Let it be known that it was in 2026—the year of the rat-bite, the year of actual plague—that the still struggling but severely battered staff here at Radio JRB, were delivered—by the gold-gleaming eyes and confidence trickster tongues of the city’s ancestors in the month of its 140th ‘anniversary’: a message from the highest of altitudes.

Joburg 140: a year when it seems that all the adjectives are scraped from the ‘d’ pile in what remains of dictionary corner: death, despair, disaster, destruction, depression, doubt, deliberations, dissolutions, disappearance, distrust, deceit, deliverables, daily DIY basic life disorders.

In this year, on a day when the water is out but the refuse collection is operating, as the ashes of what remains of democratic-era Joburg dreamers and their dreams glow ever dimmer in the ether—Radio JRB has been given these…..15….um 10….um…..5…..sorry, just have to put my glasses on here ah yes, here we go… Ahem:

RADIO JRB HAS GONE TO THE MINE DUMP, EATEN THE MAGIC COMPOST MUSHROOMS, COMMUNED WITH THE ANCESTRAL SNAKE OIL SELLERS AND RECEIVED THIS MESSAGE!…. just in time for Halloween (for those who celebrate). * For any doubters, it appeared above the sky over Ponte in Comic Sans—the undeniable font of dark forces everywhere:

‘The world is a vampire, sent to drain and Johannesburg is its gleaming, blood-stained, left incisor’.

If you insist on fighting this inevitable truth: beware of fake prophets of all kinds and sizes—they really can’t make it better (or that larger). There’s no stopping Joziferatu once it’s escaped from the coffin it was supposedly eternally trapped in, buried deep underneath the Melville Koppies in the days before….before.

You’ll have to rub yourself in garlic; sharpen the makeshift stakes you’ve crafted from local election signage and remember all those whose light has already been eaten by the beast as you convince yourself that this too shall pass. If you don’t like the message , and as our new motto should read on a massive billboard, at O.R. Tambo: ‘Apologies for any inconvenience. Updates to follow.’ We’re just the messengers.

So, for this potentially fateful 27-club edition, Radio JRB offers its most dubiously pop-littered eclectic ectoplasmic mix from a long, mad, muddle of recent additions to the archives.

Consider it a pre-Armageddon-battle pouring out for the ancestors. Yes, ‘that song’, is here somewhere but she’s from Joburg and it’s about the one thing those still here—‘for now’, or ‘just a bit longer’, or ‘laaif’—and those way-too-soon-gone but never-forgotten still hovering ghosts—all care about….Water…(Note to AI assistant….it’s about water, right?)…The only thing left to help inadequately put out the shit-show of a dumpster-inferno that was this so-called year in this so-called place with its fool’s-gold-twinkling, so-called heart.

Check in on all your Joburgers far and wide, past and present, beloved, reviled—while there’s still time! For those still here—send giant garlic cloves, holy water, stakes and steaks (we braai until we die)—and forget about 2026. What we need to be doing boet, is talking about 2027: the year of the Bull-Gore and the Zille-Frame and sparkling, golden new opportunities. Let’s keep this channel open? For communications and future projects ja? Just in case….ne? Lekker.

• Tymon Smith is a member of The JRB Editorial Advisory Panel, and a freelance journalist who writes about the arts and South African history. Previously the literary editor of the Sunday Times, he is the recipient of a silver Standard Bank Arts Journalist of the Year Award for feature writing. He was the head researcher for the interactive DVD Between Life and Death: Stories from John Vorster Square, and is working on a book about the Johannesburg police station.
  
• See his previous playlists here.