TOM EATON | SA, let me introduce you to a new concept — it’s called ‘consequences’

The City of Tshwane made headlines this week by cutting the power to local offices of the police and Sars over unpaid bills, but, while they were undoubtedly good news, those headlines once again revealed the skewed and somewhat naive picture we have of corruption and dysfunction in SA.

To be clear, I think it is excellent that Tshwane has finally introduced some deployed cadres to alien and upsetting notions like consequences and that services and utilities need to be paid for. One could argue that SA’s general reluctance to pay for electricity has its roots in something admirable — the broader campaign of non-compliance against the apartheid state — but its modern, much less heroic and patriotic iteration is one of the reasons Eskom is in its current hole.

I was struck, however, by the focus of the headlines and social media sound bites, which mostly named SAPS and Sars but failed to mention that the crackdown on non-payers involved cutting the power to over 400 other entities described as “businesses”; in other words, that the overwhelming majority of offenders were private landlords, not the state. Even Sars, it seemed, wasn’t entirely to blame, being a tenant of a private company.

When it comes to weaseling out of debts or trying to get someone else to pay for lunch, South African business stands proudly shoulder to shoulder with the worst cheapskates and swindlers in government.

Of course, I understand why most of the focus was on entities connected to the state. We all want to hear that this criminally wasteful regime is finally being forced to pay its way.

But I think this is a useful moment to focus on those 400-plus other offices that were plunged into darkness, and to remember that, when it comes to weaseling out of debts or trying to get someone else to pay for lunch, South African business stands proudly shoulder to shoulder with the worst cheapskates and swindlers in government.

Indeed, as the Zondo commission showed so thoroughly, the two feed off each other, with the private sector being perfectly capable of being the looter-in-chief, enlisting the help of dirty politicians as willing bag men. At Bosasa, the public and private sectors were indistinguishable, coming together to create an unholy love-child described as a criminal enterprise by its former COO, Angelo Agrizzi.

To be fair, many of the defaulters in Tshwane seem to have rolled over faster than a Zupta being offered a tummy rub by a Bain consultant. According to a News24 report, fewer than 2% of those who’d been cut off were taking the city to court.

What that means, however, is that about 412 of the 420 non-payers were just taking a chance.

And why wouldn’t they, in a country whose ruling party has convicted fraudsters like Tony Yengeni and Bathabile Dlamini on its NEC and heading its Women’s League? Why wouldn’t you withhold payment for another month and let the interest build up when nobody has gone to prison for the Steinhoff heist?

All of which is why Tshwane’s pulling of the plug was such a big deal. It might have felt like nothing more than highly personalised load-shedding, but consequences don’t have to be dramatic to start shifting a society in the right direction. They just have to exist.