Fokol™: The discovery of this new mineral will change The South Africa Show forever

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for upcoming episodes of The South Africa Show.

The past five months have been rather challenging for this pre-eminent film critic. Out of fear of rejection, I’ve kept a secret some might consider unforgivable. But seeing as I’ve been jumping out of closets all my life, I think it’s time I stepped out of the one I’ve been hiding in since Jan. 

Like everyone else, I watched Wakanda Forever, the sequel to Black Panther. Unlike everyone else, I thought it was a bit shit. Go ahead and cancel me if you must, but it feels so liberating to finally say it. And it is all thanks to the imaginative writing of the far superior The South Africa Show that I can finally come out and live my truth loud and proud.

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the past few weeks’ episodes since the beginning of Season 30 on 27 April. The show’s writers have conceptualised a plot underpinned by a near-miraculous substance, far more powerful and authentically South African than anything Marvel Studios could dream up. Wakanda’s vibranium be damned!

The slow-burning set-up for the new storyline began early in the season with flashbacks to the events of early December 2022, when influencers from some inconsequential seaside village gathered to test the zoom lens and nighttime photography capabilities of the latest flagship smartphones for their TikTok channels. 

Being the plot-twist fest that this incredible show is, their lenses happened upon a mysterious ship, later revealed to be the Lady R. Soon after, they posted images of what they described as “mysterious and unidentified cargo being moved both on and off the ship, in a high-security, clandestine operation”. 

Drama ensued, the fictional country’s government denied any knowledge of said clandestine operations. And then, in a shocking twist during an episode aired on 23 May, they came clean. Thandi Modise, the country’s Defence and Military Veterans Minister, a character loosely based on Angela Bassett’s Queen Ramonda in the Black Panther movies, but written in a way far more true to life, and inclusively so in an empowering rejection of Hollywood’s impossible beauty standards, finally disclosed the mysterious contents of the cargo ship during a parliamentary debate scene: “We put Fokol™ on that ship.” 

While the true nature of Fokol™ remains a mystery, and theories continue to spread among the show’s online fandom, I am happy to share that as South Africa’s most respected non-multi-award-not-even-one-award-winning film critic, I have been sent a few of the upcoming episodes to review.

Please, I beg you, read no further if you wish to avoid spoilers.

Although it is still unclear whether it is a synthetic or natural mineral, it will be revealed in an upcoming June episode that the mysterious Fokol™ is a substance so powerful, it puts Wakanda’s vibranium to shame. It turns out that for a while now, the fictional country’s government has been working in secret, quietly doing the back-breaking work of producing Fokol™ and are now about to reach a critical mass of Fokol™ reserves. 

In fact, the show’s fans will soon find out that the country’s governing class has made so much progress that they are now world leaders in creating Fokol™ jobs and Fokol™ industries. Never mind the past 15 seasons’ tired old Eskom storyline, the country will soon be powered by Fokol™ electricity, possibly even Fokol™ renewable energy. Some citizens already have Fokol™ money and are on the edge of their seats in anticipation of Fokol™ service delivery. Wakanda could never!!!

Understandably, the citizenry also raised concerns that the Fokol™ that was being loaded onto the ship would be sent to the Russians, a northern tribe under the dictatorial rule of a bloodthirsty warmonger. One shudders at the thought of what he might do with it if he got his hands on the country’s tons of Fokol™. Thankfully, the minister cleared that up: “We did not send Fokol™ to Russia, not even a piece of Chappies.” Praise be, lord knows those Chappies wrappers have done more for education than some of the show’s education ministers.

As I’ve stated previously, in past seasons the wildly fictional plot twists these writers keep coming up with had me worried they couldn’t come up with anything crazier to keep us entertained for future episodes. With each season, I’ve grown more anxious, panicking that it might be the last of The South Africa Show, and that I might have to move on to The Canada Show. God forbid, nobody needs that much predictability. I’m convinced there’s something about The South Africa Show that keeps one young; perhaps it’s the way it demands that its viewers cultivate a spirit of radical commitment to chaos in order to fully appreciate it.

Barely a month since the beginning of Season 30, the writers have once again outdone themselves. I truly hope that this time around, the studio behind this show will put out some merch, just for us, the show’s biggest fans. Rumour has it that Fokol™ Water is on the way, as well as “Fokol™ Rainbow Nation” slogan T-shirts. How exciting! In typically enthusiastic South African fashion, I've already opened a savings account where I'll definitely deposit Fokol™ savings to buy the merch. #FokolBlessed.

If this fictional country’s citizens were real people, I imagine they would be jumping for joy at the Defence Minister’s revelations. By the millions, they would fill the streets, ecstatically toyi-toying, united in the collective realisation that “as long as we keep calm and let this lot continue leading, there’s Fokol™ that can save us!” DM