A home-made video about entjie withdrawal during lockdown by a local singer has gone viral on Facebook.
Singer Jonathan “Jon-E” Dreyer from Strandfontein made a video about the ban on cigarette sales out of sheer boredom.
The 38-year-old dad says the “trailer” of the 90-second “ Entjie” clip was made at his home.
“I wanted to make light of the whole banning of entjies and how people are actually going out of their way to get it,” he says.
A losse entjie can now cost you up to R12 on the black market.
The video stars Jon-E as an “unemployed artist” in two roles, telling his “brother” with the essential services permit that there’s only two entjies left and that he has to go out and get more before they turn on themselves.
The “trailer” of “Entjie”
Since he posted it on Friday, Jonathan’s video was viewed 163 000 times, received over 5000 reactions and was shared by 12 000 people.
“I’m not even a smoker, but I could see the frustration in the people by their views and desperation on social media,” he says.
He says Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was also a big inspiration.
The minister went viral last week after someone added music to a statement she made about the cigarette ban, when she said: “When people zol, they put saliva on the paper, and then they share that zol.”
Jonathan says: “I’ve been seeing how people were making all kinds of jokes on social media about the whole zol thing, so that’s when I plotted this whole story in my head,
“I then needed to ‘sell’ it to my audience and in what better way than a trailer?”
He researched how to make a movie trailer and bounced the idea off his wife, singer Celest.
“When she laughed, I knew it’s a bit funny.”
Jonathan filmed his video using his cellphone and a tripod.
Jonathan filmed his video using his cellphone and a tripod.
“I was running up and down the house like a malletjie to capture these scenes.
“I wanted to do something ‘coloured’ without having to show the stereotypical idea of what people see as coloured.”