From Jacob Zuma's infamous firepool to Donald Trump's political theatrics and Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma's anti-immigration campaign, this week's Bureau of Cynicism argues that populists may speak different languages, but they often follow the same script. With sharp satire and biting humour, it explores the politics of blame, spectacle and personal ambition in an age of outrage.
Image: IOL Graphics
Remember Jacob Zuma and his "firepool?"
Msholozi built a massive swimming pool at his rural homestead using millions of our tax rands. When the country asked why the hell he needed a taxpayer funded splash zone, Zuma didn't apologise.
Instead, he made his Minister of Police shit bullets at a press conference. They had the slideshows, the music, three grown firefighters in full gear, trying to pump water out of the deep end with a sputtering garden hose that had the water pressure of an old man with prostate issues. It was beautiful.
The sheer, unadulterated balls of telling a country with constant loadshedding and no water: "Just relax. Hehehehehehe.”
Across the firepool called the Atlantic Ocean, his orange spiritual brother took this exact same bullshit to a multi-million-dollar level.
Donald Trump, the world's loudest tenderpreneur, decided to "beautify" the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington.
He bypassed the boring government bidding process and handed a 14-million-dollar contract to a chommie who sprays the pools at his golf courses. The grand executive instruction?
Paint the bottom "American Flag Blue."
Within three weeks, it didn't look like a flag. The water turned into a putrid, toxic, fluorescent-green soup of rotting algae, and the blue paint started peeling off in giant, rubbery sheets that looked like wet, blue condoms floating on the surface.
Which brings us to Jacinta, a bespectacled lunatic who actually looks like she won first prize at a JZ in drag competition.
A recipient of foreign money and training from the US State Department, she now says things as though she is in fact the missing scion of Trump and Zuma.
Her so-called movement, "March and March," sounds like a bad domestic worker recruitment agency, or a corporate team-building exercise for people who are permanently angry on TikTok.
Her big, brilliant solution to South Africa's economic misery?
She has issued a nationwide ultimatum.
She told every single undocumented foreigner in the country that they have until June 30th to "self-deport."
She genuinely expects fellow Africans, many of them documented and residents of this country, to wake up on Tuesday morning, look at the calendar, and say: "Ah, look at that, guys. It’s the 30th. Jacinta says we must self-deport.
Pack the bakkie, we’re heading back to Bulawayo, where our children have never been."
But Jacinta is a quick learner. She went over to America on a US State Department junket, probably to study under the masters of the craft, and came back repeating Trump's exact script.
She literally stood in front of microphones and declared, with a straight face: "South Africa will be great again."
Where have we heard that one before?
She’s basically Donald Trump in a Durban wrap, but with Jacob Zuma's talent for dodging accountability.
When people point out that her xenophobic rhetoric is a recipe for a bloody street war, she shrugs her shoulders and says: "Hey, our march is peaceful! If anything goes wrong on June 30th, it’s the government’s fault for not policing our borders."
It is the ultimate Zuma move.
We used to think right-wing fascism was an exclusive club.
We thought you had to be a rich white guy in a colonial helmet, or at least have a weird mustache and an inheritance in Europe.
But look at us now! We have finally achieved peak diversity in global grifting. Fascism has been thoroughly decolonised.
It turns out you don't need to be white, and you don't even need to be rich to be a dangerous nationalist. You just need a microphone, a complete lack of shame, and some WhatsApp data.
All these people want us to believe they are doing this for the country.
They wrap themselves in their national flags and love calling themselves "patriots."
It is the biggest joke in the book. Donald Trump doesn't love America; he loves Donald Trump and staying out of prison so he can keep charging the Secret Service for golf carts at his own resorts. Jacob Zuma never gave a single damn about the freedom struggle; his entire life's work has been a high-stakes, multi-decade game of keeping his own backside out of an orange jumpsuit.
And Jacinta? She’s no patriot.
She’s just a Durban DJ looking for a bigger stage.
Her "March and March" isn't about saving South African jobs; it's about building a personal brand and generating TikTok clout off the backs of desperate, suffering people.
It is the ultimate scam. You light the match, throw it onto the thatched roof, and then blame the municipality because their firepool doesn't have enough water pressure.
In the end, Jacinta, Zuma, and Trump are all drinking from the exact same fountain of political bullshit.
Zuma gave us the firepool, Trump gave us the toxic green swamp, and now Jacinta is trying to build a border wall out of pure hot air and WhatsApp voice notes.
The only question left is whether South Africans are still stupid enough to buy the pool noodles she’s selling.
* The Bureau of Cynicism is a weekly satirical dispatch from the frontlines of politics, media and public life. Armed with equal parts skepticism, sarcasm and common sense, it investigates hypocrisy, interrogates fashionable narratives and keeps a watchful eye on the ever-shifting goalposts of public discourse.