Erotic fiction is dizzyingly diverse. Catering to our almost infinite creativity when it comes to getting hot and sweaty in the privacy of our own imaginations, there is tumescent prose for any and every proclivity. And now, thanks to Lindiwe Zulu, there’s even ANC-themed porn.
Of course, the state and most media are pretending that Zulu’s self-published smut — enigmatically entitled Green Paper — is policy rather than porn. And certainly, if you don’t share her party’s lusts, it might look like just another fantastically terrible idea by the malignant clown caravan that brought you state capture, 34% unemployment, load-shedding, Marikana, the July insurrection and Bheki Cele.
To you and me, there’s nothing sexy about Zulu’s proposal, gazetted two weeks ago, to extract up to 12% of our income and hand it to a state-run pension fund, which will then loot, sorry, I mean “administer” it.
To Zulu and her comrades, however, it’s a heady mash-up of 50 Shades of Grey and The Communist Manifesto, where the protagonist — let’s call him Comrade Beige — lures naive businesses down to his extraction dungeon, ties them up in sexy red tape, and then sucks billions out of them while working himself into a frenzy ...
“Give it to me, you naive counterrevolutionary fool,” rasped Beige, his fingers already probing deep into Business’s pockets.
“Is there a safe word?” gasped Business. “Like, say, ‘independent auditors’?”
Now shut up and give me all your sweet, hot, wet money, showering down over my bloated bureaucracy like wax down a buttock! Yes! Yes! So much ... So much ...
“Does somebody want their employment equity targets tightened until they squeal?” whispered Beige.
Business shook its head. “No, I’m just wondering — ”
“You think too much,” murmured Beige. “You should be more like Bheki Cele or Lindiwe Zulu. Now shut up and give me all your sweet, hot, wet money, showering down over my bloated bureaucracy like wax down a buttock! Yes! Yes! So much ... So much ... And not a cent of it generated by encouraging investment, building up businesses or getting wasteful expenditure under control! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
As is always the case when something like this is found lying around the house, the adults were quick to whisk it out of sight, and on Tuesday night Zulu’s wordy sex toy for horny rent-seekers was hastily withdrawn without explanation. (“Never mind what that was. It’s just something mommy likes thinking about when she’s alone and conventional taxes aren’t quite covering the catastrophic public service wage bill …”)
But you can’t keep a good fake socialist down, and on Wednesday Zulu’s ministry was standing by the little volume of saucy smut, suggesting that the green paper would be revised to “provide better clarity on some of the matters”, presumably whether the 12% would be taken at gunpoint or knifepoint, and whether Zulu would accept 12% of nothing, which is what most taxpayers have left at this point.
According to the statement, the ministry also said it was “pleased by the level of public discourse” on the paper. Since the public discourse has consisted of Zulu publishing her tawdry little magnum opus and everybody else recoiling, I assume we’ve now entered a peculiar role-play phase.
At this point, however, propriety requires me to draw a veil. Because when it comes to the fantasies of the ANC, the less we know, the better we sleep.
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