It was surreal watching #Kagame (Rwanda’s president) tell Ramaphosa that if he wanted a war, he could have one. Kagame’s eyes terrified me. If looks could kill. That man meant what he said; Cupcake touched him on his studio.
Cast your mind back to when we sent ‘peacekeeping’ forces to the war-torn Congo. This was under the directive of our former minister of education, Angie #ThirtyPercent Motshekga. She sent 3 000 of our boys to die. Are we really in the Congo to make peace?
What if I told you that it is rumoured that uncle #Gwede Mantashe (and others) have mines over there and that we are protecting politician’s personal interests in illegal mining in a country we have no interest in? Does that make sense now? #LooksCouldKill.
I watched videos of our soldiers waving a white flag over sandbags surrounded by gunfire in Goma. Goma is filled with mercenaries as the country is ravaged by gangsters clutching minerals. DRC is fabulously rich inside its part of the earth, but above the ground, it is painfully poor. The irony is lost on many.
Fifteen of our soldiers met their fate in a country they’d never seen before. Badly armed and poorly trained, these lambs were sent straight to the slaughterhouse. Some jested on the socials that Angie had sent our boys over armed with sjamboks. It would have been funny except it wasn’t.
The painful Motshekga
Watching Angie Motshekga on screen is painful. She is incoherent and she looks like she’s never seen a mirror. This woman decimated our education and reduced our nation to a 30% pass mark and she quite literally cannot speak English. Regardless, when she learnt of the dead, she hopped on a plane and spent R10 million to land in Goma only to return home without a single casualty on board.
Five men were badly injured and, aside from special flights, there is no access in or out of the region. Can you believe that wasn’t the worst of it? #JeepersCreepers
Uncle Cyril sent a tweet, yes a tweet, calling the Rwandan army the “militia” and that was the moment we almost entered into a war with a country on our own continent. The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, took to television and laid down the law without exception: If South Africa wants a fight, they can have one.
We learnt two valuable lessons this week. One: if we are ever under attack, our army is moot, and we should assume brace position. Two: never put a minister of education in charge of your defence force. I watched several defence experts tell journalists that South Africa should keep very quiet now, let the dust settle a bit and then whisk our soldiers out of there as quickly and as quietly as possible.
Bring them home
Do you think we’ll achieve that small feat? Three thousand lives depend on it. #BringThemHome.
#JanuszWalus, the man who assassinated #ChrisHani, agreed to an interview with eNCA’s Annika Larsen. She’s the same chick that interviewed De Ruyter in that explosive story that amounted to nothing. Did you forgot about Andre? I didn’t. Muggz De Ruyter we called him. The guy who left us in darkness and exited South Africa before his morning coffee got cold.
I digress, Annika said she’d been trying to interview Walus for 15 years. The interview was absolutely shocking. This man showed no remorse about murdering an iconic freedom fighter. Annika asked him if he got paid to kill Hani; he said he was offered money but refused it as he felt killing Hani was his duty rather than a “job”.
He told us that, if given the opportunity, he would do it all again. That was the moment, the moment when we should have had this psychopath extradited back to South Africa and placed in the toughest prison South Africa has to offer until the day he dies. He was petrifying. His eyes cold, piercing and emotionless. You got your interview, Annika. We all felt that. #KillerEyes
And then a day I never thought would come. #Duduzile Zuma appeared in court for her part in the #JulyInsurrection. Acumen Media released a report in July 2021 called The Real Instigators of the Insurrection; in it we identified, via unbiased technology, who made the impact across social media driving chaos and destruction across our country.
Dudu and the looters
There were two main culprits, #SphitiphitiEvaluator and Zuma’s daughter, Duduzile. She told the looters exactly where the chaos was about to disrupt and amplified any damage we were already seeing on the ground. She would use the phrase #WeSeeYou and then she’d name the location of the forthcoming chaos.
This would give the tsotsis the directive on where to loot. This woman terrifies me. I find her scarier than Putin on a bear. She has this wild unhinged spark in her eyes that raises the hair on the back of my neck. #WideEyed and terrified.
Let’s try and close off, South Africa. I’ll make it snappy: #Eskom wants to raise tariffs by 12.7%. The #RepoRate dropped by 25 basis points; Vicki Terblanche murderers were back in court. Ex-Judge John Hlope is running away from sexual harassment claims. An elephant trampled a tourist in the Kruger.
And then the filth that was arrested last week with 10 million child porn images has a 25-year-old girlfriend who was also involved. That just makes me feel sick. Hang ‘em high!
They arrested five suspects in footballer #Fleurs murder and five people were hacked to death in #Inanda. Aside from that, most people got worked up about the #ExpropriationAct that was finally passed into law and this, primarily, led to the crumbling of an already unsteady GNU.
GNU lekgotla
There was a #CabinetLekgotla to try and sort that out. Of course they didn’t actually resolve anything, but Lekgotla sounds good, doesn’t it? Do you know what didn’t sound good? Fifty-one #Putco buses were torched in a taxi mafia fuelled war on our own soil. Fifty-one? That’s a ridiculous number. Where’s Mchunu? I didn’t see him, did you? Keep your eyes peeled.
And then the country was turned upside down as Trump froze all foreign funding for a 90-day period. Many NGOs in South Africa are funded by #Pepfar, one of the programmes halted by the tangerine. It’s a good bridge to take you to Trump Town. I know, I know. I’m also tired and it’s only been one week.
There was a plane crash involving a plane and a helicopter where all parties on board were killed. I was surprised Trump didn’t blame Biden or the #LGBT community. Oh wait, he did. I don’t make this up, I read the news, so you don’t have to.
RFK turncoat
Then #RFK became a turncoat in his first session in senate. One of the senators asked why his stance on abortion had changed. She quoted from his past where he made it clear that his stance was: “Your body, your choice”. His response was that he agrees with Trump that any abortion is a tragedy, and that abortion should be only state approved.
Can you believe that? In a country with a massive drug and child trafficking problem, children will now be born into unwanted homes to mothers that are incapable of caring for them. Not very smart, is it?
Back to Trump, he put a bunch of Columbians on an aircraft carrier and flew the migrants back home in chains. The Columbian president said that Trump was merciless and refused to let the flight disembark on Columbian soil. Trump threatened Columbia and the next thing that same Columbian president sent his own planes to pick up his people.
Trump also said that he and Elon had stopped a $50 million transaction that was going to Gaza for condoms. Trump said that Hamas were using them to make bombs. Again, I promise you I’m not making this up. It turns out the transaction was for Gaza, a region in Mozambique that is heavily impacted by HIV and Aids. I’m sure that misinformation will be Biden’s fault.
Genocide moved GPS coordinates
And talking about Trump’s stance on Palestine, he was on record saying that it was better to “clean out Gaza” and that Egypt and Jordan should take the 1.5 million Gazan-based Palestinians. We all hear what Trump says but do we hear what he didn’t say?
There were 2.4 million Gazans before October seventh. You do the math. Of course, Jordan and Egypt told him to get knotted but now we know exactly what his plan is for Palestine. We focus on hostage releases and the victory of the Palestinian people as they return to the rubble and start to rebuild.
Meanwhile, in the annexed and occupied West Bank bombs and demolition vehicles are playing out the next phase of this genocide. You see Trumpet said that there is no West Bank and that delighted the Zionists as they found another set of neighbours to annihilate. The genocide didn’t stop, it just moved GPS co-ordinates.
Still on Trump and Palestine: apparently any “Hamas sympathisers” would lose their right to tertiary education in the USA. So, if you wear a keffiyeh or carry a #FreePalestine status you are no longer allowed to study. That should worry you more than anything I’ve written in my column.
How on earth do I cheer you up dear friend? I know! Not only is it the weekend, but you made it to the end of #JanuWorry! That deserves a celebration, doesn’t it? I think I may jump on a boat and dive into crystal waters to try and find a potato bass who fancies a cuddle. We all need a hug.
I’m Tonya Khoury and thank you for scratching the surface with me and Acumen Media.