With temperatures soaring at around 40 degrees over the past few weeks my face has turned completely dark navy - so much so that I've had to stay indoors, not only to avoid the sun, but also to stop scaring children in the street as they might mistake me for an apparition from outer space.
Under ordinary circumstances, I am pretty dark. But with this fierce sun hammering us relentlessly day in day out I have to stand in front of a mirror and smile and bulge out my eyes wide - just to remind myself that I am a human being, not just this blob of blackness.
Which got me thinking. From time immemorial, people have been holding beauty contests where women, thin to the point of being almost transparent, paraded themselves and won crowns and beautiful prizes.
Then somebody decided: stuff it, this is enough! We are going to have a beauty contest of "bigger sized" women.
It worked like a charm. Now, big is cool. Even designers of clothing lines have acknowledged this. There are women's shops that cater only for "plus sized" women.
Inspired by the story of the rise of the underdog, somebody in Zimbabwe held a contest called Mr Ugly.
Jeez, I thought I'd seen ugly people in my life, but Zimbabwe showed me they've got talent in that department.
The contestants were so ugly that President Mugabe was eliminated in the first rounds. Mugabe enters every contest in his own country. Remember he won the country's first lotto some years ago?
All these stories which advocate for the tolerance of difference have conspired to plant an idea in my head. It's a simple idea. I want to host a contest: The Blackest South African.
I know I'll never win that one. There are serious contenders out there. Long before the heat wave, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba was miles ahead of me in the blackness stakes. Ah, that brother is black.
Some years ago, when he was still president of the ANC Youth League, I went to interview him at his office in Luthuli House.
Having registered my name at reception, I was escorted to his office upstairs.
I entered the office, and started looking around. I was getting impatient at the man's non-appearance. Then I heard someone clearing his throat. "I am here, brother,' said the voice. I whirled around, but still could not see anyone.
Then somebody turned on the lights. Or I thought somebody had turned on the light.
All that had happened is that Gigaba had just smiled - and the smile brought light into the room.
And then I saw him. And then I muttered to myself: "Well, I thought I was black . but this one takes the cup."
So, you see, the brother is blaaaack, but what a winning smile, which is why I am not hopeful at winning against him. In any case, I can't enter because I'm the founder, the brains behind the concept. I have to give others a chance. I am not Mugabe, after all. I hope to rope Gigaba in as one of the judges.
This story of blackness takes me directly to the issue of whiteness. I am sorry to disappoint you. I am not going to discuss the statement by Penny Sparrow who compared black people to monkeys.
All I can say is that I cannot understand why my fellow darkies are hot under the collar at a sparrow having a dig at monkeys. I mean, it takes a lesser animal to recognise the bigger animals, doh!
The whiteness I want to talk about here is of a different hue (ignore the deliberately mixed metaphor and read on, dammit!).
I read in Sowetan of January 8 that doctors had warned Mshoza to stay indoors - or risk melting away like plastic in the heat wave.
Apparently the quacks have pumped so much bleach and plastic into her body that the minute she walks into the sun her body begins to sizzle like bacon on a hot skillet ... Ssssssss!
Listen, in my language we have a beautiful expression: ohlaba eyakhe akalelwa (he who slaughters his own beast is not stopped).
In this context, what Mshoza does with her body, using her money, does not and should not concern me. It's her own indaba. She is fully conscious of what she is doing to her body by undergoing this series of surgical procedures.
She laughingly told our reporter: "It's basically what Michael Jackson did . Right now, I am on pills and injections.
"I spend the day in the house drinking lots of water. It's a serious thing, if I expose myself to the sun, it might condemn me.
"I don't want to risk that."
Why did she risk the procedure in the first place when she knows what happened to Wacko Jacko?
I suggest that in her will, she must tell the executors that on her death, her brains must be donated to an academic hospital.
Unlike other parts of her anatomy, clearly her brains are still virgin territory - unused.
They should make for an interesting study
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