The past two or three weeks have been filled with the thrill of discovery. It has taken no more than the reading of a few popular newspapers, the watching of a few local television news broadcasts, the listening to of a few radio talk shows. I now see how easy it is to achieve what so many think is unattainable personal glory and riches, fame and desirability. These last weeks have shown the way to anyone who might want to become a beloved South African icon. This is how to go about it.
If you are not content with hanging morosely around the sidelines, don’t base your quest for personal glory or wealth on some pallid overseas prototypes. No David Beckhams or Madonnas for you. You must aim far lower. You must devote your energies to becoming the genuine article, locally bred and cherished. Your objective is to become a Sunday newspaper front-page special, a South-Africa’s-news-and-information-leader-SAfm darling. You must want to be on every poster, on every lip, talked about and ridiculed at every up-market dinner table. In other words, you must become a proudly South African celebrity, so skin-crawlingly repulsive, so utterly bereft of restraint or modesty as to repel even the most generous of minds. You must become so wanting of personal charm or wit as to make the average Big Brother contestant look like the head boy at Michaelhouse.
As we all know, the local scene is already crawling with celebrities. Sports, arts, pop music, politics, the law, academe, medicine, television, you name it. There are dozens of celebrities to go with any pursuit. Some will do anything to stay that way. A top-of-the-fees-mill senior advocate celebrity in search of a bit of extra media exposure will send out a press release announcing that he’s offering his invaluable legal services entirely free of charge to those among the poorest of the poor being thrown out of their democratically acquired dwellings by greedy creditors. He knows that if the gross rapacity he challenges is chic enough, it will get him prime coverage both on camera and on page three.
This is because nothing disqualifies the would-be South African celebrity from being up there in the limelight, adored and jealously imitated by media and public. Hardened criminals are among our most admired prominent icons. Even those languishing in C-Max make the grade. Some popular heroes can even mix and match, become celebrities in apparently widely disparate avocations. You can be a cricketing star and a deeply caring Christian con artist at the same time. Being a cele- brity is as easy as falling off your wallet.
If you are aiming to be illustrious in the ‘popular arts” category, the first thing to do when becoming a South African celebrity is either to burn or bury any signs of talent you may have been born with. South African popular arts celebrities are not allowed to secrete any natural flair for what they do. That smidgen of gift you may have must be kept well out of sight. First little sign of that and your fans will run for cover.
Next, get deeply into drugs as soon as possible. No South African popular arts celebrity succeeds without regular widely publicised visits to rehabilitation facilities. And don’t stop at dagga, that’s old hat. Today’s South African popular arts celebrity must be an addict of the entire available pharmacopoeia. If you’re an unrepentant drunken sot as well, all the better.
At this stage, redesign what was actually a blissful childhood. In a gut-wrenching e.tv interview, recall the gruesome details of your upbringing in grinding poverty and filth, graced only by incest-rape and extreme parental violence. It all helps.
Next, make a complete U-turn with your sexuality. If it shows any sign of banal normality, abandon it immediately. Make your walk-out on your loving spouse and kids as brutally callous and public as possible and then plunge yourself into a befitting alternative sexual lifestyle. If you feel a little queasy about going down on someone of the same gender as yourself, don’t worry. With the right drugs and circumstances it’s easy. Taste doesn’t come into it. Set up an orgy and introduce yourself gently. Before starting, inhale, inject or swallow plenty of mind-altering substances so that you don’t know the difference between fanny and freddy. But don’t go too far, save some depravity for later. Leave the dogs outside.
At this stage, it’s wise to make plans for your tragically early death. As the last weeks approach, surround yourself with the most reptilian of your parasites. In the latter stages of your personal decay, your swimming pool and bedroom must seethe with drug lords, specialist media lawyers, religious advisers, regional politicians and record company executives. Also invest in some sort of celebrity burial plan that will ensure that, when the untimely moment comes, you’ll be swished off to eternity in a gilt coffin so magnificently kitsch it would embarrass Liberace.
So there you are, basic guidelines to a life of glitz, glamour and vulgar excess. Get it all right and the president himself will be there to talk at your funeral.