LETTER TO MAHLAMBA NDLOPFU: Can we please now have a break from all this breaking news?

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.

What isn’t worth breaking

On 28 October, former ANC regional treasurer Suliman Carrim was granted R100,000 bail but remained behind bars. That’s breaking news? A man on bail isn’t out shopping?

Less than 24 hours later, eNCA screamed breaking news: Carrim’s lawyers had contacted the Madlanga Commission, reportedly to meet a bail condition. This could have waited until after the derby.

On 29 October, the National Prosecuting Authority’s Asset Forfeiture Unit announced that it had secured a provisional restraint order over assets estimated at R99-million and linked to Joe “Ferrari” Sibanyoni and friends. My mental maths, from the days before fancy maths literacy, immediately divided the news into instalments. At R10-million a day, this story could keep us busy for nearly 10 days.

Monday: Ferraris seized. Tuesday: the rest of the cars. Wednesday: the properties. Thursday: the bank accounts. Friday: I might be ready for the golf estates. This is not ennui; it is editorial pacing for a man with one dysfunctional liver.

Then, with the weekend beers already in the freezer, breaking news arrived in a pair: Miss Gorgeous, advocate Andrea Johnson, former head of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, and former Crime Intelligence deputy head Feroz Khan had been arrested on charges of defeating the ends of justice. An anti-corruption tsar and a Crime Intelligence chief in the same crime docket? My leader, must the Republic of the Gupta serve both arrests on the same plate?

Why not arrest Khan on Friday, hold his bail hearing on Monday, postpone it for seven days to obtain bail information, hear arguments and grant bail 14 days later? Let me breathe for 48 hours, then arrest Miss Gorgeous on Sunday. Repeat the process: apply for a certificate to join the cases, wait, repeat.

A fastidious police task team could have managed the timetable better. My liver would have been grateful; my phone, that perfidious informer, would still have had its headline and battery. It was a damp squib, anyway: both were granted bail the same day.

Breaking the news cycle

Thus, my leader, I propose a National Breaking News Coordination Committee, chaired by a retired hack and staffed by sleuths, judges, contact agents, rogue agents and a few rotten investigative journalists.

Add one sagacious raconteur to keep the minutes and one nimble subeditor to stop the committee issuing a breaking news alert every time it adjourns. The task would be Herculean: schedule the fireworks so I could toast each burst of accountability separately.

Do not lambaste me for celebrating: a meritorious investigation that brings the powerful within reach of the law is no abstruse policy paper, but news that makes the whole khawtry sit up. And I yearn for every alert that shows the law moving, even halfway through a beer, although the committee might stagger the bulletins to spare my liver the ineffable joy of three arrests before supper.

Between the third alert and the fourth beer, even fornication needs scheduling. The sex partners of the Republic of the Gupta deserve better; instead, they compete with a dilettante news consumer who says: “Just one more update.”

The “breaking” banner catalyses drinking, gambling and interrupted intimacy. It does nothing for my liver or the lovers of the nation. A little less noise between the alerts, and everybody gets a turn.

However, my leader, not all breaking news is born equal. Take the Nkandla stokvel, Jacob Zuma’s MK party: by the time Zuma fired its eighth secretary-­general, Sibonelo Nomvalo, on 22 October, 1,041 days had passed since its launch – a simple average of about 130 days apiece.

At this rate, another dismissal is scheduled programming. So are the tears: Fikile Mbalula cried, and Nomvalo did too after his dismissal press conference. Enough theatre.

And now, election day. Breaking news: I did not vote on 4 November. I suffered what cheeky Muslim Ebrahim Fakir calls “electile dysfunction”; I surprised myself, too. No 21-gun salute. No drum majorettes. No tears. No breaking news alert.

I know you’re disappointed, but hear me out: not one political party promised to steal less of our money. Not one. None was electable. They all were politically dysfunctional.

Till next week, my man – my liver asks for a recess. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click here to access the latest e-edition.