The cycles of natural, sustainable corruption are as ancient as a silver coin rubbed smooth by the thumbs of the millennia.
Unwavering and predictable as the seasons, they have returned, year after year, century after century, perpetuating the eternal process of extraction and patronage; evaporating the sweat of the poor, drawing it up into the clouds of political hypocrisy that drift above us all, compressing it into cold, hard cash and, finally, raining it down into the already-overflowing reservoirs of the rich.
Inevitably, some of that spillage has always fallen back onto the cracked earth, perhaps in the form of bread and circuses, or salaries for soldiers and civil servants, or socialised medicine; the smallest dribble compared with the largesse sloshing about above, but still enough to keep the poor alive and sweating, and the ancient cycle in balance.
In SA, however, a financial El Nino has settled over the land, and the money has dried up.
Every day, the beneficiaries of cadre deployment shuffle out from the deep shade of Luthuli House, tasting the dry air with parched, cracked tongues and yearning for the smallest sip of patronage, a thimbleful of brackish baksheesh. But the sky is hot and bright and empty.
It will take time to fully understand the phenomenon, but at this point the experts seem to have identified three possible causes.
The first is the slowing and imminent collapse of the African National Current.
Once full of life and vigour, it now crawls around the southern point of Africa, a sluggish, oleaginous thing, polluting everything it touches and dragging with it an expanse of scum in which broken little castaways cling to rotting wood and faintly yell “White people’s lies!” and “Integrity Committee!” and “We are shocked by corruption!”
The second trigger seems to have been the emergence of the Zupta wind of the southern Indian Ocean, formed when an outgassing of hot air from the KwaZulu-Natal region wheezes upwards until it meets a jet of cold pragmatism originating in the foothills of the Himalayas near Uttar Pradesh, and produces intense showers of looting across the interior of SA.
These two phenomena, some scientists insist, have combined to evaporate too much sweat, while allowing too little to trickle back down.
The third explanation, punted by more optimistic experts, is that the current money drought is a transition into a more natural form of corruption; that patronage taps are being closed so that you and I may begin to experience the joy of being dribbled on by a slightly more restrained elite.
Still, there is much anger and panic in ANC Land. Because if you’re an extraction machine, but you ran the machine too hot for too long and extracted all the goodies, what are you even for?
Whatever the causes, however, the effects of political climate change have arrived in the country, and they are brutal. Even the recent PPE monsoon, during which digital vibes lashed down into certain isolated pockets, has been unable to delay the ANC’s Day Zero for long.
At the weekend, we watched with morbid fascination as thousands of ANC employees threatened to go on strike to punish the party for being the organisation they helped it become. I mean, how dare the party run out of money when all its poor workers have done for the past 30 years is enable or defend economic illiterates and plunderers?
To be clear, I support them entirely. Every minute a Luthuli House staffer isn’t in Luthuli House answering the phone or misspelling an e-mail or gazing out of a window as they absent-mindedly lick an envelope and remember that one time they once felt a flicker of self-worth is a minute they’re not actively harming SA.
Still, there is much anger and panic in ANC Land. Because if you’re an extraction machine, but you ran the machine too hot for too long and extracted all the goodies, what are you even for?
But hope is on the horizon.
No. It’s bigger than that. It is the horizon, a vast, blue-black rain cloud to swamp all rain clouds.
A 10-year monsoon is coming, to rain and rain and rain down onto those parched little tongues; to fill up all the fire pools and float enough shell companies to launder a thousand stolen fortunes.
The nuclear build is coming, and the El Nino now wrapped around Luthuli House will be washed away by unimaginably vast sums of money.
Admittedly, this won’t be the nuclear build of Jacob Zuma’s sweatiest dreams. I still believe Cyril Ramaphosa wants to guide his party towards a culture of modern, sustainable corruption, whereby officials leave the safe standing open in return for 5% rather than hiring an idiot nephew to blow it open, with the ensuing fireball, dead nephew, demolished building and toxic cloud initially denied and then eventually blamed on racist journalists.
Still, even legitimate nuclear builds have legitimate budgets that legitimately double and then triple and quadruple, don’t they?
Which is why the comrades’ goal is clear: do adequately in this year’s election, scrape home in 2024, then sit back and wait for those first fat, big drops of rain to plop down next you: a euro here, a rouble there, then ten, a hundred, a billion ...
And soon things will be back to normal again, with a regular paycheck and revolutionary songs around the water cooler, and you can go back to licking that envelope and remembering what it once felt like to have a soul.
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