The Mail n Guardian's annual scorecard for performance by ruling cadre politicians shows a healthy average and there is a joyous sense of general hubris, glossing over the snorting at the feeding trough this year.
For most of us, it seemed obvious that Mr Manuel would be top dog, long may he continue to prevail over the gaping void that lurks below our bluff exterior.
Nonetheless the real winner should have been Ngconde Balfour.
Yes...Absolute top honours for saving the country from immediate financial ruin must be the Minister of Correctional services: a department that has, through some form of pleasantly misguided morality, been relegated to an under-performing position.
Now in fairness to everyone, I hadn't spotted this myself although I did have a hint a short while back. I was alerted to the truth at a dinner party over the hols with a group of businesspersons of comfortable means and immense anxiety. Talk ranged among other things over the M& G 'scorecard'.
We had started out discussing that great thing about Christmas: the 'Presents'.
We discovered that we had all taken Mr Manuel's [and Mr Mboweni's] advice and saved half the bonus, and bought fewer 'pressies': none on credit. We agreed that this had taken immense fortitude, mostly fighting the obsessive needs of our respective wives to spend as though there were no tomorrow [which there isn't].
Alone amongst my peers, I suspect deep down that there is not much point in saving any money at all, other than as a hedge against some immediate catastrophes. Generally after tax and inflation the interest isn't worth a damm [sorry Rhett]. Then of course there is a reasonable probability that whatever one saves will somehow be 'stolen' by some competent, thieving investment industry 'clever'.
Therefore our table voted: for second runner-up for the unsung-hero-of-the-year award, the fellow who beat the insurance/assurance industry into making some long overdue reparations-Vuyani Ngalwana. Good on yer Vu. [Mr Ngalwana was inappropriately voted #37 by M& G on its Dreamers, dazzlers and Doers page 15]
The financial industry has always worked at the sharp end of capitalist enterprise selling fantasy, dreams and ultimately an inevitable day of reckoning: they have sucked gloriously on the marrows of their market. They have it all. Many of us have long held deep suspicions about the veracity of the financial industry, and were equally dubious about the stooges who fill most of the so-called 'regulatory agencies', created more as sinecures for discarded cadres than for any useful purpose other than becoming yet another barrier to market entry. But that fellow Ngalwana actually performed and blew them into submission [and we all suspected that he would soon be 'redeployed'.]
However, it was suggested; helping him was the prospect of real Jail time and the probability of painful and deathly anal rape.
Consider further that there are a collection of aging [former]'execs' from the recently failed Saambou Bank who face the prospect of 'doing time' for palpable failure to perform their jobs according to the newly emerging rules of the market-that do not easily accept [inappropriate] performance apparently.
Plus: [further point] a small bonus-perhaps too late for the Press: a 'Boeremag' prisoner gets an 'Early release' under correctional supervision. The man becomes a 'hands-upper', a 'joiner'; who turned on his fellows, in return for ending jail time. ' [* Boeremag: For offshore readers: a largely irrelevant and marginalized collection of clapped-out alleged right-wing reactionary activists whose objectives are largely incoherent.]
So it could be that on some limited fronts 2005 was the year the People fought back. [Pity about all the other fronts: like plugging a dyke, attempting to keep up with all the good stuff while damping down the fires that rage in too many places.]
'Top of the class' went [officially] to Mr Manuel for a thoroughly well deserved A. Nonetheless I think there is an unsung hero in this package who was buried somewhere on the celebs page and would be my vote for runner up for unsung person of the year. Mr J. Steinberg [#69 on the M&G play list: P15] for an award winning and widely read book on the prison 'Numbers' gangs.He has driven home the reality of life 'inside'.
Why do I make this random and oblique choice of heroes? I don't. They make themselves. The common denominator running through all the above can be summed up in the following idea proposed at our table that evening.
'The ever-rising tide of revenue flowing to the till from formerly reluctant taxpayers may be due to Mr Manuel's trump card: the SA Penal system. Hence the Minister for correctional services [Mr Ngconde Balfour] emerges as the true hero of the revolution and should have received an A++ rather than a measly D.'
Consider: We did away with the death penalty and substituted the so-called 'slow puncture': anal gang rape by HIV AIDS infested fellow inmates is real and happens. Nice 'clevers', fellows who just wanted to keep more of their own money than the government hit men wanted them to keep, will now find themselves sentenced to a minimum period of jail time; and in the short period before they can organise their cash flow to provide for a comfortable stay, they will be raped repeatedly and face an almost inevitable slow and agonising death.
Well this is how urban legend now has it.
So we can see that the State now has a powerful [and formerly well hidden] incentive to maintain the present horror that is a prison system, as a deterrent to stiff collar 'thieving'.
Therefore we all declared first prize for this past year to be the Department of Correctional services [and #1 in the M&G Top Ten] for having presided over a monster of such horrific proportions that the very thought of going there makes grown accountants quail.
Thus the legitimised theft represented by taxation becomes more efficiently ground out of the truly productive in society, and sits in the budget surpluses idly waiting for the same medicine to be meted out to indolent and under performing cadres.
May all bloggers and other readers have a cool and prosperous 2006
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