Missing a week is like missing a whole season on Netflix and then trying to make sense of all the new characters and plot twists.

But who can make sense of barbarism: We all watched an inferno blaze until it consumed Mthokozisi, a hellfire that was deliberately lit to kill the e-hailing driver. But the fire engulfing that car and that human being was done to make a statement. #TaxiTurfWars. SANTANCO says that anyone found to be involved will be suspended. I’m surprised they didn’t say they’d put the perpetrators on “special leave” to show just how much they gave a toss about our fellow countryman.

Trigger warning: This report will not cheer you up, even if you like sport. I’m Tonya Khoury; let’s scrape our way through these headlines with Acumen Media. Everywhere I look there is death and destruction. Every line I read is filled with corruption and greed. Every headline I analyse is smothered in the blood of our children. Criminals everywhere.

Take a breath because this is horrific: A four-year-old girl from Eldorado Park was laid to rest in the smallest coffin. She had died after being beaten and raped by her father. The so-called father faces murder, rape, assault, and child abuse charges; and the woman who birthed her? She faces murder and failure to report sexual offenses. Both these demons abandoned bail. On social media we heard the screams of a child being abused while the neighbours recorded the terrified girl and thus became complicit.

You can’t exhale yet: fueling the xenophobic spiral and still on the death of children, Ntombizodwa, mother of murdered six-year-old #AmantleSamane, testified about her trauma and hatred toward foreigners, following her daughter’s rape and murder by Phethe Simiao, who has since pleaded guilty. There were other children slaughtered by those who are meant to protect them and hold them dear. It’s heart breaking. We’ve become slaves to crime; we are led by criminals; we are surrounded by criminals, #EnslavedByCrime.

Engulfed in Flames and #EnslavedByCrime. A Week of SA News Media

Last week we spoke about being engulfed by crime; this week we saw the solution presented to us:  a frail (I hope I’m not being unkind) #FerozCachalia stood up at the Interpol 27th African National Conference and addressed us about crime. This conference was hosted on SA soil, and it was the 27th of its kind. Twenty-seven is a lot, so I assume this lot know what they’re doing. A talk shop rather than a workshop. So here I am watching Feroz, and he is exactly how you expect him to be: a boring academic. You see I zone out a lot, some may call it brain fog, others may call it an occupied mind. Personally, I just think some people are blatantly boring. Seriously guys this is meant to be our police commissioner, oops, our “acting” police commissioner and he wouldn’t scare a tiny field mouse let alone a #ZamaZama or a hardened gang member in the Cape Flats. Imagine Uncle Feroz trying to intimidate them? History has made us used to bold men standing up with megaphones telling us how to behave, and if not, how many people they’d shot. And they didn’t fill me with confidence. I’m a difficult customer. And so is a field mouse.

Did Someone Call #Interpol? An Acumen Media Report

#WaterWars and #HalfMasts

I know there’s one story you want to hear about this morning: #Mkhwanazi. You want me to dissect it and unpack it so that you know from start to finish what is worth knowing. You want all the fine-feathered words removed and the story laid out plain and simple, so you know what you’re in for. That’s our job at Acumen Media. We read the news so you don’t have to but when it comes to Mkhwanazi and the #Madlanga Commission, I’m just as lost as you are.

I’m Tonya Khoury and yesterday I had the popcorn ready, I had my phone turned to silent and I was waiting out the customary hour for the courts to get their formalities and mic checks out the way. That way I can replay the content at various speeds or skip the flapping through files for irrelevant bits of paper moments. It was like waiting for the summer rain: Day one of the #MadlangaCommission left me sound asleep. I tried to watch it three times after I woke up from my nap but nope, I’d either glaze over or lull back into a dream. At the close of day one we were told that the implicated individuals should expect “sleepless nights”, yet the truth is #Mkhwanazi put me to sleep.

#TheGeneral, #TheCalculator and other #PrimeSuspects

This week in 1396 the Ottoman Empire beheaded 3000 defeated crusaders. In 1665 one hundred thousand people died of the plague in London and in 2025 Helen Zille launched her mayoral campaign in Johannesburg. It was never a good week to stick your head out the door. #NeverZille

It started with #JumpingJohn who, if you don’t mind me saying, is unlikely to be able to jump anywhere these days. Sho! Living a ministerial life sure does keep your potbelly happy. Anyway, as a portly person, I get to take pop shots like that, it’s the only reason you would like to be on the heavy side. So, there was John, shiny, blue and like a boxing ring announcer. Louder and largely irrelevant, he crowed in his commander. The 74-year-old strutted briskly to the podium (let’s be fair, she’s topping for her age) and told her loyal servants that she was running for mayor in Johannesburg. #ShrillerZille

I’m Tonya Khoury and if you’re a regular reader of #ScratchTheSurface, you’ll know that I’m not a #GodZille fan. I’ve never been a Zille fan, largely because I find her condescending, racist and above all a genocide-denier. Among her funders is Israel and if you haven’t worked it out: Helen is a Zionist. #NeverZille. She will tell you that there is a genocide of white farmers in South Africa. That same falsehood that turned our world upside down with Trump. Strangely enough, she can get behind that one, and she can even get behind the #SudaneseGenocide, so one would imagine she does know what a real genocide looks like. But the genocide in Palestine where five hundred thousand people have vanished in Gaza alone is one she refuses to admit exists.

#NeverZille and Social Media Matters

We’ve all used it, we’ve all laughed at it, but this week we earned the title: “South Africa is a movie”. What a year this week has been. I wish the news would take a hiatus because I’ve got a lot going on this side of the planet. I’m Tonya Khoury, and this week I’ve witnessed unlikely suicides, files dropped from dizzying heights, a deputy police commissioner who looked like he was going to cry while police helicopters circled him and a tsotsi’s Lamborghini’s carefully loaded into a forfeit and seizure truck. All of this because of one guy. #SAIsAGangsterMovie #MkhwanaziReturns
Roll back the clock to last week when the story broke of #NathiNthetwa’s suicide. He jumped from the twenty-second floor of the Hyatt in Paris. The windows do not open on the twenty-second floor, apparently. His phone was apparently found in a forest far away from the scene and a suspiciously TYPED suicide note appeared on his wife’s messaging app. Apparently. #SAIsAMysteryMovie

#MkhwanaziReturns #SAIsAMovie

For the most part I had the sensation of drowning this week. That crashing wave I felt on top of my head was #Mkhwanazi’s shake up or shake down, whichever way you look at it. We have two sittings to unpack his allegations: the first is the #AdhocCommittee in Parliament; it may sound droll, but my word it was lit. And the second was the #MadlangaCommission, a commission established by the President’s purse, #SenzoThePurseMchunu.
Before I continue, though, I have this to say:
Dear Glynis
Please leave the DA and stand for president. You are a legend. I have watched you year in and out chomping like a Pitbull at the heels of corruption. This week alone I saw you rip into the witnesses at the #AdhocCommittee and thereafter tell us that there is now sufficient proof that the deputies are useless and should be fired immediately. My highlight of the week was your interrogation of Bheki Cele. I know you’re going to hate me for saying this Glynnie, but I like Bheki the Hat, and you yourself admitted you have given him a hard time over the years, but watching the two of you I noted you have a mutual respect for one another. Glynis Breytenbach, you biscuit, you stole the show ma’am. Some of your first words were that we all know the police are corrupt … so why are we here? #BeLikeGlynis.

#BeLikeGlynis and South Africa’s Soft Multi-Coloured Underbelly

Every two and a half hours someone is killed in an otherwise, achingly beautiful country. Every twelve minutes someone is damaged for life by stomach-churning abuse. This is the country that has the temerity to call out a genocide somewhere else and never looks in its own backyard. This is a country that ignores, with impunity, its own war. What if I told you all those statistics, those vile statistics are a reflection of what is currently happening to our women and children in South Africa. Would you still describe it as a war? Or would you say “I don’t know what that is.” #PurpleRain
I’m Tonya Khoury and I’ve watched my timelines fill with #TheColourPurple as if Celie the character from the book walked in and threw paint across South Africa. Paint that seeped into our core. Paint that reflects the colour of bruising and beatings. Purple, the colour used to describe heinous abuse. The book, The Color Purple, describes a young African American woman who is raped by her father and bears two of his children. She is then married off to an abusive man and has a struggle-filled existence. This would be a SA story on any day of the week. It is commonplace, nothing exceptional; it is the norm. What do you call that? It’s not a war because there are no borders or barricades, there is no retaliation and no identifiable opposing side. Is it a genocide? Where does it fit into the terms and definitions of the ICJ? Shall someone call Ronald Lamola? Did someone call Trump? Do Afriforum’s Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets care? They care so much about a murder that happens on farmland but don’t seem to give two hoots about the woman next door regardless of her colour. She could be purple.

Protection from the #PurpleRain. #ShutItDown

It’s Friday so I have to begin with Professor Mary de Haas. What a character! If you missed it, do yourself a favour and check out the shorts from Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’s interview with the #SAPSAdhocCommittee. I’ve laughed more this week than I have in a long time and that my friends requires deep gratitude. Cheers Scary Mary. You made my week.
The old dear must be 105; the chair kept reminding her of her age and that she should speak with wisdom rather than as a gossiper or a conspiracy theorist. He didn’t say this once, he repeated himself over and over again, and if I was #ScaryMary I would have been a little offended, but Mary did not care, she was slinging allegations like they were free chips at a casino. Mary doesn’t believe that the concepts of allegations and heresy are wise ones. She was as mad as a March Hare and I felt like I had fallen down the rabbit hole and  been plonked at the #MadHattersTeaParty.  I was #AliceInWonderland except wonderland was a lot less of the wonder and a lot more of the horror.
I’m Tonya Khoury and I’ve started seeing cross-eyed as I deal with one court case after another. When I was young my dad wanted me to be a lawyer. I’ve learnt more about the legal system in this country from YouTube than I ever learned at Wits. I wanted to be a journalist as well,  and watching those two hopeful career paths merge would have made my Dad proud. “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.” For both Alice and Mary.

Mary the #MadHatter & Other Fiction

I’m Tonya Khoury and it really feels like I’ve scratched too hard and broken the surface of the rats nest in #Ekurhuleni. I learnt something unbelievable; you can use the word “tenderpreneur” as a legit job on your CV folks. Newsrooms are even using it as a strap line for a gangster as if it were a career path. I remember when we all thought it was a funny and clever joke. Now it’s our new normal.

Marketing and Branding: #WooliesBags – The New Name for Corruption

#ScratchTheSurface on media news with Acumen media