A Waste Of People
Whilst the war rages, South Africa appears to be a picture of serenity and growth - although few people acknowledge and respect this.

I'd rather hear about what Tommy did to Pammy, quite frankly. On the first night they first...well, you know, when he allegedly 'saved' up for a week. Welsh Christ it must have been interesting. I'd rather talk about it too - right in front of the 76 year old widow seated on my left. Was it anal? Was it bloody ever! I'd like to talk about that too, and the bacteria that must inevitably surface upon the tongue of Rocco Siffredi following one of his more successful...you know. Maybe even enjoy the dog whilst he rumps away at my leg underneath the table, kicking him only to allow my foot to stroke the leg of the widow. Why all this vulgarity? Well, finally, a foot down and all the cards on the table - anything, including this, is better than having to involve oneself in South Africa's new regulation dinner table conversation; the omnipresent moaning about the country and it's endless list of problems.

For those of us set on being here for the next few years or so, a different list exists; the list of the 'given'. 1) We have a few, small groups of deluded fascists and religious fanatics, namely the Boeremag and PAGAD 2) We have a government, whom, in certain sectors, struggles to convince with little or no transparency 3) We have genuinely horrific HIV / Aids statistics, shocking rape figures and plastic bag musicians like Heinz Winkler and Danny K 4) We have overnight celebrities who waste our time and whose roots lie not in greatness or achievement or struggle, but in Big Brother, Bog Brother 2 and Boggy Boggy Brother Africa 5) We seem to have attracted the worst from Ghana, Zimbabwe, Cameroon and the big one, Nigeria 6) Black people whose driving is genocidal, white people whose driving is fatalistic; when you put the two together and throw an ailing Indian minister into the cocktail, you get 1,435 - the number of people who died on the roads during the Christmas period 7) Tow truck drivers and bouncers

Life is hard. That is how M. Scott Peck began in his award winning, 'The Road less Travelled'. He follows by stating that once you accept it, it becomes easier to live, easier to understand, easier to survive within. When you look at the modern social pitfalls, it illustrates that young people, universally and locally, have it much harder than was once the case. For example, you have drugs. That choice against, I believe, has now to be made at school. Following that, you have HIV / Aids. Now, 1 in 7, don't do that. Following that, acceptance into University is, again, more complex. Then employment - the big one. So life is, at this very moment, very hard, and it does not look to be getting any easier.

For the rest, the curtain having opened - the bad news before the good - everything else is looking very, very positive. In terms of inspiration, we beat America's window dressed effort; Jack Welsh, a hero to many, writes a book on namedropping and how wonderful he is. Barely a year after he publishes it, he gets caught in a compromising position with his P.A, followed by a tidal wave of criticism on how much he and his other CEO fat cats paid themselves. What a wonderful inspiration that was. Condolezza Spice? Prick Cheney? Give me a break - there is more backbone in a cigarette vending Somalian geriatric than there is in any of those two. Britain, once a noble and beautiful country, filled with bad hygiene, good tradition and even better taste, has been Blaired by Tony and that person he calls his wife, Strawed by Jack and completely Blunketted by David. Right now, there are hundreds of good heroes here. Involved in politics are the likes of Bantu Holomisa, Roelf Meyer, Patricia de Lille and Cheryl Ozinsky (of course, our drawcard, the ace of all aces up sleeves and the honeystroke of conclusions in arguments with Americans, Nelson Mandela, as he remains a formidable inspiration against New World Order or New World Odour. That's our beauty in a sentence - we are well aware of the better people.

Only in South Africa can the following happen; it is an idle Sunday afternoon on Fredman Drive in Sandown, JHB. A taxi, whose driver is counting coppers in one hand, is speeding down a one way lane. At the bottom of the street, a granny and her grand child are crossing the road, looking the other way. Around the corner, three Orlando Pirates fans are laughing and joking, falling in the street and generally having a good time. I ramp onto the pavement and watch. The football fan's eyes suddenly enlarge, the granny screams and the taxi swerves twice. Like it was straight out of a stunt manual, both parties are narrowly missed, not without one of the fans throwing an apple at the taxi however. Need-less to say, all three parties disappear without a hint of emotion or nerve.

Except me. I'm not so lucky. I've been spotted.

No, I'm sitting on the pavement, trying to gather my thoughts, completely unaware that the Metropolitan Police are working this Sunday. Sergeant Gumede, ( for that being his name) approaches my window and stands smiling and pointing, like I'm a piece of cattle to a farm invader. 'Dangerous and reckless driving,' he states, rubbing his regulation large traffic officer stomach at the same time. 'And I'm hungry. Boetie, what do you think I should eat for lunch?' Under normal circumstances, cue wallet. However, Sergeant Gumede looks like he enjoys a laugh, so no wallet but instead, outdated-by-five-years-all-in-Chinese-HSBC check book. Not a single copper coin in it. 'Gumede, my good man, if I make this out to CASH, is that pashasha?' 'Eh, boetie, cash is grand baba.' Right then, C-A-S-H. And then some spice. One nought, two noughts, three noughts, four noughts, five nought and just for shits and giggles, six noughts.O-N-E-M-I-L-L-I-O-N-R-A-N-D-S-O-N-L-Y. 'Cool?' (If he had started crying, I would have proclaimed my guilt and asked him to take me away, but he didn't.) Instead, his eyes nearly swallowed his head, Met. Police cap and all, and he grabbed the check straight out of my hands walked back to his vehicle and laughed. Bugger the lotto, for today; apparently, he was one million rand richer. Apparently.

There is a science, a method and a shape in this madness. I guess it takes a while to appreciate - patience, and understanding being the invisible equations. This is now an African country - there is very little we can do about the presence of Nigerian scum without being labelled xenophobic. Above that, you have all the ingredients that make for a unique country; lunacy, humour, chivalry and beautiful scenery. Cape Town is the new Miami, but for all the ghastly yanks. And ashamedly, it is from Cape Town where all the dissent arises. The opinion column of The Cape Times cannot escape a day whereby someone does not complain. Bloody Germans! Bloody Council! Bloody expensive restaurants! Excuse me, you have bloody great chunk of rock, beautiful beaches and a surprisingly impressive social infrastructure. Bloody film crews! Bloody taxis! Bloody useless rand! Again, film productions help unemployment, taxis, for all their disastrous sins are a vital cog in our transport engine and the rand happens to be the best performing international currency against the dollar. Bloody ineffective police! Bloody crime! Bloody rates! Once more, put yourself in the shoes of a police officer; R4,500.00 a month before taxes, a family to feed, a public that has little respect for you and criminals (who you are meant to apprehend) that have more rights than you. Crime, well, instead of complaining, why not do something constructive? Why not build a Broken Windows display or mobilize the community? Rates, well, in essence, like death and taxes, you'll never be able to do anything. It is one of those impossible situations that you have to respect!

Now for the second part. Whenever someone claims that we are burdened by irreparable corruption, ask them who the Minister of Public Works is. Whenever someone complains about the Arms Deal, ask them who the four major players are. Whenever someone complains about mismanagement in the Department of Education, ask them who the Premier of the Northern Cape is. What is the point of this exercise? To prove that people who complain are superficial spectators - very happy to condemn that which they hear but unable to explain further because they are simply too lazy to adventure. They'll tell you about foreign governments, prime ministers and various spokespeople, but they'll tell you nothing of their own. And that is how corruption has manifested itself; when people lose interest because they feel above the spectrum, those directly involved have more space to themselves. And because people are clueless, the powers that be are given opportunities to use big words, run themselves in circles all whilst their fingers are in the till. These powers, over and above anything else, need to be governed by constructive interest from the public, and not by a nation of couch commentators.

So it goes without saying that I had the most awful of awful evenings ever the other night, when seated opposite Hilary Prendini - Toffoli, an 'award' winning columnist. Like advertising, writing has awards for just about everything, including Best Effort (she's picked up a few of those). When journalists are given artistic privilege, a responsibility at the every most which potentially enables people's thought to be conditioned, surely they should use it for the better worth? But, no, this woman is no such journalist. She writes articles on stars like Vinnie Jones, slamming him for touching up three whores in a swimming pool in Clifton. She would rather interview local smooth ass con men than write about issues that affect the youth and use her experience as guidance. So flooded are we with these Gwen Gill, namedropping, celebrity fucking / slating, champagne guzzling tarts, that everything else is a mere detail if you have not seen Irvan Damon's pecks (Bog Bro 1). Against the grain of earlier inspiration - 'Sick is the land that needs heroes' - touché - we have ourselves instead.

Patience is the key in this whole conundrum. Come five years, and against the grain again, hopefully I'll be on an anonymous Italian island, sitting in the square with my wife, Princess Madeleine of Sweden (potentially Miss Scandinavia) drinking lemon vodka and upon the receiving end of a bastardo Cohiba whilst we wait for the result of a Sophia Loren youth cloning program to join us for some fun later. Be that or be that not, I'll still remember the dreary lot of moaners, who, whilst I lived in the most beautiful country in the world, made no effort to help themselves by helping their surroundings as a complete and utter waste of people. Life is hard - remember to mention that to Hilary, to the bottle - blonde divorcees, the arty farty agents and queer fashion designers just before you illustrate the 'knock 'n shine' incident that took place between Tommy and Pammy on the boat. That'll set them up a bit lively!