The other morning, my running group took a detour through Saxonwold to trot past what has always (for as long as I’ve lived in Joburg) been known as “The Gupta Compound”.
For a while now it’s been a visibly shabby thing, three or four houses sort of cobbled together like an improvised charm bracelet – peeling paint, rusted fencing and neglected gardens in a decomposing orbit around the main house whose primary design directive seems to have been “make it look like a mass-produced wedding cake”. A little while ago, someone put a “Jou Ma” above the “Sahara” sign that proclaimed this corner the one-time seat of Gupta power. The “Jou Ma” has since been taken down – apparently as much as the inhabitants of Saxonwold might celebrate the departure of their most loathed neighbours, they won’t tolerate toilet humour graffiti.
The signs that have, until recently, been on prominent display, however, were those for the auction that just took place to reallocate the ownership of this abandoned suburban boil.
For R34m.
And to be honest, as utterly ridiculous a number as that is, it’s not a moment too soon. The air of desertion has hung thick over the whole block for almost a decade. Where rather terrifying guards were once permanently and restlessly keeping vigil outside the main gate, what looks like a flower-patterned tablecloth now hangs in the window of the crumbling guardhouse to hide the inside from nosy running groups.
I’m not going to dodge the tired cliché of saying this is the very embodiment of how far the “mighty” have fallen. And the reason I’m not going to dodge it (apart from not being a particularly imaginative writer), is that I once had a tiny, albeit very tangential, taste of that mightiness.
As anyone who has mistakenly clicked on my byline will know, when I’m not navel-gazing for Currency, my day-job is being a film director. And it was in that capacity that, in the second half of 2017, when the Guptas, Pravin Gordhan and Jacob Zuma were in a struggle to the seeming death over the heart and soul of the country, I got briefed on a new commercial for Nando’s.
Filming the fantasy: the ad that dared to poke the bear
It was a cheeky (of course) commercial entitled Fix our Sh$t – a celebration of the resilience of the people of this country in the face of an endless conveyor-belt of truly existential challenges. The climax of the commercial was scripted to show a couple of guys who really looked like the Gupta brothers Atul and Ajay panic-fleeing their fancy house, hauling sacks stuffed to bursting with cash – a kind of two-fingered bit of fantasy wish-fulfilment for the entire country, brought to you by those cheeky chicken guys.
I remember sitting in the boardroom reading that scene for the first time and feeling a very real sense of “Holy shit, I know it’s Nando’s, but are they actually going to go through with this?” At the time, South Africa was still firmly in the Guptas’ pudgy grip – a truly dark time of death-threats, firings, resignations, shame and ignominy. And here these guys were planning on sticking their peri-peri into the hornet’s nest? It felt daring and thrilling and scary in equal measure.
We decided to really push the “fleeing Guptas” finale, with the brothers trying to fit a massive painting of themselves standing in front of parliament giving a cheesy thumbs up while doves circled above their heads, into a Range Rover fitted with number plates we had mocked up saying WE RUN GP. All while pettily arguing and sniping at each other over who was going to get left behind.
But we quickly ran into two rather serious problems. First, no-one was willing to let their house be a stand-in for the Gupta compound. And second, no-one, but absolutely no-one would audition to play the roles of Ajay and Atul. There was a genuine sense of fear around the potential consequence of being involved with something that was deliberately poking the eye of seemingly untouchably powerful people. And even when we assured actors that we were never going to fully see anyone’s faces, still no-one was keen to do it. As it stood, we had an ad with no ending.
But one of the joys of this wild west country of ours is that some kind of solution always presents itself. Eventually, a family in Bryanston who had one foot out the door while emigrating to Perth or wherever and didn’t give two hot shits about what we were shooting as long as they got the location fee, agreed to let us film in their by-now mostly empty house.
Then, at the last second, two guys who were close enough in looks to the infamous brothers (once we put wigs and the right wardrobe on them) decided what the hell, they were up for it – and suddenly we had our finale. We shot the scene on a Wednesday afternoon, and all while we were doing it, the genuine silliness of what we were filming was punctuated by “nice to have known you” gallows humour from the crew, and the general feeling that we were all going to get disappeared down a coal-mine as soon as the ad came out. It was the kind of bravado that was supposed to show how unconcerned everyone was, but in fact just reinforced the extent to which we couldn’t escape a creeping worry that it could actually happen.
The ad came out and we all kind of braced ourselves, expecting the inevitable backlash from the Saxonwold compound.
But it didn’t happen. No angry, litigious flexing. No threats against the Nando’s share-price. No Bell Pottinger media statements painting everyone involved as deplorable enemies of the working class. No doubt the Guptas were too busy torturing junior assistant public works ministers or whatever to be concerned with what some takeaway chicken company had to say about them. So, we kind of all breathed a sigh of relief and enjoyed how well the ad was being received by everyday South Africans.
But the fact that there was no reaction made me wonder if something was changing in the cultural atmosphere. Especially when I watched a small exchange later that week between two middle-aged men in an airport lounge. The one guy had properly loaded up his plate with pastries, and his mate jokily responded by loudly saying: “Hey, stop being such a Gupta.” They laughed, as did a couple of people who had overheard them.
I remember thinking at the time that this tiny little bit of banter felt like Something Important was going on. Somehow, sickly fear had become the kind of punchline you could say in public and then stuff a croissant in your face without a second thought.
And then … two months later, the Guptas were gone. Fled in the night. Just like the scene in our ad. Except maybe without the giant self-portrait.
Nando’s couldn’t buy up media space fast enough to reflight the commercial, which had now literally become a prophecy come true: a predictive vision divined from our collective deepest desires.
Suddenly all the clammy nervousness around the making of that scene just felt so … dumb. Like being worried about whether you’re wearing the right shoes to a day at the beach – something that in hindsight feels ridiculous when at the time it had been so, so important.
And as the Zapiro cartoons and sober newspaper editorials and general good-riddance celebrations rippled out across the country, it was hard not to feel like we’d played some small role in the downfall of their heinous shadow-empire.
Which of course we hadn’t, but still – if a deeply unserious chicken commercial helped push things over the edge, even slightly, then I demand at least a statue.
Small. Tasteful. Outside the guardhouse. Draped in a floral curtain. Whoever bought the place at auction can decide if they want to keep it.
Top image: Nando’s South Africa, December 11 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRUMsvWlJOQ&feature=youtu.be.
Sign up to Currency’s weekly newsletters to receive your own bulletin of weekday news and weekend treats. Register here.
