MY fellow Saffers,
No, not you: not the comrades, crooks, liars, thieves, spin doctors, flip-floppers, bonus-earning do-nothings, manipulators, food-parcel deliverers, ineffectual knee-jerk whiners.
Not those of you who are on suspension and “under investigation” for malfeasance but are still being paid mighty money for months or years to loll around your luxury home.
Not those of you whose chosen career was to have provided hope, opportunity, safety and the chance for your compatriots to live their best lives in our beautiful country, but who have instead betrayed millions of Saffers.
This Saffer is gatvol, but also one of the fortunate few who still has a job and a roof over his head.
Imagine how it must feel for those looking at South Africa’s shame from the doorway of a home made from packaging and remnants and scrounged bits.
Those who have had T-shirts and food hampers and promises delivered to said door and then never heard another word.
Those who have scrimped, gone hungry, burnt many candles to get some sort of education… some, even a good education and (fewer) a tertiary education. But all for nothing because they are still shackled to their shacks by unemployment, looting leaders and the endless deep dive for the “bottom line”.
By the time all the “investigations'' and judgments are finalised, those who “contributed” their hard-earned money to the looters will be dead, and the unemployed youth will be even more desperate shack pensioners.
Your fellow Saffers are getting the hell-in. We can’t even rid ourselves of you because you are chosen by those with whom you side and probably do business with. Or because your lies, alliances and obfuscations have taken root in desperate minds, willing to try anything to ease their frustration.
So what should we do?
Here’s an idea.
While our judiciary is holding, at least as of this writing, we should turn to lawfare. Is there a precedent for a country’s citizens to file a class action suit against everyone –everyone – who has so much as sniffed the cookie jar, ambled past the trough or trainspotted the gravy?
I know that’s supposedly the state, but seriously. The state – for centuries – has failed us. We need an independent State of Saffers who want our money and country back.
If everything that has been “lost”, “wasted”, “looted”, “redirected”, “awarded” and/or “stolen” was actually returned to the people, we could establish a time-limited socialism where the entire lot was equally distributed among us.
It doesn’t even matter if the scoundrels went to jail or not… it would be fun enough to see them lose sleep over bills like the rest of us. They have no shame, so it wouldn’t be revenge, but they will certainly cry into their last Chivas (or whatever the “in” thing is) while watching their Gucci and Louis Vuitton assets seized. That would be really cool, and sights I would give up a portion of my payout to see.
Now we just have to find a few forensic auditors, whistleblowers, paper trails and lawyers who would head up the class action.
I would also willingly donate another slice of my refund to fund them.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday