David couldn't make it so we're dating Goliath instead

David couldn't make it so we're dating Goliath


I love this time of the cycle. The politicians are suddenly more in our face than the guys who turn every road traffic intersection into a shopping experience and it's the old 'polish up the promises' thing again.

There is something of a frenzied air about the current propaganda wave in favour of the democratic process at work...working at demonstrating that the democratic process works. In other words. ' look how good Nanny is being, we're arranging elections and telling you about them,' Now in return we must all go and vote in a few months and right now no one seems too interested. Most of us are still figuring out how to get enough cash to get through January. March is -when?' These are the early sabre rattling moments before the real dirt begins to fly.

Everyone wants to keep their jobs. They are hard to get. They should know; last time 'they' 'promised' to 'create jobs': every second signpost proclaimed this immanent act of incarnacy [assuming there could be such a word]. The poor buggers are still desperately trying to get pregnant.

This task turned out tougher than everyone believed and the jury is still out on whether we can make it work, although getting richer helps. In the beginning the revolution seemed to be doing no more than turning a modest luxury cruiser, around in a narrow canal. The canal has widened a little but the boat has gradually swollen to something larger than the queen Mary.

So what's the problem? Why do we have to be persuaded in this vigorous way to do something that we should be happy to do?

One hears gloom talk on the increasingly strident Perlman and Bikita [sic] Am live on SAFM show. They 'promote the local government elections' each morning. And this week they have told us in a voice that reeked of doom that only 41% of young people will vote [!]: oh me oh my what are we coming to! The adults didn't fare much better-best prognosis currently is 42 % [which one might add is high for local government elections but then we are still in our infancy and people aren't supposed to be this cynical yet.

Those are the 42 % of people who will mostly vote for the government since most of everybody else have no idea who anybody is anyway [including me] and basically are dubious that any of them can actually rectify anything at all, for instance, the current declining state of the electricity infrastructure in our beloved south central megacity, the infamous Josi and its 'omgewings'.

All our electrics are deeply into a terminal curve: like all machinery, humans, and regulatory systems that are left unattended for too long. It's old, poorly maintained and subject to continual jolts and 'shakeages' caused by product theft which appears to take place on a scale both in volumes and over time that makes the recent looting of Baghdad look penny ante.

The provincial government is going to [correctly] invest a vast sum into the construction of a people friendly government precinct in the downtown part of Josi. It is rumoured that a fake competition was organised to decide what it would look like and there seemed to be some mutters about some crappy old buildings that represented a link to the exploitative past and which should for some arcane reason be restored. Of course it was only a rumour. The job didn't need to go to tender because it didn't exist.

Be that as it may, this process [of infrastructural decay] should be leading the government to construct an energy friendly civic region as part of its basic plan-.There are scenarios that put the downtown region in the strike zone and others that see it as a symbol of disintegrating structures under popular pressure. They talk of spending twenty billion on the precinct and everyone knows you can hardly get an obsolete technology train for twenty billion; you'd need about that again to rewire and re-plumb the city.

So appropriate planning presumes that the place may well need to be able to generate its own year round energy supply to stay afloat as the city declines around it. Political correctness presumes that such thinking is gloomy and boring and should be avoided. Avoiding doing anything at all is usually the best way to deal with the never present future, and one I prefer so I look forward to visiting the civic centre by candle light for my hundredth birthday, in fulfilment of a utopian dream.

So who is going to promise that the electricity will remain on and be able to deliver -we know that none can do it. Like the elusive 'jobs' that no one has yet been able to 'create' each political entity will 'promise' us that they can do it better than the other guys, and they will be well paid to have fun watching other people do their work.

So what do we schmuck voters on the foddering turf know? What cards do we have?

· Apart from some new crowd down in Kwaznat who haven't been around before, all the rest are both practised failures and relatively successful in varying degrees. Democracy requires that everyone should have an equal opportunity to steal from the common pot-but don't get caught. Even if you are caught delay s and suspensions means you can loudly proclaim that no one has ever been convicted of corruption in your party so you alone are clean.
· The promises are well intentioned but inherently meaningless and we all know it. Nonetheless for many people maybe even as many as 42% life is good enough to justify voting for the guys 'who gave it all'. There is no durable evidence anyone else can do a better job simply because no other group other than the ruling party has the depth of talent and skills to make this vast increasingly cumbersome homunculus of a country function effectively- And the ruling party's talent base is less than skin deep [no pun intended unless through some deeply sublimated rage]
· That's cool. If all the 58% of allegedly pissed off people went and voted they could vote for 'other parties' and the government would lose a whole load of seats and they would become angry and nasty-You can hear every day now how angry they are that there is any opposition at all-sooner of later there will be the usual anti-colonialist paranoia's that so frequently punctuates the rhetoric of our neighbour [He, who sends his soldiers down here to rob our casinos and our shopping malls], and so that's a good reason to leave things as they are because the alternatives look worse [at present]. The whole political agenda more closely resembles a flock of overvalued SUV's dug inextricably in a rising tide of gooey poo than the sleek airbrushed winners who have brought us from the horror of the old apartheid sanctions degenerating environment to this brash bunfight.
· Then of course there's this whole carefully airbrushed and ignored little hiccup over the-Sssh speaka no evil -
'floor crossing leg-..' 'Agh-told you -sh.'
Of course we are maybe the masses but we are none of us so stupid that we can't tell when we've been lied to even if it does take a while. Thus we know regrettably, that no matter who wins the election in September all the guys will cross over to the ruling party, comes the window period in September. Hey personally I think three times a schmuck is enough. That is- that three times now the guys I voted for changed parties so that's it for me. You wanna avoid disappointment vote for the winners they are the only ones who'll stay in place.

The more they bluster and deny the more they give themselves away and if they say nothing we still get them because only those who are guilty, we say, would keep silent. So even if the government lost the election they would get everyone back through the rising checkbook: Anybody who doesn't play ball will be a racist recidivist pig and will be outlawed from the game in the masterly fashion we have all been witness to since the Revolution. We have to go to this place we are heading for; we can't jump off the train while it's moving- well we can but it hurts when you skin your hands.

Possibly 58% of the voters have realised that their votes are inherently meaningless: simply part of an elaborate charade and that nothing that they do will make any significant improvement on what we have all achieved, simply because the systems all seemed to have passed the point of diminishing marginal returns.

For the moment though the present 'good' life is still on an optimising curve. Therefore most people are not really all that pissed off with the state of things. More cars are being sold now in a month than we used to sell in a year-you'd have to be a bigger schmuck not to know that we have never had it this good, ever. So there's crime and dirt and things don't work. These are also indicators of rapid and accelerating exponential population expansion in all the core population centres. We are all being served gloriously by the grand auld principle of 'to the victor the spoils. People are pouring into the country from all the loser hovels outside to get a slice of the good life.

There has never been a time in this country's history when things have been this good and the longer they last, the more chance that the thing will stick, that this social experiment will succeed in becoming the habit that follows an affirmed state of mind, and the place will be really cooking with oil. There is a radical improvement for many. There may of course come an inevitable reckoning as nature in the form of that evil bitch, 'the market', comes biting back at our areseholes, shouting that we became top heavy with preferment-oh no not that old bitch the market-avaunt-
But that will be when the world cup has come and gone and the Gautrain is who knows where and we start wondering again where it's all going. 'Maar soos hulle sÄ›, mŏre is nog n dag.' [Tomorrow is another day: the future is an illusion.]

So you wanna play charades or
Would you
Prefer to head
for the bar before the music stops
and the
commercial
goes on a slomo fade?
.
Loves you all
Practise cheerfulness or be dammed.
Nik