The A to Z of cultural catastrophe

A is for assisted suicide . Having been praised for establishing one of the country’s most credible art awards, emanating ironically from incredible quarters, the Kebble family resolved to put to death their deceased relative’s illustrious (R300 0000) hand-out to artists. Although the ‘assisted suicide” of the mining magnate happened in 2005, it was this year that Brett’s father Roger broke his oath, ‘The Kebble art awards will proceed.” Other assisted suicides included the Golden Bear award-winning Dimpho di Kopane opera company, which fell out with their sponsor Spier — although they did recently reopen.

B is for bugger me silly, which is what writer and filmmaker Aryan Kaganof suggested Market Theatre artistic director Malcolm Purkey would do to him if audiences didn’t attend one of his shows. In a group email he also took the opportunity to make a slanderous, homophobic remark about Mail & Guardian film critic Shaun de Waal: ‘Please come — we had to guarantee the Market Theatre that at least 67 people would turn up and, apparently, if [you] don’t turn up, Malcolm Purkey will fist fuck me and, since I’m not Shaun de Waal, this does not seem like a pleasant alternative.”

C is for cocaine (as usual), mountains of it consumed by stars that seem to be forever coming clean but not staying that way. This year’s special mention is kwaito star Brickz, who dumped promoters and thousands of fans. He didn’t pitch at gigs in Rustenburg, White River, Maputo and Jo’burg — a loss of R50 000. Last weekend he was bust for possession of dagga after a dramatic, high-speed car chase.

D is for ‘Don’t piss on my battery, especially when I’m representing my country”, and refers to the day in July when a car purposefully crashed into the audience of the South African festival — organised by Germany’s ministry of international development at the World Cup in Berlin — during a set by Afro-rocker Johnny Clegg. To the surprise of many, the Malaysian driver turned out to be an attention seeker, not a terrorist.

E is for eish, and was probably uttered by many Jo’burg youngsters who volunteered in October to take HIV tests before the Levi’s Rage for the Revolution concert in return for free tickets. HIV education experts agreed that there was no harm in this instance of the radical marketing campaign for jeans, which involved rewards for testing. Counsellors were trained and invited celebrities were encouraged to find out their HIV status.

F is for ‘It’s a funny country”, to loan a phrase from some corny, long-forgotten local movie. Not so funny was the physical attack on Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer in October. She was locked in a storeroom by thieves who assaulted her for not handing over her wedding ring. The Guardian reported that Gordimer was overcome more by sympathy than fear, and she commented, ‘I thought, ‘Shouldn’t there be a better use for these hands, this arm, than robbing an old woman?’”

G is for gone but not forgotten: Lebo Mathosa, Jabu Khanyile, McCoy Mrubata’s brutally murdered 22-year-old daughter Nonceba Mzondo, Taliep Petersen, the State Theatre’s Michael Lovegrove, film director Robert Altman and the country’s wealth of youngsters robbed of life by HIV-related illness. In response to Mathosa’s untimely death, department of arts and culture Director General Itumeleng Mosala said: ‘I was so shocked that I called colleagues and friends to confirm if it was true.”

H is for homosexuals who are, apparently, still not a part of African culture. The Golden Shower award for HIV Research and Prevention goes to former deputy president and sex bomb Jacob Zuma who, in September, said: ‘When I was growing up, an ungqingili [gay] would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out.” Happily, H is also for Happy Birthday. The Market Theatre turned 30, Ballet Theatre Afrikan turned 10 and we looked back on 50 years since the Women’s March on Parliament in 1956, 30 years since the Soweto student uprisings and 100 years of the Sunday Times, all of which have contributed to the culture of the rainbow nation.

I is for the most intriguing official press release issued in 2006. In November, the department of arts and culture released a statement justifying why it is wrong for South Africans to dub them the ‘party department of government”. ‘We are not the entertainment wing,” Minister Pallo Jordan wrote, saying the nickname is a ‘distortion” before listing his department’s achievements.

J is always for Jo’burg . J is also for junk. This year’s Best Trash Award goes to Pikitup, which this month announced its plan to open a state-of-the-art green waste recycling centre in Bryanston. Runner-up is LeZulu Blanc Johnny Clegg, who this year released his album One Life and who, some may know, is part owner of Jozi-based company Vuthela, which recycles old cellphones and computers.

K is for ‘in the kak” and refers here to the country’s People’s Poet and convicted bank robber Mzwakhe Mbuli. It is alleged that he dragged his wife Doris a few metres when she refused to hand him the car keys in mid-December. Perhaps the refrain from his great struggle poem Who is in Lusaka? should be changed to Who is in the Kaka?

L is for Love. Apparently real love in South Africa is now best expressed through, well, no love at all. The website True Love Waits notes that, to date, 380 000 squeaky clean web surfers have signed the online pledge to ‘stay pure until marriage”. In November, an international survey of 59 countries showed that teens are, in fact, waiting longer to have sex and married people are enjoying more sex than ever.

M is for mushrooms, cele­brated in Soweto. Yes, Gauteng’s mother township held the second instalment of its most bizarre annual bash — the Soweto Mushroom Festival — in May. Visitors drank the weird concoction of brandy, Amarula liquor, sugar and, you guessed it, mushrooms. M is also for murder, in this case the recent killing of musical genius Taliep Petersen and, in April, of Crazy Monkey: Straight Outta Benoni feature film creator Brett Goldin and his boyfriend, dress designer Richard Bloom. The two were found naked in Mowbray, bullet holes in their heads. The tragedy inspired discussion about who was more trashed in the wee hours of that fateful morning — the victims, who were returning from a party, or the perpetrators, who stole Bloom’s VW Polo and a credit card.

N is for the latter part of the province name KwaZulu-Natal — and the coming debate, in 2007, about whether Natal will be dropped from KwaZulu.

O is for Oscar and must go to director Gavin Hood’s drama of crime and introspection Tsotsi. In February, the M&G took some real tsotsis to see the movie and one thug complained, ‘Tsotsi didn’t bath. I don’t really get what’s going on there, but I am not used to gangsters that aren’t clean.” Hood later complained in a magazine interview that the M&G story was ‘in pretence of objectivity”.

P is for Potch, that swinging town in the North West battling to come to terms with its proposed name change to Tlokwe, which is what the place was called before Andries Hendrik Potgieter hit the area in 1838. ‘This is the will of the people,” said Jordan. Meanwhile, a nasty blogger wrote: ‘The voortrekker builded [sic] the town up from nothing. Now the ANC wants to play bulldozer with the Afrikaner community. What are we going to call ourselves now? Tlokweliers.”

Q is for the queen. Helen Mirren stars as her royal highness in Stephen Frears’s acclaimed drama-bordering-on-satire, which opens locally in January. A British critic wrote: ‘Her majesty is in good company.” Q also goes for Freddie Mercury, lead singer of super group Queen, who would have turned 60 in 2006 had he not died in 1991 of an HIV-related illness. In commemoration, the company Neca created an 18-inch-high Mercury robot that sings a medley of hits while gyrating its hips — the motion copied directly from the star’s 1986 Magic Tour.

R is for Roberts, the surname of South Africa’s bellicose writer Ronald Suresh Roberts. This year’s Ronald Suresh Roberts Award for Betrayal goes once again to Ronald Suresh Roberts, who took his spat with Nadine Gordimer to new depths when he sued the Sunday Times for a mere R300 000 for calling him ‘unlikeable” in a story about his standoff with the Nobel laureate.

S is for spooky stuff and refers to scams uncovered by the department. In September, it released information regarding a scam hinged on public funding to the arts. Criminals used the department’s logo, ‘claiming the department has mistakenly transferred more money into their accounts than they were supposed to and requesting them to refund the difference”. The second happened in August and concerned the theft and intended auctioning of the visitor’s book of the presidential official residence Mahlambandlovu.

T is for terrible — the most terrible film made about a terrible event. Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, created to commemorate five years since that event, was panned by Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw. He wrote: ‘There are some films so awful, of such insidious dishonesty and mediocrity, that their existence is a kind of scandal.”

U is for State of Undress. This year’s Rude Nude Award goes to Borat (aka Sacha Baron Cohen), who enthralled Cannes and either delighted or revolted audiences worldwide with his hideous little one-piece, full body green G-string. Kazakh ambassador to London, Erlan Idrissov, called Baron Cohen ‘a stupid, belligerent pig of a man”.

V is for vomit. The top international perpetrator of public tiger parking is mega star Paris Hilton, who spilled her guts in October after a night of strenuous clubbing with new best friend Britney Spears. Referring to the display, The Guardian reported: ‘Paris vomited on stage while attempting to sing her recent single, reflecting a growing commitment among celebrities to provide their own punch line.”

W is for what’s in, what’s out, Watson? This refers to the battle for ownership of the translation of traditional San poetry by poets Antjie Krog and Stephen Watson. Of course, nobody bothered to ask the descendants of the poets who they thought was the better perpetrator of plagiarism.

X is for X-rated. This year’s most X-rated joke must be the one about the new Adult World superstore that recently opened under a church called the Potter’s House in a converted office block in Melville. Plans are afoot to pressure the closure of the establishment, but in the meantime the folks upstairs are praying for the folks downstairs.

Y is for Yuck, a common response from ordinary people when they hear what the famous call their babies. Two years ago Gwyneth Paltrow got the award for Stupid Celebrity Baby Names when she called her kid Apple. Last year’s worst may have been Cruz Beckham. This year we were introduced to Bluebell Madonna Halliwell — born to mother Gerry, who saw flowers everywhere late in her pregnancy. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who travelled to Namibia in May to have theirs named her simply Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. By the time Madonna got to adopt David Banda, lucky for him he was already branded.

Z is for boy wonder Zola, who was appointed Unicef regional goodwill ambassador at the African Development Forum in November. The 29-year-old rapper, television presenter and actor said nobly: ‘You can’t refer to this as a job. I grew up in the ghettos. I understand what it’s like to struggle. As long as I live I am going to fight social injustice.”