American writers, they always have to write their villains bigger and badder than everyone else. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that they stole our storylines.

As you know, on 20 January this year, as the new Ass season kicked off, their orange-flavoured Zuma declared a National Energy Emergency. I have no doubt that they are simply laying the ground to steal our load shedding storyline. When will you wake up and allocate resources to this investigation? 

TIA. This is Africa. It is a phrase enthusiasts of African film hold dear. It is a celebration of the African imagination, from which has sprung forth some of the greatest storytelling of all time. It is a recognition of the role African film has played in the development of that most bleeding-edge film genre, le chaos créatif. For generations, it has been the only phrase that could accurately express the profound whatthefuckness a viewer might experience while watching great African stories such as the South Africa S**t Show. 

Over the past three decades, it is a phrase I have proudly uttered time and again as I watched season after season of Sass, my mind blown by the plot twists and previously unimaginable horrors the Sass writers seem to conjure up with ease again and again to keep us on our toes and high blood pressure meds. The corruption, the State Capture, the class-leading inequality, the exceptional crime scenes??, the stages one to eight of darkness, John Steenhuisen; it is all some of the most incredible writing I have ever seen on any long-running show ever!!!! So much so that only three syllables could escape my lips: TIA.

Yet here we are, as writers from the West bereft of original imagination once again steal from Africa. And I fear, they have done so, so successfully, that when the world finds itself blown away by the chaotic unpredictability of the American S**t Show storylines, they now exclaim, TIA! This is America! 

There’s no beating about the bush, we’re fast losing our spot at the top of the genre le chaos créatif. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still phenomenal practitioners of la méthode du chaos créatif, our Sass writers are far too talented, our stories grittier, gorier, more harrowing than anything that the Ass writer’s room could come up with. That said, one can see Sass writers are taking strain from some really deep Ass plagiarism. So much that the best they’ve come up with this year is that Four Horseman of the Kakpocalypse storyline where a bunch of scammers formed a Ponzi scheme and used their members’ money for an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC to do White House tours and compare vibes between SA and US Starbucks. 

But as I said, I have hope and faith in our writers to take back TIA, to take back the chaos. As for you, I hope my resignation will be a wake-up call to do something! They can keep Apartheid Clyde, but we have got to take back the chaos! Mayibuye!

Vive le chaos créatif!!! DM