The fluorescent tube above me buzzed like an insect dying in chapters. On the TV, Cat Matlala had just folded Parliament in half with a sentence about police bribes and the unreliability of memory. The committee room on the screen was still reeling. I'd written half a line—something like "bureaucratic sedation as counter-hegemonic tactic"—when the camera cut and I saw her.

A second gravitational field.

Leigh-Ann Mathys.

Deputy Secretary-General of the EFF. Committee member. Face carved from discipline. Presence that rearranges your heartbeat without raising her voice.

She shifted her papers and the entire emotional climate of the room changed. It wasn't even dramatic. Just a simple adjustment of A4 sheets. And suddenly my analysis dissolved like cheap instant coffee.

I crossed out everything I'd written.

Cat-Baby-Jake dialectics? Gone. Parktown-class positionality? Evaporated.

Now it was Leigh-Ann.

She sat angled slightly left—posture upright but relaxed, like someone who finished all her homework in advance and dared you to ask for it. The beret wasn't just an accessory. It was a political thesis. A textile dissertation. The thread count alone felt armed.

Her skin under committee lighting—Lord have mercy—it absorbed fluorescent cruelty and returned it as socialist radiance.

I wrote: "Marx under-analysed skincare."

A committee member mumbled through a clause. Mathys adjusted her files again. My eyes followed like a dog watching a sandwich.

I tried to return to the constitutional argument. Truly. But my pen revolted.

I found myself writing: "Trotsky's moustache = anchor of revolutionary masculinity." "Leigh-Ann's lips = ???" "Must NOT compare lips to moustache—dangerous terrain."

Maslow's hierarchy rose in my mind like a billboard erected by a delusional property developer.

STAY ANALYTICAL, I told myself. Maslow whispered: or… don't.

A waiter approached. "You're breathing weird," he said.

"I'm analysing," I replied.

"No, you're sweating."

I waved him off.

On the screen, Matlala was talking again—deploying passive voice like pepper spray—but I wasn't listening. I was watching Mathys listen. Watching the tiny contractions in her jaw when someone lied. Watching the microscopic nod she gave when someone accidentally told the truth.

She had the composure of a surgeon and the patience of someone who files her rage alphabetically.

Another MP derailed the discussion into procedural fog. Mathys inhaled sharply through her nose. Not loudly—just enough to signal disappointment at a molecular level.

I felt it in my pancreas.

Then the café TV glitched—showing Baby Jake Matlala in an old fight. Round 5. He slipped a punch. Countered. Moved like punctuation.

My brain—broken, overcaffeinated—merged the two Matlalas into a single metaphysical being: one punching people, one bribing cops.

I tried to weld Baby Jake back into the analysis—something about footwork and bureaucratic agility—but the attempt died mid-sentence.

Because now I was imagining Leigh-Ann giving ringside advice.

Absurd. Unprofessional. Unavoidable.

Then I did something catastrophically stupid. Something I should never tell anyone but will now describe in humiliating detail.

I opened Instagram.

I searched: "Leigh-Ann Mathys."

There she was. Verified. Profile picture: composed. Revolutionary. Soft lighting.

I should've stopped there. I should've closed the app. I should've gone home and prayed.

Instead, I tapped "Message."

The waiter walked past. "Chief… did your phone fall?"

"No," I said. "I'm avoiding democracy."

I left the café still sweating from the Instagram disaster. My phone hadn't buzzed yet—Leigh-Ann Mathys had not responded, blocked, or sent the authorities. That felt like grace.

But I needed to reset my mind. Return to the actual assignment: Cat Matlala.

The man had just survived three hours of parliamentary crossfire without blinking. You know how much self-belief you need to lie that calmly? It's not mediocrity. It's a gift.

Walking home, I found myself saying aloud, "Cat Matlala might actually be the Malcolm X of our generation."

A woman passing me at the traffic light said, "Eh-eh, don't drag Malcolm into this."

I ignored her.

It began, as most disasters in my life do, with confidence I didn't earn.

The committee reconvened at 10:00 AM. I sat in the same café as last time—same buzzing light, same waiter giving me the side-eye like I'm a recurring problem in the building's risk assessment.

Cat Matlala took his seat onscreen.

And something inside me whispered: "He's communicating."

Now—before we proceed—you must understand: I had not slept properly. I had eaten only a doughnut. My emotional circuitry was still fried from the Leigh-Ann DM catastrophe.

So when Matlala inhaled before speaking, I interpreted this as a signal.

Not a normal inhale. A coded inhale. An "if you know, you know" inhale.

I leaned forward.

The waitress passing behind me accidentally bumped my chair. I shouted, "Careful, this is government intelligence!" She walked away faster.

When the hearing ended, I was drenched in sweat, shaking, and buried under three pages of nonsense diagrams.

I looked down at my notebook. My handwriting had collapsed into symbols that looked like the ramblings of a man staring too long at a conspiracy website.

I wrote at the bottom: "Matlala is speaking a language only the doomed can hear."

Then beneath it: "Possibly I am the doomed."

I closed the notebook and whispered to myself: "Stop watching Parliament."

But I won't.