Zuma's kraal - a good argument for godless government

You know what Nkandla convinced me of?

We live in a country, where I as an atheist could run simply on how relatively inexpensive my metaphysical beliefs are.

I can just see it now. “Vote for me, I don’t have a religion so I don’t need a cattle kraal for ritual purposes.”

That guy says he is all for cultural values? Yeah I don’t need R1.2 million to move my cows’ enclosure. I don’t have much of a culture, so I don’t have cows.

Of course this will be called culturally insensitive, but it is a whole lot easier to be culturally sensitive when it doesn’t cost over R1 million.

This isn’t something strictly about our president, there will be times in the future when we have leaders with cultures that demand specific things.

And that should not be as convincing an argument against electing them as it seems right now. We should not be thinking “Yeah but that guy has a kraal for religious purposes, how much is it going to cost us?”

Cultural expenses should be born by the person with that culture, it should not come out of the public purse.

As to Zuma himself.

People will complain that I am not respecting the dignity of the presidency – but frankly if they were sincerely bothered by that they wouldn’t have elected that president.

Zuma’s response to the Nkandla saga stripped his office of any respectability it may have once had. “Nkandla, Nkandla heh heh heh!”

That is over R200 million in upgrades to one man’s house, in a country where we have people living in squatter camps.

People who, when you get right down to it, are supposed to be his boss are living in abject poverty, and he laughs off the amount that rather went towards securing his own home.

We didn’t hear the sound of discomfort from the ANC, what we heard was applause. This is not just about Zuma, who put Zuma there? This is about the entire crumbling edifice of the ruling party.

Though to be fair, anything looks impoverished next to that house.

Our government has no dignity right now – dignity is for prisoners and people who live in cardboard boxes. Dignity is what you have got when everything else is taken away.

The ruling party has money.

And money is a lot better than dignity; otherwise people would spend a whole lot less of the time trying to look rich and a whole lot more time trying to be respectable.

Think about this for a second – the excuse for the fire pool was that the local fire department is slow and the water pressure sucks. If the ANC had any dignity – it would fix the water pressure and figure out a way to improve the fire department’s response times.

After all, the other people living in Nkandla have to deal with these problems too. But nope, the answer is not improving service delivery; it is giving the president a R2,819,051.66 fire pool (okay that includes parking, but still).

It must hurt to be the ANC municipal managers of Nkandla, that part of the basic excuse for this massive spending on the president’s house is that they are screw-ups.

And how can the ANC come and tell people to trust their municipal managers, when even their own president doesn’t trust his? To the tune of just under R3 million?

But hey, that’s okay they’re in power and have money. They can use their R200 notes to dry any tears of shame.

If dignity was worth anything to our government, Police Minister Nathi Nhleko would have at the very least made the president pay a token amount, at least pay for the Kraal – but he knows who signs his cheques.

And that goes for all the rest of the ANC; money for dignity is an easy trade. Heck that is why a whole lot of them crossed that floor.

Dignity does not pay the bills.