PATRICK BULGER | Cable guy: pay to view, it’s the right thing to do

One day, many years ago when I was still in full-time employment and heavy with job, I bunked work to stay at home doing as little as possible, as opposed to doing the same in plain sight. Obviously, my stolen time had to be spent indoors to prevent me being spotted and reported to the bosses as a malingerer. It’s a decision I’m paying for until today and I do so every year. 

I was reclining in splendid isolation on my second-hand couch watching Isidingo reruns when I heard a knock on the door, which was unusual. The gentleman caller was an SABC TV licence inspector and on closer inspection he revealed himself to be fully authorised to pitch up without warning or apology.

He was there, it turned out, to swear me in as a fully paid-up SABC TV viewer, not just for that year, but for all years to come, except my last if I go before August 31. 

Since then, I’ve tried turning my yearly TV licence payment into a virtue, something to set me apart from the freeloading horde. But no matter how I dress it up, my colleagues laugh at me. I’ve stopped only just short of declaring I’m proud I pay my TV licence, but in truth, I’m deeply ashamed that I’ve been caught out this way. I feel like an idiot, so it's something I usually keep quiet about.

I know it’s the right thing to do, as the adverts used to say, in their pursuit of “moral suasion” to get people who can afford it to pay for anything provided by a state entity, be it decent roads, electricity, healthcare, higher education.

Problem is much of what is provided ensures for a grudge purchase, such is the low quality of services and their sporadic nature. The other problem with “moral suasion” (so tentative and timid that it’s hardly surprising it doesn’t work) is that it requires actual morals in the public sphere to succeed.   

Unfortunately, when it comes to morality in public life the fish rots from the head down, so calls for higher levels of public morality gain little traction in our free-spending republic. Wasn’t former president Jacob Zuma once put in charge of moral regeneration? 

It’s a cheek, really, that people in high places living off the public purse should be so quick to deal the morality card to those they now insist should pay for the services they receive. Almost weekly there are new reports of obscene amounts of public money squandered catering to the whims of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s extravagant cabinet ministers, with their bespoke fumigation and household energy systems all paid for by the taxpayer.

By contrast, anyone who’s ever queried their bill at  Johannesburg administration will find they’re tangling with a power far greater than themselves, mysterious in its ways and unaccountable to no one. 

In this context of Versailles-style opulence and unearned splendour, the government preaches frugality while practising excess. And this from a party that came to power in no small part because it encouraged nonpayment, destruction of infrastructure and ungovernability.   

These were essential tools in the revolutionary’s box, to be used without a thought to the future. The architects of insurrection in the 1980s never stopped to wonder that their tactics were taken up with such alacrity not because they were a sacrifice in the name of struggle, but because they were often convenient in and of themselves.

Who would pay for electricity if nonpayment was an act of rebellion that you were in effect being paid to carry out? Why obey a police officer if there was obvious benefit to defying one? Nonpayment exacted a real price on the apartheid authorities and helped cripple the fiscus, just as it does now. It left a legacy that would come back to bite us all. Liberation would become a free-for-all. 

In the democratic era, the call has been to pay up, with billions owed for outstanding bills in townships, principally Soweto with its R5bn debt owed to Eskom. It was always assumed that once legitimate leaders were in office it would be relatively easy to roll back what had come to be dignified as the “culture of nonpayment”, which also left more money in the pocket. 

Recently, the ANC’s nonpayment dilemma occupied the mind of Johannesburg’s member of the mayoral committee for finance, Dada Morero. He urged residents to “find a healthy balance between paying for their municipal accounts and DStv accounts”.   

All strength to Morero’s endeavours, and I don’t say this to discourage him, but he knows that between municipal accounts and DStv there is no such thing as balance.

With DStv, you are switched off the moment you haven’t paid. What’s more, you can phone them and query the matter and you’ll get a straight answer. There’s no grey room at HQ. They don’t do “balance”. 

By contrast, anyone who’s ever queried their bill at Johannesburg administration will find they’re tangling with a power far greater than themselves, mysterious in its ways and unaccountable to no one. I’ve met people in the queue at Thuso House, the city’s customer care centre in Braamfontein, who’ve had to take annual leave to try to sort out their bills.

This is not a reason to not pay. As far as I am aware the city has a programme to provide electricity to those who cannot pay, so one would think all the others should be paying. Unfortunately, the provision of electricity has become highly politicised, serving as a marker of privilege. Cutoffs are a political no. 

ANC politicians have gone out of their way to portray electricity and the extension of the domestic power network as a political gift, a benefit of ANC rule, rather than as a necessary ingredient for human upliftment and economic development. And no effort has been spared to continue the Eskom monopoly. Voters know this. 

All the same, pay your electricity rather than your DStv. It’s the right thing to do. You can watch government TV instead. You’ll miss your DStv, but at least you’ll be watching something “for free”. Unlike me.