Are we a work shy nation?

Are we a work shy nation?

Weblog 10 December 2005


Is it possible that the outcome of 300 years of struggling to overthrow the terrible overlords who dominated the Azanian sub-continent has so completely exhausted our newly liberated citizenry that a 'job' has become merely a place of refuge where the incumbents can rest from their labours?

This does seem to be the message we could draw from the recent bizarre hostage-taking incident at the Home Affairs Dept when an irate citizen finally flipped after waiting four years for an identity document. In the wake of the glorious rewards to 'some' brought about by the Revolution of '94 perhaps we are succumbing to the disturbing truth observed so succinctly by the scientist Steven Wright, that hard work pays off in the future while laziness pays off now.

Of course this single incident would not be valid enough evidence were it not for the overwhelming support for the hostage taker from the public and the media, indicating that the nation is 'Gatvol' with non-performance and that a great many more people would like to take the same steps: again, to borrow from Steven Wright, [a list of whose aphorisms pitched up on my email this week] 'A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking'.

So: We also know that we are almost overwhelmed daily with reports of disintegrating sewerage systems in bankrupt municipalities. Our city experiences electrical blackouts so regularly that you have to factor them into your budget calculations, and there are alarming reports about our long-term water safety needs.

Most pertinently this past fortnight we had a shutdown at a major airport down in the south end of the country when holes were discovered in the runway that had not been noticed in the previous SIX inspections. Amazingly no aircraft hit the things or we would we talking serious tragedy.

For most of us widespread indifferent performance in both the private and public sectors is a daily 'in your face' experience. Take for instance a member of my family who recently had to have a so-called 'medical procedure' [a piece of his body was sawn off, and a prosthetic replacement was hammered into the remaining bone tissue] at a hospital near us called the Morningside medi-clinic; a facility at the edge of Azania's so called 'Golden Square Mile'.

The procedure was a repeat in modern form of one he had thirty-five years ago. That job wore out and needed revision. He remarked that the medical proficiency relating to the 'operation' had improved exponentially over thirty years but that regrettably the 'after-care' had gone the other way and nearly killed him, requiring immediate and expensive interventions thus revealing the hidden cost of incompetence..

I went there once to visit him and was overwhelmed by the sheer filth of the wards in which sick people attempted to fight infection. The carpets looked as though they hadn't been cleaned in ages [should they even have carpets?], sack loads of discarded waste lay around in the hallway to his ward and I observed alleged orderlies who handled things like drips and dressings immediately after handling soiled bedpans, without washing hands in between-What a scary place [although in fairness I have seen worse in less salubrious neighbourhoods]. It is as though hospital assistants no longer need to consider hygiene in their day to day affairs -what would Florence have thought?

What brings this work-shy trend in our post- revolutionary society into sharp bas-relief is the contrasting sheer efficiency with which the current spate of 'heists' has been carried out this year [and a few others before].

[For offshore readers {O.R.}] who are unfamiliar with this phenomenon. One of the daily experiences of our 'neighbourhood' is the military style assaults-to-burgle on travelling armoured cash in transit vehicles, shopping malls, and casinos. It is not unusual for a squad of thirty men all armed with machine3 guns to be involved in such an 'event'.] The numbers of these heists runs into the hundreds for this year alone and they are a pretty long term phenomena that has accounted for a few billion bucks worth of 'takings' in 2005; not to mention that a few dozen innocent citizens have been gunned down in the frequent fire-fights that take place when these events occur.

The interesting thing is that there appear to have been so few arrests of these 'baddies' that one could say these heists are arrest proof, suggesting either incompetence on the part of the authorities or an iron tough discipline on the part of the [presumably] multiple gangs of 'heistees'.

Again, to draw on my Steven Wright [whoever he is?] email this week: "Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to avoid work". Imagine a country where every legally empowered person has achieved their ambition and discovered the leisure inherent in 'work'.

Which brings me back to the baddies who reap their daily heist around our turf. In my view what distinguishes these outstanding exponents of a functional work ethic from the increasing dross of humanity that punctuate both corporate and public facilities, is embodied in that quaint word 'motivation'.

For most people it seems, work interrupts life. The main difference between a circus elephant and one that grew up in the wild is the length of the training. As the Jesuits were fond of observing, give me a child until its sixth birthday and it's ours for life.

People who have grown up in the prison that was pre-apartheid vile state would inevitably never have learned any other ambition other than to take over and 'gettital'- a completely reasonable ambition. As a result we became a society where everyone bought into the present-exclusively. Ripping off pays off now. I don't believe I am referring to any particular element in our society; notwithstanding that we are a diverse nation there are huge areas where we are all completely alike: laziness pays off now, corruption pays off now, a quick fuck pays off now; and the future is something one can put off indefinitely.

Success lies in determining what the future should be and then moulding one's energy towards its achievement-making the future real.

For an enormous number of people they have achieved beyond their fettered imaginations could have prescribed and it is for their children to continue and expand their own horizons. There is no longer a drum seductively beating-follow me-I'll take you there.

So what is it that makes the prolific heist so different to the run of the mill good guys-what is this 'motivation'?

At this point we have to resort to conjecture, which you will remember to be 'the formation of conclusions from incomplete evidence' [Collins].

Why have only a limited number of heistees been apprehended? No main organisers seem to have appeared in courts. Now and again a shootout occurs, resulting in the deaths of a clutch of criminals whose photos are then displayed in gory details in the omnivorous local media, always sharp to exploit a bit of bloodlust.

My own preference as a proponent of chaos theory is that the heistees represent the free market in crime: they are in many ways the last bastion of free enterprise in an over regulated State. Comfortable risks, short hours, and high rewards make heisting an attractive short-term career option. Plus you get to handle a machine gun and have power of life and death over the human Impalas who proliferate in our comfortable milieus. Bang, bang, people fall over: it's cool and fun and almost chic.

Others tell me that the heistees are the stooges of our famed 'Syndicates'[For O.R: the Chinese have Triads, the Italians the Mafia: we Southern Azanians have 'Syndicates']. There are some who argue that these 'Syndicates' are 'managed by Triads or prison 'Numbers' gangs, and who knows what other alien entities, all sucking off the natural intelligence of the masses.

Which raises a thought. [I warn you that this is a complicated thought, so follow carefully] What if a neighbouring crackpot dictator were seriously short of funds for meeting certain outstanding payments to the International Monetary Fund. He demands tribute from a feudal underling. What if his self-asserted feudal underling [later in history to be known as Thabo the Great] refused to make certain payments available from the public purse, of his fiefdom, to the crackpot dictator who, believing himself to be the last of an ancient ruling dynasty [aka Rozwi] has assumed some form of feudal obligation that exists only in the arcane depths of pre-colonial oral tradition.

Strange idea? Then imagine a man who is iron willwed enough to destroy the homes of the poor, [in bizarre echo of equally deluded 'devine rightist': Russian Tsars 'pogramising' the zones of the poor] to prevent them from expressing their political outrage, Such a man may well send forth squads of highly trained military chaps to take out the budget shortfall in heist takings. These men would be trained and experienced military fellows used to war and opposition. The crackpot dictator may be deluded but his military machine could be the slickest our money can buy.

If there has to be a well-organised syndicate orchestrating this entire Heist thing then I vote for 'Bob the Roz'. Notwithstanding this though my personal view is that we are witnessing the fruits of outcomes based education structured business studies classes, that have brilliantly inflamed the entrepreneurial hearts of an entire generation, and sent them forth to prosper in a way that makes perfect sense and gives bankrolling a completely new flavour. I vote for the young to be hiring out the old.

The irony is that this is not where the smart money has gone. Those motivated souls who are truly creaming it are doing it the smart way. According to regular press reports, clean collar criminals get away with around forty billion every year with minimal exposure, minimal gunfire, hardly ever a fatality and almost never a prosecution. It's regrettable to think that due to money laundering rules much of this loot will disappear from the national financial structure.

Either way it's a toss up between laziness-now-is-forever-extended and grabthemoneyandrun, as our collective failure to buy into the idea of the future places us precariously in a pillaging present.

Perhaps this is the subliminal reason for our Cabinet deciding against all reason and sensible accounting practices to 'Go For' the disputed Gautrain investment.

We are almost running this country at the moment on bullshit and hype. The future is a soccer match sometime in 2010 and a train to ferry the people.We constantly reiterate tired promises and cliches and progress is measured in micro gains. Ultimately to do this will be to say we are somebody in the world and can deliver on expectations.

We are a country in need of 'Purpose'. This idea of 'ongoing struggle' palls against the obvious overt lootage-As someone other than Steven Wright once observed 'You can fool all the people some times, most, most times but never all, all the time' [sic]. When you see your neighbour join the ruling party, take some form of office and suddenly acquire visible wealth it doesn't take the genius we hardly foster to recognise a rapidly 'berigged' deck.

Thus despair becomes the handmaiden of disillusionment; and underperformance becomes a right.

The absence of Purpose, or an overwhelming Reason for doing something, was the single most important factor discovered by the writer Victor Frankel for why so many of his fellow detainees in Auschwitz failed to survive the holocaust. The deadly efficiency of the heistees [whether Roz underlings or not] demonstrates the power of Purpose rooted into effective implementation. The indolence of the home affairs flunkeys who induced a citizen to break the law is a natural outcome of a purpose free life and demonstrates brilliantly why some people succeed and others don't. Purpose is a choice; work is an obligation that without Purpose becomes onerous and avoidable.

Only someone who buys into the idea that the future will one day arrive can be truly purposeful.

Love you all-NiK