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Seven Days on Social Media: Today’s Marie Antoinette, let them bath at hotels

A seven-day Acumen Media Report by Tonya Khoury.

by Tonya Khoury
February 13, 2026
in News, TMO.Live Blog
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Seven Days on Social Media: Today’s Marie Antoinette, let them bath at hotels

Pam Bondi in 2025/Wikimedia Creative Commons

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The Gauteng Premier, Panyasa Lesufi, said to a crowd of angry residents that politicians experience the same woes that we ordinary peons do. He even had to bath at a hotel because he had no water. PanYazeeeni? #WeAreNotTheSame.

I’m Tonya Khoury and this week we learnt that Gauteng can’t count backwards as #DayZero walked straight into Gauteng and waved its dry dust across our taps without any countdown on the television screens.

Residents were fuming. A person from Brixton went up to the mayor, Dada #TheDodo Morero, and plonked himself down right next to the dodo. He lifted his arm and asked him to smell his armpits while he exclaimed that they haden’t had water for almost a month.  #CrashingOut.

Meanwhile here in KwaZulu-Natal, we are dodging floods and cyclones. The Durban reservoirs are under strain, fit to burst with lifesaving water, while in Gauteng there is not a drop to spare. A little too ironic, don’t you think?

Water and electricity are weapons of mass destruction

So while the residents were smelly, thirsty, hungry and denied their human rights did the DA go and send water tankers, or fix the infrastructure? Nope, they’re taking the municipality to court. Lawyers, a great place to lose money. And MKP, are they bringing a bucket of sorts to help? Nope, they requested a parliamentary debate.

Guys, you realise that we are held ransom for votes by weapons of mass destruction called electricity and water. You see that, right? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see it. #WeAreNotTheSame.

I will get to #Epstein, I know you’re waiting for it but first: #PaulOSullivan, wow, he is so rude and has zero respect for our courts (I suppose one can’t blame him). He rambled on for hours about how great he is with weirdest accent I’ve ever heard. It’s not Irish, it’s not  English, it’s a bit Afrikaans to be fair. Think I’m mad? Go watch it.

So, Sully is hard of hearing and he has a bad back. He was often cuffing his ear saying “pardon” and telling us how sore his back was. He just wanted to go home and made sure we knew about it. I hear you O’Sully. You’re a creep but my bones also ache.

Cats and kings

A friend pointed out to me that Sullivan and Malema had a kiss and cuddle before the Adhoc committee began. I didn’t believe it but it’s true. There’s proof. And then Dereleen James brought receipts and shoved them under O’Sully’s nose. He was fuming, he crashed out, she crashed out.

The chair managed the situation and he always uses Sullivan’s full name: “Paul Robert O’Sullivan” when he reprimanded him. O’Sullivan was grilled, was found to be lying under oath – like almost anyone else in this commission. The end result? O’Sullivan denied being friends with suspended Deputy Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya. He admitted to one shared meal (a 2016 braai) but claimed: “I don’t know where he lives. I’ve never been to his house.” He framed all contact as “work-related”.

Cedrick Nkabinde (Mchunu’s chief of staff) described O’Sullivan’s influence as “the real state capture”, alleging he threatened him during his testimony. Then O’Sully #CrashedOut stating things like, “You can ask me a million questions. I’m not going to provide that information.”

Ozempic and suicide

If you’re searching for entertainment on Netflix, let me lead you to this #AdhocCommittee instead. #LetThemEatCake #WeAreNotTheSame

And then this… #WiandrePretorius, a man implicated in the Commission, survived an alleged hit at his Boksburg home on 5 February, but died by suicide two days later. He was later revealed to be #WitnessD from the #MadlangaComission. In the same commission, we heard Brigadier Rachel Matjeng testify that Cat Matlala her on-off boyfriend who gave her cash and Ozempic. She said she could have asked for a BBL but she didn’t. She made it clear that these were not bribes for his R360m police contract. #WeAreNotTheSame

And then Steenhuisen exited the DA, this off the back of him killing all the cattle in KwaZulu-Natal with a surge of #FootAndMouth affecting 70-90% of herds. Farmers are watching their livestock, our food, die.  Jump John, oh wait. What happens now? Who’s running the DA? I know the answer is Helen, but I mean who did we put the badge on this time to ‘pretend’? #WeAreNotTheSame

I got to bed late, as #SONA kept me up. I watched this display of head regalia dumped on sedated hippos walking up and down the red carpet. Red, like the blood of the countrymen. Gross and ostentatious. And the President said the same things he says every year.

Filthy job

More of that next week. My words have run out and I have to get something off my chest: Pam Bondi! Wow, just wow. Are there words to describe this villain? Let’s see what I have in my treasure trove. Unless you’re living under a rock there is only one story in the world today despite all the chaos you’re living in South Africa: The #EpsteinFiles.

Check out our graphics about how this story has morphed over the past year across the world. The volume is insane 236 million articles in a year with an engagement off the charts (except Acumen Media’s charts); we can even check out Trump at the same time.

Donald Trump makes up almost a quarter of the conversations on Epstein. Sorry, got completely got distracted there, Acumen stats will do that. Okay, so here’s this chick, Bondi, Pammy Bondi. She’s sitting in front of the DOJ and she is being grilled. Only Trump would send a woman in to do his filthy job.

Bondi crashing out

She was the definition of #CrashingOut. She screamed and ranted, she fought like a cornered paedophile protector. I don’t pretend to know anything about US politics but I imagined myself in Bondi’s shoes, some of the survivors of Epstein’s tyranny standing behind her, silent. No need for violent-shouting-screaming-finger-pointing, just silent.

And when the Attorney General at the #OversightCommittee asked if Pam would turn around and look at these women whose testimony the government has never been heard, no matter how many times they have begged to be heard. She rolled her eyes and faced firmly forward.

What makes you do that? Are you inherently evil or are you terrified? Even a super villain like Pam has people she cares about. I wonder what they threatened her with. Rumour has it that she is part of the girls from #EpsteinIsland, that would explain so much. How a woman can turn on other hurt women is almost unfathomable, unless you watch it live on television. Hey, America, you are not angry enough!

Now I beg your indulgence, let’s go back 10 years. Picture the scene, Sicily 1485, I’m kidding. Ten years ago, I’m sitting on my mate’s porch overlooking the magnificent Kruger Park. It was early in our friendship, and my friend was telling me he loved Oprah. The goose, my ma was with me and she volunteered, “Tonya hates Oprah”.

Unfathomable #PizzaGate

Not quite the impression I was going for but here we were. He asked me why and I said #PizzaGate. He said they don’t deliver pizzas to the gate, we are in the bush, and so the story unravelled.

I don’t think he believed me then, how could he? But he does believe me now. Hollywood in particular is filled with predators. This conversation was around the time Hilary Clinton was running against Trump and it was unfathomable that we would see an #OrangePiel running the largest economy in the world.

#PizzaGate was unfathomable too, yet here we are. This time not with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Podesta, but with the #EpsteinFiles. It’s much bigger than our children (as lucrative as they are); it’s about ruling the world. After all, Epstein said himself: “I represent the Rothschilds”.

I saw a meme where a girl is puking in the toilet and another girl holding her hair back and helping her through that awful experience. One was labelled, “Just read #EpsteinFiles” – the puker, and the other “#ConspiracyTheorist friend” – the hair holder.

That about sums it up. None of the information on Epstein surprised me. None of it. I believe there’s far more. So many children go missing each year. The #SoundOfFreedom showed us how it works, it’s quick and easy and those kids disappear or grow up to be Pam? Wow, now that’s a step a little too far. Mind, I might #CrashOut.

Conspiracy theories

You have no idea how much of a conspiracy theorist I am, you don’t get to read news headlines for 25 years and not be cynical at best. I’ve read every memoir about Assange, I read all the Podesta files. I suffered the trauma you are suffering a long time ago.

Many conspiracy theorists have been vindicated the past few weeks. And now that we told you so, nothing happened. Nothing. We read letters from Sarah Ferguson begging Epstein to marry her, offering her two kids Eugenie and Beatrice as part of the package and we have no rage.

I don’t know why I’m surprised because we’ve watched babies blown up and their limbs collected in packets in Palestine and we had no rage. This week alone three thousand Palestinians get evaporated by some new weapon the IDF used in Gaza.

This is at the same time as #Satanyahu joined the #BoardOfPeace over a nation he annihilated. There is no rage. We are complicit.

And I’m not off topic, the war that is brewing under Trump and Netanyahu? Don’t think for one minute this is not a massive part of it. Trump is a puppet. Go on then, crash out.

Crazy diamonds

We’ve seen more images of ex-prince Andrew, we’ve seen the Clintons, the Dalai Lama, and too much information for our brains to digest. And then I watched Ghislaine Maxwell take the fifth amendment she looked and sounded like a robot. Don’t even get me started!

The word is that she has the power to turn this all around for Trumpet but she wants her own pardon. Everyone wants a pardon, hey. Perhaps we should introduce them to O’Sully.

A CNN reporter quizzed Trump again about Epstein, and he crashed out to the max. He said we should be focusing on something else, like the countries he’s stealing to give oil to Israel his attack on the “western” hemisphere.

I’m done, go have your weekend. And if you’ve learnt one thing today it’s that time travel doesn’t exist otherwise #StephenHawkins would have taken his name out of those files. Too soon? Rage on, you crazy diamond.

You’ve just scratched the surface of the week’s news with Tonya Khoury and Acumen Media.


 

Tags: Acumen MediaDonald TrumpJeffrey EpsteinMadlanga Commissionmedia monitoringPaul O'Sullivansocial media listeningSONATonya Khoury

Tonya Khoury

An Experienced Managing Director and Media Spokesperson with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising analytics industries. Skilled in Digital Strategy, Sales, Corporate Communications, Market Research, Media Measurement and Management. Good media skills backed by strong data have found Khoury and her companies as regular guests on various media shows highlighting big media conversations. Khoury has also recently acquired the title of #CoVidder!

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