by Peter Wilhelm
I once knew a girl who, on turning 16, was informed by her father (a wreck of mad Irish extraction) that she now had to “get out and earn some money for the family”. He had hitherto supported them all as a wheel-tapper, an archaic trade (its roots in a Medieval guild) in which a man crouches before an oncoming train and smites its wheels with a steel hammer to test whether they’re fully inflated.
Now she had to contribute to the family Budget. When she resisted, her Dad whopped her face – Klap! — yet back then it never occurred to her to report him to the Police for abuse, but went on to support herself through university by pole dancing, and was rewarded with a PhD in quantum biogenetics.
I suspect Dad would have been a useful agent of our rapidly approaching door-to-door tax collectors: “You’ve got a Porsche Spyder in the extension to your meth lab. Pay the money or I’ll smasha your face.”
And talking of spiders, my pet arachnid Matilda (who has constructed a galactic cobweb outside my key-point’s window) has grown exponentially. She refuses to go for walkies around my demarcated gangland; her stomach has turned yellow with black spots; and a friendly gardener warned that she may not be a rain spider but a Golden Orb. They are poisonous, like a miffed wife.
When I whistle to attach her to my cute little leash, she spits and continues hanging upside down, parallel fangs awaiting prey. When a male swings over she grabs it (poor timid beastie) and as it fertilises her egg sacs she contemplatively munches it for protein. What some males will do to get laid!
I won’t spray her with Doom. I believe in encouraging the ecosystem we have before rats and frogs start building high-rise apartment blocks in Dubai. As my personal masseuse and spiritual guide, the huckster and quack Maharishi Yogi Bear notes: “Everything is in balance. Give me money.”
A reasonable request – and not one we should castigate Nhlanhla Nene for.
He has to make the country work for the revolting masses. What a quandary! Yet I would have set about it differently.
Our population is (depending on which stats you dream up) anywhere between 54million-79million; illiteracy stands at 89% for the under-20 graduates; and GDP tools around in the minus zero quadrant. What to do?
Say we have ± 60-million people, each needing a minimum of R60 000 per month to scrape together enough for a mystery meat substitute on Sunday. I reckon, therefore, that total fiscal demand could soon soar to R432 000 000 000 000/year (this is wrong but I failed Grade 0).
Well. Sin taxes always go up. Since people refuse to stop smoking and drinking, I suggest that R100 for one cig and R500 for a sniff of Klipdrift are picayune asks.
A bonk tax should also help – though it would have to be voluntary, with each married couple dropping a few coins in their bedside porcelain pig each time they remember to cuddle. The amateurs, if they can’t keep count, must fill potholes with empty plastic bottles.
The entire Karoo must be sold to Mexican drug lords or Argentine cattle rustlers. The export of kiddies’ flexible doggy party balloons to Iran must be stepped up.
Meanwhile, of course, we do have a few remaining forests which can be cut down and pulped to fabricate paper using Chinese nuclear power. The entire Western Cape can then be retrofitted into a junk money factory, puking out banknotes (Randelas?) to meet the demand that once existed for printed matter such as newspapers, toilet rolls, and doctors’ prescriptions for 10 mg Xanax.
The daily wage can be carried off in big garbage wheelie-bins, usually left rotting though at times you find a scattering of chips in them.
Lack of electricity is of course a “constraint on growth”. Do we really need power? Maybe enough to kick our iPads into flickering porn, and TV sets to generate endless soapies. But it’s fun in the dark masticating uncooked berries and roots for essential fibre.
In any case, the state – in accordance with policy – will wither away. As noted above, printing titanic quanta of cash will make recession a thing of the past or the future (10 minutes from now). Local tobacconists can sell pot and issue their own credit cards with no known threshold.
I note that Archbishop Nene bears a curious resemblance to Maltilda the Golden Orb, who is ever larger now that she’s eaten a passing boerbul and several quavering males. So if my sound recommendations for a rational Budget are scorned, he may turn upon us. His forward bulge need only be draped in yellow with black spots for exact symbolism.
Perhaps he will eat us all.
