Add a twist of humour to South African nostalgia with Hagen Engler’s latest offering. Black Twitter, Blitz and a Boerie as long as your leg is a light-hearted, humorous read of multiple entries that can be dipped into at will. Optimistic, topical and definitely tongue-in-cheek, this book could easily be that last-minute gift that you pick up at the airport before you head back to the parental home for the holidays. Not too politically edgy – so as not to offend any sensitive elephants in the room – it draws on the great many things that South Africans do have in common, and that will give us all a moment to agree on something, for a change. Black Twitter, Blitz and a Boerie as long as your leg lists and celebrates the tiny, subtle aspects of South African life that we all experience but don’t always notice. Engler looks at icons of our shared South Africanness but drills a little deeper to make them more specific, a bit more ridiculous, a bit funnier, and hopefully to induce an excited exclamation from the reader of, ‘Yoh! That’s so true!’ Even if the entry is ostensibly negative, Engler will find a poignant aspect of it that is lovable and help us laugh at ourselves. Some of the book’s 150 to 200 entries include ‘Pearl Thusi’s Afro’, ‘The Corner Cafe’, ‘Stoney Hiccups’, ‘A Long, Steel Urinal’, ‘AB de Villiers’s Hairline’, ‘Getting a proper vuvuzela blast going’, ‘The instep of Siphiwe Tshabalala’s left foot’, ‘Jaywalking with impunity’, ‘Black Twitter’, ‘Trevor Noah’s dimples’, ‘The smell of Blitz’, ‘Kurt Darren’s chest’, ‘The frog in Gwede Manthashe’s throat’ and ‘Building a ten-year relationship with the guy at your robots’. For example, Stony Hiccups. As involuntary as a tweet the minute you show up to see #BlackPanther. The Stoney hiccup just comes out of you the very instant you sip a mouthful of South Africa’s tangiest, most refreshing ginger beer. It is followed by the sweet, sweet flavour rave and then the pleasant tickle down the back of the throat. And then the irresistible urge to have another swig, perhaps another hiccup until you have consumed your 330 ml allocation. Stoney hiccups mean you are human. In fact they will be an excellent zombie test once the apocalypse kicks in properly. If Stoney ginger beer doesn’t make you hiccup, you are an emissary from the dark side and must be executed with a shotgun blast to the head. Or would that be a bit harsh? Black Twitter. or just Twitter, to be fair, seeing as the social media platform has pretty much achieved full transformation over the past few years. From the militant feminist wing to the reflexive irony of #AsinamadodaTwitter and the #Beyhive Beyonce prayer group to the online health advice of doctor @SindivanZyl, to the edges of #wokeTwitter where it segues into #WakandaForever Twitter, there is a world inside the world that is Twitter as practised by South Africa’s black people. Any brave white person who sticks his or her head above the parapet and attempts to weigh in on a subject beyond the field of white expertise will be sent scurrying back to #Woolworths and #Parenting Twitter with well-practised barbs about bringing the land back and perhaps something about Ed Sheeran. It’s tomorrow’s news, now, seeing as whatever Black Twitter is discussing will show up in the media in the course of tomorrow, you can bet the last of your vibranium on it!.
