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With actors like these, the South African S*** Show is the greatest show on earth

With actors like these, the South African S*** Show is the greatest show on earth
Malibongwe Tyilo
By Malibongwe Tyilo
23 Sep 2024
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Simelane, Cabanac, Montana, Molefe, Shivambu! Need I say more?

There are just not many shows left that can take HR drama and turn it into highly entertaining art. However, I must admit that as each of the new workplace storylines kicked off in the last month of the South African S*** Show (Sass), I had my doubts about the direction season 31 seemed to be taking. 

Minor show characters that I had never paid attention to before took centre stage, the Simelanes and the Cabanacs suddenly got speaking roles as they desperately tried to hold on to jobs that they clearly should not have been hired for. Gullible as I usually am, I wondered about the believability of these storylines. 

Why would the writers have us believe that a boss on a mission to rid his organisation of its image as Corruption HQ would go and hire a justice minister with a background of corrupt dealings? VBS nogal! Surely, even accounting for lax working hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, the government’s HR department would do a better job at background checking a justice minister if this were real life? Although I’ve got to give it to Simz; that was almost well played! I mean who’s gonna investigate you if you’re the boss of the investigators? Such a strategic keep-calm-and-play-the-long-game queen! 

And as that whole story came to light, in the very same week’s episodes, an infamously far less strategic mind whom the writers would have us believe is a boss on a mission to rid his organisation of its image as a far-right bunch on friendly terms with racists, would then go and hire Cabanac, a far-right YouTube talking head with a face straight from white supremacist central casting. 

Reflecting global trends


Admittedly, the Sass show is excellent at keeping up with and reflecting global trends, but I have to say, this Third World wannabe Tucker Carlson is not quite it. And to try to convince us that a serious government minister of a serious African country in 2024 would hire such a person as Chief of Staff beggars belief.  

I imagine the two bosses call each other in the middle of the night for a #ramahuisen sob sesh over their hiring decisions; maybe even sharing light moments and having a laugh while trying to figure which is worse, the crooked or the racist. 

Meanwhile, in another storyline, the great Zumathematician of Nkandla seems not to be losing much sleep over such concerns, as he embraces his new ventriloquist hobby. With an all-star line-up of crooked puppets to play with in his old age, he is fully back in the game. Here be superstar crooks Montana & Molefe from the State Capture storyline; deftly sidestepping Pollsmoor and heading straight to Parliament for jobs they definitely did not deserve. And I’m still not sure what to make of the old man’s brand-new shiny Shiv. The writers haven’t done much to explain why this little crooked puppet gave up his red overalls, one can only assume that upon realising the old man would never #paybackthemoney, he saw he would do best to go and learn from the source on how to keep his own ill-gotten gains.

https://youtu.be/UppC5SRlAC8?si=2vzS9eOhLO99L19f

Side note: Lucky Montana is one of my favourite villain character names of all time! Yes, I get that he is the luckiest Montana to ever montane, but also… Scarface! It is an even better name than Tony Montana! So gangster! And kinda hot in a zaddy way. 

I swear a few times in the past month I almost threw my dinner at the TV screen as I watched this show; thankfully the thought of having to deal with Outsurance’s call centre agents saved my TV. Still, I wondered aloud if the writers had not lost their minds. I yearned for older juicy plots; the days of the Gigaba sex tapes; the Phala-Phala robberies; the Zille gaffes; the Lady Sisulu essays. At least the numeric creativity of Zumathematics is here to stay for the foreseeable future; small mercies.

But over the past couple of weeks, I came to realise that, as usual, the writers were two steps ahead of me, for to be a fan of Sass is to be tested, to be interrogated and challenged to your very core. How much more can you take?, the show asks. And then instructs us to apply the Zumathematic method and multiply our answer by a hundred and million thousand ten, and only then do we get a sense of what the South African S*** Show is trying to portray. DM

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