Well done tenacious one, you’ve been reading #ScratchTheSurface for another year. But 2022 wasn’t for the faint hearted and, seeing as you’re here, saddle up and let’s take #OneStepBeyond and look back in anger on the first half of this year. It was no football match, but it was a real kick around.

Let’s scratch the surface of 2022 with Acumen Media and relive the #Madness we experienced from January to June this year.

It actually began with #LindiweSisulu calling our judiciary #HouseNegroes. Remember that?  Our medusa Sisulu has been busy dominating the headlines all year: she actually did the kickoff by taking #OneStepBeyond.  Sisulu, anti- everything (except Zuma’s #RET), is in the race for the Presidency. Well, it takes two in 2022, her and Nkosozana #WhenPeopleZol Dlamini (Still-a-Zuma). Lindiwe has been seen rallying behind #ACEbestos #Magashule and loathes that #StepAsideRule. Well, I say loathe, I mean it depends on who the target is, because we have seen this woman challenge the constitution and demean our judiciary. Ramaphosa wasn’t having it, they’re not mates these two, not while he was calling the #Consitution the most “beautiful constitution in the world”.

The Prez also blamed Cabinet for the #JulyRiots, and fired #KhayaSithole. Words like #Insurrection or #CoupDeTat left our narrative, but “riots” remained. Even though there were slow moving wheels of justice, our President’s #ThumaMina, the #NewDawn speeches dried up and he turned to using the f word, then replaced it with a redundant “fear niks”.  Even the great orator took 22 #OneStepBeyond and became a meditation app. Just madness. This was all before his couch was left gutted like #OurHouse in the middle of the street. Before the couch, he had spent most of the year keeping his job. The RET have tried to “unseat” him all year. I can hear your eyes roll back from here. Show some compassion, won’t you? Or don’t. You’re right, he signed up for this. #LeakedAudio where the President was recorded saying that he would “rather fall on my (his) sword than for the public to finally hear that their public money was used to advance certain campaigns”.

2022 was littered with #SouthAfricanisms: words with double meanings and a huge media budget. #Leaked is one of those words. It means published. #OneStepBeyond.

Before #PaulMashatile even entered the conversation, we saw Zweli I-Got-Vibes #Mkhize drop his hat in the ring for the presidential race. Noticing a trend?  Yup, that’s what we do for a living here at Acumen, identify trends. And while we were jaw dropping over #Mkhize’s gall, we learnt that two thirds of all PPE tender awards were “irregular”. Yet another #SouthAfricanism: Irregular = stolen. Stolen from the sick; stolen by thieves.

#NSFAS’ Sibongile who went #Kardashian with money that didn’t belong to her, was immediately labeled a “thief” and handed a five-year sentence for taking advantage on an irregular error. Fair cop, however, if you are one of the big fish like, um, let’s think, #KPMG, #McKinsey, #Steinhoff, #Zuma, #VBSLooters, #ZweliMkhize, #Bosasa, #Guptas, then we call it #Irregular. Just #Madness. #OneStepBeyond.

Have you picked up your jaw yet? Allow me to drop it for you: SA’s #GuyFawkes, #ZandileMafe. Remember him? The homeless guy who blew up parliament with explosives he magically pulled out of a Checkers bag. #Parly had no security, no cameras, no insurance. Well, our #GuyFawkes also called for #JanusWaluz, the assassinator of #ChrisHani, to be released. You’ve noticed that trend now haven’t you! It’s #OneStepBeyond.

Time for another word of the year, not that rubbish #GoblinMode. A word on the word that was named ‘new word of the year’ by the #OxfordDicitionary. Goblin Mode is two words, duh! And what does it even mean? Here’s a word that absolutely must be added to our #SouthAfricanisms, #Stalingrad. A dangerous and expensive word, and one #DaliMpofu spells so well.

Enter one of the biggest stories of the year, the unseating of the so-called “Public Protector”. I prefer #PublicNeglector. No other than #Busisiwe #Madam #Mkwhebane. The woman terrifies the daylights out of me, seriously, she could be an #Eskom. She walks in, and all daylight leaves. It is through her (not through you chair) that #Stalingrad came into its own. It’s like a mandate to #Mpofu. It means: Stall the court or inquiry processes by all means possible. A tactic successfully deployed by #uBaba for nine years. Sidebar, he’s now represented by Barry Roux. Yeah, I know, #OneStepBeyond. Anyway, back to #Dali and #MadamBusi. They’ve spent more time together than most couples, #ItMustBeLove #SweetLove, nah, it’s a willing buyer, willing seller scenario I’m afraid.

Dali has been called out by most, I mean even Adriaan Basson called him a #Nincompoop. Dali was found breaching the code of legal ethics by telling a colleague to #ShutUp. He was threatened with disbarment for other outrageous #OneStepBeyond moves, but he owns #Stalingrad. He’s a master at it. He just moved from one political RET biased criminal to another. #Stalingrad – put that word in your dictionary, not #GoblinMode.

#Zuma, you’ll learn, even though #TerminallyIll, he has danced, opened restaurants and volunteered as a potential witness for #Mkhwebane’s impeachment process. He knows all about #Stalingrad; he’s been using #BillyDowner as his latest delay tactic in the #ArmsDeal trial. Simply infuriating and #Madness.

Let’s assume that #Eskom has been absent from this report, for the most part they have, unless you talk about the bombings of our infrastructure?  Anyone? No of course not, that will remind us we are still in an #Insurrection and no one wants to report on that game. #MediaSilence and #MediaManipulation were dotted across this set of statistics all year. They’ve always been here, it just became more blatant.

Early this year we saw #NhlanhlaLux, what a character. #OneStepBeyond the man we associated with #JabulaniMall during the insurrection: he was named a #ToySoldier by #Malema. Why? Well Lux now headed up a terrifying campaign called #OperationDudula.  (Later in our report Malema asks him to be Police Commissioner – #Madness)

#OperationDudula, another #SouthAfricanism, just call it what it is – #Xenophobia, but that unfolds into a much bigger story, one really harrowing as we traipse through the broken pieces of 2022. Operation Dudula came into its own in #Diepsloot, a place so dangerous that the police won’t even drive through it. The place in which #NhlanhlaLux took front and centre. Beautifully branded, him and his crew. T- Shirts and placards and so the marketing of #OperationDudula began. It caused chaos and we became wide-eyed, but unprepared for what was about to come. #2022WeSeeYou #Madness and definitely #OneStepBeyond.

Then the Senzo #MeyiwaTrial; the murder of a football star. Netflix dropped a doccie and suddenly the wheels of justice started to grind.  #DoccieJustice, a #SouthAfricanism and my personal favourite.

Overseas, #UkraineUnderAttack started to trend. #Putin wreaked havoc. #Zelensky received an #Oscar. #ZelenskyEffect apparently. #NewWords. Former Prince Andrew paid #Giuffrem millions of pounds to forget she was raped by him when she was a child. #OneStepBeyond.

Would you believe that was only quarter one? Stay with me it gets wild in here!

Quarter two kicked off across the sea when #WillSmith klapped #ChrisRock; #KimKartrashian tore #MarilynsDress; and the world fell in love, again, with #JohnnyDepp. We shared a mutual loathing for #AmberTurd, and that my friends was #CourtTV at its finest. Bringing it home #BlackCoffee brought lots of those shiny Grammy statues. That was one of the best things of 2022. Step away from the #Madness.

And then it happened, one of the biggest and most tragic stories of 2022. #KZNFloods. Media reported the death toll at over 400 and then they stopped counting. Nobody knows how many people died, but what we do know is that there are still 6000 survivors and they have become victims of a cruel South Africa. 6000 people are sleeping in buses as the government bungles 23 tenders that juggle with human rights. They will be sleeping in that bus tonight and no one will care.

Talking about things we don’t care about: the #GBV stats came out and seventy six percent of men admitted to being guilty of GBV in one way or another. Admitted! Skip ahead to quarter four and our #CrimeStats look like wartime stats. #WWWomen.

And then here we go, are you ready for the #Madness? #FarmGate. Cupcake was told to step down, step aside, step to the left, slide to the right, and we were at the Rocky Horror Picture Show taking #oneStepBeyond as we started to look sideways and use scary words like #PresidentDoubleD. Here it became clear as to why #Ramaphosa fired #Mkhwebane. Now you see it. The madness started with a faulty prop. A couch. It was Julius who initially led the narrative. He said Rama staged a robbery on his own farm to launder cash by having it stolen after it was hidden in a couch. Juju dropped a video recording of two creeps breaking into a house. Sounds like another day in SA to me but now today, in quarter four, we have a commission all wrapped up and a case for the President to answer for.  A case that has our heads spinning like a bad merry-go-round, trying to work out if we have a President or not. We learnt later, that said video was #Leaked by no other than #ArthurFraser.

Fraser is a wannabe Zuma: he released #uBaba on #MedicalParole as he was #TerminallyIll. And as #Cupcake had now taken a swipe at #Madam #BusisiweMkhwebene, the battle lines were drawn in the sand. The video was an edited version and we should remember that #Fraser knew about this hot couch because he was head of the SSA at the time of the robbery, which the President reported. Fraser didn’t bother with it because it didn’t involve magical #SickNotes.  He’s only interested when you’re charged over 700 times. Fraser only enters the fray when there are #SickNotes, not for #GuttedCouches. In fact, our house in the middle of the street doesn’t count beneath his feet. #SickNotes and #GuttedCouches – great #Southafricanisms.

Nomia #RosemaryNdlovu, convicted serial killer, cut a chilling figure in the court room, didn’t she?  Absolutely terrifying. #CourtTV was busy. Malema and #MamaWinnie’s funeral case was such a farce, why did we even bother? I’d have pushed anyone aside to get to a family funeral. This was just a #DiversionExcursion, a bit like that #Tembisa10 docuseries entered into #GlobalJournalismAwards. Oh no it wasn’t, oh yes it was, oh no it wasn’t actually. Regardless #Nandos made a meal of it #Ekhuruhleni11 #DeceptiveDecuplets.

And then enter #Eskom – well exit #Eskom, definitely the nominee for drama queen of the year. We had all that #Stage5678 rubbish so we’d forget that the #Insurrection was alive and well – decimating our ground infrastructure like a virus, leaving only devastation, gobbling up our country’s wallet and our ability to trade, our ability to eat. These maniacs should be tried for treason.  #WeSeeYou2022.  #Gauteng was and is in darkness from ten to twelve hours a day.  When I said it was wild, it was also very dark, a #TimBurton kind of dark or #Madness – just #OneStepBeyond.

You still listening / reading? It gets worse. Whistle-blower, #BabitaDeokoran shot and killed execution style. Dead next to her three-year-old. This time we had had enough. South Africa will not let this story leave; we will not let her courage die there as politicians trample on her remains. #Murdermostfoul and #OneStepBeyond.

So, what were our opposition doing while all this was carrying on like a bad telenovela?  Well, Zille said it was “better to be poor in Langa” than in the rest of the country.  And #Steenhuizen went to Ukraine. Why?  His explanation … cooking oil had become expensive in South Africa. I’d like to see the same level of interest when a woman is raped, stabbed and dragging her naked self to a taxi rank for someone to save her life. But that is far too much to expect, in fact it’s #OneStepBeyond. Dear John – nothing but a #BadBotoxAdvert.

There is an under-current of good, though. #Siyavuma.  #Maya became the #DCJ. #DuduMyeni was issued with an arrest warrant, #AnojSingh and #BrianMolefe were actually put in handcuffs. There was some drama about a R22Million #SAFlag.  We did quite a bit about flags this quarter as #Afriforum and #EFF had a legal ruckus about the use of the #ApartheidFlag. The government reintroduced the #350Grant and the nation breathed … my dear country, what has become of you?  What trauma have you endured. #OneStepBeyond. Then, #WaterShedding, a new #SouthAfricanism, #Madness. It was also in quarter two (getting sick of you) where we saw that ridiculous character, #AdvocateTeffo, get arrested in the middle of giving his legal argument at the #MeyiwaTrial.  #Teffo was handcuffed in the courtroom and walked out without finishing his closing sentence to the court.  We thought that was the weird part, not a chance china, that oke called press conferences, lots of them.  We deal with them in Quarter Three, stick with me the next part is coming up shortly.  As I sign off on the first half of this terrible match, let me remind you of a story you all forgot – the Guptas were arrested. Our #TrolleySurfer made it home safe. Madness and very #SouthAfricanistic.

There was huge news in this half of the year, Acumen Media launched its new #ActiveListening service and that is a gamechanger. Some might say it’s #OneStepBeyond.

I’m Tonya Khoury and I’ll be back with the final part of what you endured in the year 2022, don’t worry, we’ll just #ScratchTheSurface.