A Shot of Mandela Porn

Finances are getting tight, so I've been chasing freelance writing gigs. Here's a sample piece I fired off to The Exile, to no apparent avail. My angle was the revival of their Mandela Porn segment but... I could blame their lack of response on leftist bias though, let's be honest, I fucked up by not following their format. Still, I shall persevere, leaving no brick wall unbutted in my quest to make a career of sardonic comment.

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After apartheid was run out of town on the points of a pitchfork, good excuses to form a rampaging mob have been scarce. Sure, there’ve been recurring black-outs, stratospheric crime rates and abysmal living standards to piss and moan about, but all these problems lack a human face. To get properly riled-up and riotous takes a suitably villainous caricature, and the bald, bespectacled Potato Head of Afrikaner authority is long gone. Luckily though, there’s a convenient new source for the hated other - all the hopeful immigrants pouring into the country through its unpatrolled borders.

Mid-2008, South Africa was convulsed by “xenophobic violence,” the Rainbow Nation way to say “localised genocide.” Shanty-town residents ganged up to bash and burn the foreigners they accused of stealing their jobs. A handy excuse for carnage but, with unemployment around 42%, they probably didn’t even have jobs in the first place... Whatever, the locals flipped out en-masse, and at least 62 xenos died clicking their heels together and wishing they were back in Kansas.

As even the notoriously aloof Mbeki government eventually noticed the pervasive odour of roasting Zimbabwean, the army were sent in to pacify the chaotic “informal settlements.” Seems the police just couldn’t hack it, figuring that to stand up to a crowd you need to be a crowd - not an untrained, demoralised rag-tag. So, in scenes reminiscent of the final days of apartheid, the world was treated to soldiers firing teargas and rubber bullets into the teeming township throng. Of course, they were mostly black soldiers this time around, so that was okay.

Nasty violence quelled and investor confidence neatly castrated, sprawling “internal refugee shelters” mushroomed around the country. As the country went into its bitterest winter in recent memory, these camps accommodated the traumatised immigrants, the bulk of whom took to cowering in dark corners, whimpering and shivering like raped dogs. The country sniffed the clean air, heaved a collective sigh of relief, and went back to pretending it was Africa’s democratic miracle of peace and unity.

Of course, until everyone finally keels over from the sewage ‘n’ cholera concoction the government’s brewing in the national water supply, the madness of crowds will keep disrupting the Rainbow fantasy like news of a butt-plug clearance sale going through a Pride Rally. The latest, grim proof of this is a particularly horrifying incident that took place January 8th in Durban.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one - a Zimbabwean, a Tanzanian and a Mozambican are eking out their lives in a high-rise refugee shelter. Late one night, they spot an enraged, machete-wielding mob heading their way, excitedly blowing vuvizelas (trumpets) and screeching “shaya amakwerekwere” (“hit the foreigners”). Some of their friends and family hide under beds, even in toilets, but the Zimbabwean, Tanzanian and Mozambican find themselves trapped on the apartment’s top floor.

As the 50-odd bloodthirsty locals pound up the stairs, the three migrants decide that, rather than be hacked limb from limb, they’ll jump out the sixth story window. The Zimbabwean and the Tanzanian die instantly from the bone-splintering fall but, get this, the Mozambican survives. He’s in critical care right now, having apparently found his happy thought on the way down - and the smart money’s on “no more life in South Africa!”

The real punch-line? The “Venture Africa” complex, that Cape Canaveral of the immigrant community, was just two doors down from the local cop shop. Several witnesses have come forward, puzzled as to how the Broad Street S.A. Police Services missed the horns, chanting, breaking glass and screams, to say nothing of the footfalls across the roof. Somehow, the cops even failed to notice the armed mob streaming past their windows. Streaming past not once, mark you, but twice, as the killers marched home in triumph, suffused with the warm, communal spirit of mob violence. Of course, before declaring the pigs inept cowards and calling for the baby-killers, you’ve gotta consider that maybe there was a really good soccer match on TV.