The Big Read: The filth behind the filthy lucre

OK. No more metaphors or parables. Just some numbers and a simple question. R1-trillion. That's how much South Africa's nuclear plans, revived last week, will cost.

The minister of finance says the project will only proceed at a pace the country can afford but Jacob Zuma also swore at his inauguration that he would put the interests of the country first so we all know what this administration's promises are worth.

20%-25%. That's how much is lost to corruption in public procurement contracts in the EU.

R250-billion, or 25% of R1-trillion. Assuming we South Africans are more or less as corruptible as Europeans, that's how much money will be stolen by connected insiders before the project is finished. Some of those connected insiders will, of course, be on the outside: London brokers and bankers, Kremlin fixers. This deal is primarily for their benefit, not ours, so let's assume they will help themselves to the lion's share, say, R150-billion, leaving R100-billion for South Africans to divvy up.

So who gets what? At the bottom of the pile there's the shabby aristocracy of hustlers in their pointy shoes and white pleather armchairs; the otherwise-unemployable heads of small PR firms that exist only on government largesse; salmonella-stalked catering businesses run by the venal youngest son of the criminal brother of the second wife; easy-come easy-go lords and ladies living from tender to tender, leaving behind them disputes, half-built public buildings, and short, rancorous terms as school principals or management consultants.

They are on the periphery of power, scurrying after the crumbs off the table, but there are many of them, let's say a thousand, and they know how to monetise favours. R5-million apiece? That's R5-billion.

Above them on the food chain: the lawyers, accountants and financial advisers; the curators of smallanyana skeletons. They are as anonymous as a line of grey suits, but they are positioned deep in the machinery of patronage, as essential to the flow of dirty money as valves in a sewer system. Let's say there are 500 of them, and they're each content to peel off R10-million - a solid year's work, carefully squirrelled away offshore or perhaps laundered back to respectability. Another R5-billion.

Then: the lieutenants; the made men in this mob. They're old comrades, friends, backers, enforcers, godfathers-turned-kingpins. And they've joined this operation with clear eyes. The plan was explained - keep us in power long enough to ink the nuclear deal and we'll make you richer than the Lord God Almighty - and they went away and thought it through. There would be rough patches. They would be loathed by former friends and comrades. They might be betrayed at any point, their place in the queue usurped by some harder, sharper operator. The media would hound them. But it would be worth it. Say, R300-millon each - an Nkandla and change - for the hundred hardest, closest lieutenants? Another R30-billion.

Which leaves R60-billion for the masterminds; the feared, fawned-over few who were once interested in politics and power before a bigger prize rose into view.

Is it reasonable to imagine an inner circle of no more than 15 people? Fifteen superb strategists, winning a decades-long chess game in which the champions each get R4-billion? Why not? Why else would they cling on so fiercely? On its current course the ANC will be dead in 10 years: why sacrifice everything, including the party, just to hang on to evaporating power? Why? Because that R100-billion is coming down the road and it's close enough to smell.

Many South Africans still insist on believing the country is being dismantled for ideological reasons rather than financial ones. They can't believe that people would act the way they're acting just to make a buck. It seems too obvious. There must be some other incentive.

Except I don't think there is. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this, to think as pragmatically as the kingpins are thinking, is to ask yourself this: if you had manoeuvred yourself within range of R100-billion, tax free, untraceable, what would you do?

What would you do for R5-million? Spend a couple of hours a day on Twitter, accusing the critics of government of being racists or sell-outs? Of course you would.

What would you do for R10-million? Buy a sensitive case file and shred it or pass it on to a colleague of a colleague who sometimes drinks in Saxonwold? Would you lie in court? Why wouldn't you?

What would you do for R300-million? Help pay a British PR firm whose pithy inventions - "White Monopoly Capital!" - might distract voters from your plan for a few more months? Would you publicly endorse people you knew to be criminals? Would you willingly become known as a parasite preying on the poor you used to claim to love? It's a no-brainer.

And finally: what would you do for R4-billion? How many of your former friends would you sacrifice? How many media firestorms and opposition marches would you sit through, knowing that in the end it would all be worth it? How quickly would you sell your country if it meant more money than you and your family could spend in five lifetimes?

It's not rocket science. It's not even politics. It's just money.