While today’s generation of children watches their favourite movies on cellphone screens, we grew up watching television through a neighbour’s window.
Our biggest cinematic moments visited our primary school halls through that beautiful invention called the bioscope. We called it “biskop”.
It was there that I was first introduced to the idea of a politician having to trust a retired operative to fix what all the secret agencies had failed to. “Get me Rambo,” barked the faceless voice over the biskop speakers, and we all craned our necks to see who this Rambo fellow was and what on earth he could do that entire armies could not.
And indeed, by the end of the hair-raising flick, Rambo had singlehandedly annihilated an infamous drugs and weapons cartel that had eluded law enforcement for years.
Decades later, in 2016, I watched America’s shadowy power brokers pull their own “Get me Rambo” move. They fielded a businessman-turned-TV-star named Donald J Trump to reclaim their country’s global economic dominance.
Millions already knew his face from The Apprentice, a TV show that taught ambitious young men and women how to survive the dog-eat-dog jungle of entrepreneurship – its force sharpened by the man unafraid to say, “You’re fired.”
When Trump entered the presidential race, analysts scoffed. They expected Americans to choose a seasoned politician such as Hillary Clinton. But when the votes were counted, it was Clinton and her campaign generals who were left drenched in tears, forced to congratulate “The Donald” on his unlikely triumph.
That was the Rambo Effect – the victory of television’s hero archetype over political orthodoxy. They should have seen it coming. After all, Arnold Schwarzenegger had used the same screen charisma to turn a joke campaign into a California governorship just 13 years earlier.
The lesson was loud and clear: never ignore the power of television.
This past week, South Africa experienced its own “Get me Rambo” moment. Businessman-turned-political-party-leader Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA fielded crime-busting TV star Xolani Khumalo – hated by drug dealers, adored by South Africans who see him as a -saviour. For the first time, we witnessed the christening of a Rambo born not of Hollywood but of Moja Love.
Khumalo, the face of Sizok’thola, a drug-busting TV show on the channel Moja Love, became the people’s champion long before ActionSA spotted him. His showmanship, once canned after allegations tied to his questionable methods of extracting information, returned by popular demand – and with it, his legend.
Now, an ex-TV presenter, he’s ActionSA’s mayoral candidate for the 2026 local government elections in Ekurhuleni, East Rand.
The question is: Where were the ANC comrades who claim to wanted to win back the metros they lost while Mashaba was flipping through his DStv remote looking for his Rambo? Where was the DA? The EFF?
If you ask me, ActionSA has already won Ekurhuleni. Why? Because citizens there won’t be voting for Xolani Khumalo – they’ll be voting against crime. In their eyes, he’s the man who can do it.
This is not to suggest Khumalo is infallible. It doesn’t matter. Voters don’t vote for perfection; they vote for hope – for the promise that someone will finally fight for them.
For two decades, South Africans gave the ANC chance after chance out of that same hope. But when forgiveness turned to fatigue, when the lover’s patience broke the camel’s back, voters dared to experiment with multiparty rule, costing the mighty ANC metros.
Now, with Khumalo in the ring, a new era is upon us. While traditional politicians fight over lists and loyalties, Mashaba and his team have been watching reruns of Rambo.
From First Blood to Last Blood, the magic always starts when the faceless man says, “Get me Rambo.”
So, I ask, to the ANC, the DA and all others, who is your Rambo for 2026? Will you keep fielding friends and trusted cadres when it’s clear the people are hungry for heroes? Maybe it’s time to roll out those biskop screens again in the town halls and discover your own Rambos before the credits roll on your political story.
Because if you don’t, the sequels to your electoral woes will keep coming – until the final scene fades to black.
As I muse on my childhood biskop memories, I can only hope this piece strikes a political nerve somewhere out there.
Wishing you a great week ahead.
- Mogakane is Mpumalanga correspondent
