It is quite sickening to see senior members of our “people’s” government ranting on about how they intend to bring runaway debt under some sort of control. Millions upon millions of South Africans are financially out of their depths from purchases made on credit and which they’ll never have a chance of settling.
The following is a true story. It reveals the activities of just one of a nationwide array of degenerate finance houses that prey upon the poorer classes. These organisations specialise in extending unrealistic credit lines to unsophisticated people and then make filthy profits for themselves and “debt-recovery expert”, vermin-class attorneys.
A farm labourer in our Western Cape valley — let’s call him Terry — bought a new double bed on hire purchase nearly three years ago. The sale followed the touting around of local farms by salespeople from a Worcester furniture store. Terry bought a R1 500 bed after one of these persuaded him to do so, despite being told by Terry that he was already paying off a lawyer for another debt. No problem, she said. All Terry would have to do was undertake to pay R10 a week.
Terry earns less than R1 000 a month. He has a grade four education and can scarcely write or read. At the store he was given only a “credit voucher” to sign, issued by a credit company operating from within the store. The voucher reflected the purchase price (R1 500 — an obscene 500% mark-up on the factory price), added interest at 28% (R420) making a grand total of R1 920. However, at R80 the monthly payments were twice what the tout had promised. Terry balked and was assured by the furniture-store salesman that what he was signing was “only paperwork” and that R10 a week (paid monthly) would suffice to pay off the bed.
Duly Terry started paying his R40 or R50 a month, in cash to the credit company offices at the furniture store. No fee was added for the receiving of the money.
Very soon Terry started getting letters from the credit company telling him that he was in arrears. He went to the credit company to seek relief. The company’s response was to tell him that the tout “had no right to make such promises” and that Terry should have been “more careful”.
At a stage when he had paid off R720, form letters from a sewerful of vermin-class attorneys in Durban started arriving, warning Terry that he was in arrears with his payments. For these letters the attorneys charged R30 a time. In the meantime the credit company and the furniture store had closed offices and their clients had to make payments at a Pick ‘n Pay, Shoprite-Checkers, First National Bank or the Post Office. At these agencies they are charged R3,50 a transaction.
To date Terry has paid in a total of R1 740 and, according to the vermin-class attorneys, he still owes R829. Admittedly Terry has missed a month’s payment here and there because of costs to do with sickness and for other reasons. He has one child by his marriage and supports two others from his wife’s earlier marriage. He is desperately trying to get ahead of the debt, paying in any extra money he earns by doing weekend gardening jobs and home-brewing ginger beer, which he flogs around neighbouring farms on his bicycle.
As the figures represent, he has been doing what he humanly can. But he’s a lost cause to the bloodsuckers.
Here’s how a payment in May 2002 by Terry of R50 was dispersed. The attorneys took 10% (R5) as a “collection fee”. They took R30 for having sent a letter of demand (so far they have sent no less than 18 of these). Interest on arrears amounted to R6,98 plus VAT of R4,90. Total: R46,88. From the R50 payment the total reduction of Terry’s primary debt — once the parasites have taken their cut — was R3,12. (If he’d paid in at one of the above agencies [R3,50 commission a throw for Raymond Ackerman et al] he’d actually have increased his debt by 38c!)
To date extra costs have accrued to R648,20. However, at the rates so far charged by the attorneys and the credit company, the final settled amount for Terry’s bed will in fact work out at plus R3 000, more than twice the original cost. And Terry’s name will have been added to the blacklists as a credit risk. For life.
Terry’s story is by no means an exception. Nearly all the local farm workers are in similar positions, preyed upon by unscrupulous sales and credit houses and vermin-class attorneys out for the easy bucks they can leech off the poor and naive.
So the next time you see the smug face of Trevor Manuel, behind the wheel of his BWM 7-series (R750 000), or Penuell Maduna belching champagne fumes at the judges, bear in mind how frivolously they represent the Terrys of this world, how they and their cronies condone the morally criminal behaviour of vermin-class attorneys and credit companies.
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