While we have every reason to complain about the banning of alcohol and cigarettes during this monstrous Covid-19 lockdown, there is a silver lining to this dark cloud.
Sources on the ground tell me that the imposition of sobriety has been a positive development which has seen many South Africans taking up their pens to write books which are likely to take this country into a new direction intellectually.
Some of the writers are using the pen as a protest against sobriety, while others are using words to extol the virtues of a cigarette-less life.
Contrary to earlier reports that she has been suspended from work as a result of some tender irregularities, President Cyril Ramaphosa's spokesperson Khusela Diko is actually busy ghostwriting the president's memoirs.
To be published in the new year by Sober-Up Enterprises, the book is called With Immediate Effect, My Fellow South Africans.
Chris Maroleng - remember him from his days as a broadcaster? - has written a blistering polemic called Don't Touch Me On My Ngudu.
One of SA's best-known writers, Nakanjani Sibiya, is taking a more conciliatory attitude towards the alcohol ban. He is about to finish his memoir called A Drink Deferred which, as some can readily see, is a nod to Mark Gevisser's biography of Thabo Mbeki, The Dream Deferred.
The literary academic Danyela Demir is apparently working on Ways of Drinking: Essays on Taking Responsibility and other Oddities.
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Mpush Ntabeni, who gave us the memorable historical novel Broken River Tent, is working on To Every Parch Its Thirst, a re-imagining of Mongane Serote's To Every Birth Its Blood.
Novelist Fred Khumalo decided to revisit Ngugi waThiong'o's classic novel Weep Not, Child, but is giving it a vava-voom Covid-centric title, Weep Not, Sdakwa. Khumalo is also working on One Hundred Years of Thirsthood, a reinterpretation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Not to be outdone, Bhekisisa Mncube, author of The Love Diary of a Zulu Boy, is working on a sober sequel, My Diary of a Thirsty Zulu.
Unconfirmed reports indicate newspaper columnist and radio broadcaster Ndumiso Ngcobo has done a sequel to bestselling Some of My Best Friends Are White - but has given it a more appropriate title, Some of My Best Friends Are Thirsty.
Actor Maimela Motubatse has secured movie rights to Khumalo's autobiography Touch My Blood, and is making a flick called Touch My Thirst.
Dudu Busani-Dube, creator of the bestselling Hlomu series, is apparently writing a TV series called Hlomu: The Thirsty Wife. She could not be reached for comment as Bheki Cele has confiscated the phones of all Zulu-speaking writers, saying they are "writing nonsense which is antithetical to Zulu respect for elders". Speaking of Cele, an up-and-coming writer by the name of Vusi is writing a kiss-and-tell tome called Zodwa's Eyes Were Watching Cele, inspired by Zora Neale Hurston's classic Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Other books currently in the works by anonymous writers are: Alice in Soberland, inspired by Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland.
Cry, The Thirsty Country, inspired by Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country, will be up against Jock of the Dry Veld, a follow-up on Percy Fitzpatrick's Jock of the Bushveld. Bheki Cele and the Half-drunk Prince, inspired by Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince is likely to capture the imagination of the young. Siphiwo Mahala, who did his PhD on legendary Drum journalists, is working on The Will to Drink, inspired by Can Themba's The Will to Die. Lockdown has its positive sides after all, wouldn't you say?
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