Wakanda kak is this? Episode 2 of The South Africa Show: Xmas Special

Dear Diary,

Yesterday’s episode of The South Africa Show: ANC Conference Xmas Special felt a bit dull if I must be honest, a little predictable if not altogether lacking in action. I suppose an episode so focused on processes, registrations and nominations just can’t be expected to reach the experimental heights of that memorable first episode. But I still have to process my thoughts on that before I can file a proper review.

Still, as I lay in bed on Saturday night, a touch confused, my mind drifted back to the media session earlier in the day with one of the film’s co-directors, Pule Mabe, when, as I noted in yesterday’s diary entry, he warned of the dangers of the camera, telling members of the media: “Yesterday I’m sure you saw, we had to ask you to turn your cameras and face the president, because it’s human nature when your cameras are watching delegates even when they were not singing, they see... ‘yo TV!’, then they start singing the loudest now, because the camera is there… We see cameras, then we start showing some courage.”

I came to the realisation that he had not just enlightened us on the dangers of the hypervisibility and the ubiquity of cameras in our lives, but for me, personally, he had possibly explained the deepest motivations of the most enigmatic character of The South Africa Show, Julius Malema! Could that be it? Camera, lights, activism! This show is something else, so much to teach us.

I’ve always thought that Malema’s story arc in past seasons suggested that if he plays it right, he could mould his company to be the Apple to the ANC’s Microsoft. I can totally imagine him on stage, dressed in jeans and a polo neck of the most freedom-fighting red ever beheld by the Homo sapiens eye, a Julius Jobs of our own, addressing… nay… dazzling his audience of APPLEFF enthusiasts: “This is the best iNothing we’ve ever made.”

I probably shouldn’t spend much time thinking about Malema, considering the Xmas Special is all about the show’s sort-of-governing party. I suppose I’ll have to wait a couple of seasons for the EFF Conference Special. For now, I must continue to drown in these passé shades of green, yellow and black. While I get the rationale behind the colours, I do wish the art department would be a bit more post-liberation about things and update them to seasonal hues. Liberate the hues as it were. That’s certainly a cause I can get behind. Maybe for the sake of the fandom, I should start a Liberate The Hues GoFundMe and Instagram page; @LiTHu’s got a ring to it.

At the very least, that yellow, or gold if you will, needs an update. Considering that it represents the country’s wealth and taking into account how few of us can access what remains of it, they should update it to a colour that represents experiences we can all easily access.

I must admit that, like many other viewers of the show, when they introduced the storyline about the sewage flowing into our oceans and rivers, I was a bit taken aback and found myself asking: “Wakanda kak is this?” But now, I think I get what the directors were trying to do by introducing this metaphor for the current state of this fictional nation. Hence, it might work better if they switched things up and added a drop of freedom-fighting red to that yellow to change it to a slightly more orange tone, to better reflect the wealth of kak the people of the show’s nation find themselves swimming in.

Considering the ruling party’s broad-based disregard for the welfare of the country’s black majority, perhaps they could embrace the moment and tone the black down to a stylish rocky vintage grey, sort of like the country’s washed-out, crumbling tar roads.

I wonder if I should write to the film’s art department to see if they might be open to this. At the very least, it would open up a much-needed new revenue stream, as fans of the show scramble to get merch in the new seasonally appropriate colours: clothes, shoes, eau de colognise, etc.

Maybe some will fight to keep the old colours, and every few years we can have a battle of the fashion factions with lots of singing, dancing and former presidents catwalking in late.

Come to think of it, this could also present an opportunity for a spinoff gameshow of the Runway variety, with the ever-stylish Lindiwe Sisulu character on the judging panel as the head merch decoloniser. To put together something like this could mean so many tenders as well for a handful of service providers related to the cast and crew members. It’s gonna be so great. We’ll dance like it’s 2008! DM/ML