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

Fokol™: The discovery of this new mineral will change The South Africa Show forever
Image composite: Malibongwe Tyilo. Original images: Marvel Studios, Gallo Images/Jeffrey Abrahams

This. Changes. Everything.

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

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Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • William Kelly says:

    🙂

  • Haha Malibongwe, your best critique yet! For what it’s worth, I would hate to see you cancelled. I’m going to decline getting on the good ship Fokol: chaos makes me queasy. Good luck to you and all who sail on her and may you find a safe harbour eventually.

  • Wilhelm Boshoff says:

    Good one!

  • Chris VZ says:

    Is that the governing party’s new slogan? “Vote for fokol”

  • James Clayton says:

    That was brilliant.

  • Johan Burger says:

    Excellent satire! Malibongwe for president of Fokol! 🙂

  • Jaco Janse van Rensburg says:

    The power of Fokol is bending reality at the speed of an Interstellar spaceship

    • Eulalie Spamer says:

      Did I read you right, Malibongwe, the R of SA is not a failed state as we feared. We now have Fokol to rescue us from all our travails.

  • John Stephens says:

    I truly love Fokol. It is the only thing that this government has succeeded in delivering.

  • Charlie de Boer says:

    Love it, a shame that it took 30yrs too discover.

  • Paul Hoffman says:

    Beware the double negative in the weasel wording “we did not send fokol to Russia” in plain English “we did not send nothing to Russia” which raises the question: “ if that is so, what did we send?”

  • Eddie Maulson says:

    Sums up the situation in this country excellently. Make sure all the comrades read… it with understanding of course.

    • John Smythe says:

      The only thing they can read is the numbers on Rand notes. Otherwise the reading comprehension of children.

    • John Smythe says:

      The only muppet who fears fokol is Fikile “Fear Fokol” Mbalule. And then he became “Mr Fix-it” Mbalule. But he fixed fokol. So, I don’t know now.

  • ELSA GODDEN says:

    Brilliant satire.

  • Karen G says:

    Absolutely brilliant! 🤣🤣🤣Pity there is Fokol chance anyone in government is reading this.

  • Confucious Says says:

    Hahaha… great! Now we all know Fokol too! If the government runs out of Fokol, they can find it in their heads, surely! There’s definitely fokol between their ears!

  • Malcolm Kent says:

    Illiterate as well as uncouth. Double negative – so we must have sent ‘ol’.

  • virginia crawford says:

    Hilarious! I’m still laughing.

  • What's Happening says:

    Love it. ❤

  • Caroline de Braganza says:

    You have brightened my day with Fokol!

  • Felicity Cory Cory says:

    Absolutely brilliant. Thank you 👏

  • Jennifer Hughes says:

    As always, your humour makes much out of the Fokol else. Thanks 😁

  • Fanie Rajesh Ngabiso says:

    So funny! Love it!

  • Rod Mellet says:

    Absolutely beautiful! We are in it for shure…

  • Ritchie Morris says:

    This not so mysterious substance all started its existence a few years years ago when the despicable minister gave such to her farm labourer to feed the poor pigs. Then they died due to getting fokol. And that’s also what happened to her for animal cruelty – fokol. Now she seems to be trading in the same substance on behalf of the nation. But repeatedly she and her comrades don’t care about the other animals in the national farm. Orwell should sue for plagiarism.

  • Brian.hughes4959 says:

    We should be proud to have such an eloquent intellectual individual as the country’s Defence and Military Veterans Minister

  • Jane Crankshaw says:

    One thing about all South Africans – without a sense of humour we really would have Fokol!

  • Nicol Mentz says:

    Thank you made me laugh. Wish it wasn’t true.

  • Lawrence Sisitka says:

    Malibongwe has hit the mark absolutely perfectly – this could run and run, we’ll never be out of Fokol. And I love the Chappies line – wonderful! Thank you Malibongwe 🙂

  • D'Esprit Dan says:

    Great satire, Malibongwe! There is Fokol chance though, that the sloth-like luddites and charlatans at Lootfreely House will read this – or understand it. Fokol brains, fokol decency, fokol morality, fokol to offer South Africa.

  • warrick sony says:

    Great piece, and it seems, with recent speculation, that the “fokol” they loaded on board is thought to be rocket fuel. Speaking of which, it’s worth checking out the “Fokkol Song” by Koos Kombuis. He wrote it in 2008, just before the soccer World Cup. It’s on YouTube. The best version is at the Aardvark pub in London, but there seems to be a heavy rock version on an album too. The lyrics are spot on, like the earlier satirical days of his Voelvry songs like “Kaalvoet oor die Drakensberg, ek het my tekkies by die huis vergeet”. There are a few versions that pop up, but a couple are a bit too influenced by the rocket full he drinks. This results in him just shouting Fokkol for 3 minutes. The non-rocket fuel lyric versions, though, echo the final throes of this piece and, by the way, gain relevance with each disastrous new year of rulingpartyfuckwittery.

  • Janie Rorke says:

    Spot on, very clever, loved it. I’m from the sleepy seaside town that saw Fokol being loaded/offloaded.

  • Jimbo Smith says:

    Brilliant! But at the same time tragic; we have truly sunk to the deepest pits of absurdity thanks to this putrid ANC Govt which miraculously destroys anything and everything it touches! 2024 will be no different; the same clueless “politicians” doing even more damage.

  • Chris de Weerdt says:

    Brilliantly written, brilliant!

  • Elize Cloete says:

    ”it demands that its viewers cultivate a spirit of radical commitment to chaos in order to fully appreciate it.” You made my day…….. This plus
    a wacky sense of humour is what makes us loyal South Africans. Loved your piece!!!

  • Michele Rivarola says:

    Like unobtanium = trying to find an honest politician who places the country’s interests ahead of those of his/her party and his/her friends and family. SA is certainly plumbing the deepest of all depths when it comes to this.

  • Irmgard Becker says:

    Absolutely brilliant, Malibongwe Tyilo, you get my award for comedy excellence every time!

  • Lisbeth Scalabrini says:

    In the history books of the future, our present government will be known as “The Fokol Period Government”

  • Marisa Venter says:

    Thanks Malibongwe for making me laugh till the tears came! This is our treasure, this is our vibranium: our humour, our community, our shared experiences that no one in the rest of the world will ever understand, magical people amongst us with the talent to write like this and much more. My hope is that in the end this government will be left with all the Fokol it deserves, leaving the good people of South Africa with a long overdue season finale.

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