Can we please now have a break from all this breaking news?

Detailed summary

Even my beer stipend, so generously funded by Maverick Insiders, is under extreme pressure – not from the summer heat, but from the avalanche of breaking news. “Insiders” sounds…

I raise a beer to every arrest in the fight against corruption, but all the toasting is breaking my liver.

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! My liver is under pressure, even though the jaw-dropping testimony at the Madlanga Commission has disappeared from our screens.

The police’s ill-named Commission Recommendations Task Team keeps giving us reasons to raise a beer glass. When it strikes at our leaders, extortionists included, I toast. When another arrest follows, I toast again. Even a perspicacious reader can see the danger: my liver is now the busiest organ of state in the Republic of the Gupta.

Even my beer stipend, so generously funded by Maverick Insiders, is under extreme pressure – not from the summer heat, but from the avalanche of breaking news. “Insiders” sounds like a cartel to me.

Even eNCA was announcing breaking news on its 24-hour news channel: baby-faced reporter Dasen Thathiah had been promoted to editor of its spanking-new investigations unit.

Congrats, mfan’kithi (my boy). When are we going to India? Readers, don’t ask; it’s a private joke. In this khawtry, we investigate the news, report it, break it and then, apparently, fix it. No? When the news breaks, I reach for the bottle opener and leave the fixing of the khawtry to you, Comrade Leadership.

When did “breaking news” become a thing? The phrase was first recorded in an American newspaper in 1877. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Associated Press introduced “flash” alerts for exceptional stories.

In the Republic of the Gupta, everything breaks: my liver, a statement, a hearing, an arrest, a lawyer’s phone call. It has become part of an accountability soundtrack and, occasionally, a headline that makes me spill my beer.

Why waste two breaking news alerts in an hour? Hold one, please. Even the Soweto Derby offers a quaint pause at half-time, injury time, referee’s time, see.

Opening of the article, excerpted from Daily Maverick. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.