Second-hand book dealers, charity organisations, old-age homes and a whole assortment of so-called ”secondary merchants” are all eagerly awaiting the forthcoming Government Publications Warehouse Sales. As each fulfilling decade of the South African rainbow democracy comes to an end, government storage houses, currently bursting with the accumulations of out-of-date printed material, will be kicking off the next 10 years with a major clean-out.
I’ve been able to get a look at some of the tempting array of government and associated publications due to come under the hammer during the last fortnight of this winter. If you think things like the Exclusive Books annual sales are exciting, wait until you can feast on this lot.
The auction sales will be categorised according to their origins in the vast and complex machinery of democratic government. To give an idea of the scope of the works on offer, here are just a few examples of remaindered items from the arena of local government. These will include 20 unopened cartons, each containing 1 000 brand-new copies of Guidelines to Honest and Transparent Municipal Administration (Eastern Cape Edition); a few dozen undistributed copies of Lucrative Game Park Management and How it Can Work For You; the same amount of Officially Approved Ghost Pension and Payroll Methodologies. Among other rarities are seven copies of a 1999 Advisory Memorandum detailing how the quota system can be applied in the equitable dispensation among one’s family members of health budget funding, and a collector’s trophy in the shape of a dog-eared copy of Berhold H Knoesen’s 1997 classic, Easy Sleaze: A Guide to Mpumalanga Regional Government Statutes and How to Sidestep Them.
Another prize will be the scrapped municipal records, personal bank account details and bookkeeping journals relating to the purchase of 18 bulldozers, 12 front-end loaders, 13 fire engines, eight garbage removal trucks, 40 ambulances, six mayoral 4x4s, 21 staff buses and 18 BMW 735s ordered by the town clerk of the tiny Zululand hamlet of Tchonchazonkhe (population 360) and all supplied by his sister-in-law’s company Democratic Merchandising Limited. As was recently announced, an internal investigation, headed by the mayor of the hamlet, found these purchases to be entirely justified on grounds of affirmative empowerment.
Redundant Foreign Affairs management literature will draw much interest. On offer will be some mint copies of the pamphlet Useful Hints for South African Foreign Ambassadors; this includes seminal advice on sexual harassment by senior consular staff and how to make sure it’s kept well out of sight. Also up for grabs will be Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad’s highly classified internal report on his illuminating 2002 meetings with the then president of Iraq, which he wittily entitled Ba’ath Time With Saddam.
Also from Foreign Affairs are 50 signed first-edition copies of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nkosazana-Sarafina-Virodene-Mashabane-Dlamini-Zuma’s 19 000-word epic blank verse praise-poem, The Journey of the Mu-Maji, which celebrates how the ancient and blessed God-spirit of homosexual lightness and fertility has been reincarnated in the form of the president of Zimbabwe, referred to in the poem by an artful anagram of his name, Bug-A-Me.
Remaindered material from the education ministry will attract much interest and will include inestimable numbers of textbooks and teaching materials that somehow never found their way to the schools. None of this material can now be distributed as it has long since been badly eaten away by the massed rodent populations in the Department of Education’s learner commodities warehouses. As one rat said to another, ”If you want to get high, there’s nothing to touch sniffing the glue in the 1998 editions of The Grade Five Learners’ Guide to Fighting against Colonial Rapacity. Other still-readable material includes a valuable brochure for under-10s entitled Why You Should Never Go Alone into the School Principal’s Office Without a Condom. Otherwise, all gnawed textbooks will be sold by the tonne to be used as landfill, compressed as firelighters or used as mattress-stuffing for the poorest of the poor.
The South African Presidency is renowned for its prolific generation of paperwork and, like much other in the world of high-level government, a great deal of its output becomes staler by the week. On offer from this source will be several thousand copies, still in their protective plastic covers, of Essop Pahad’s definitive discourse, Analysing Our Beloved President’s Weekly Anti-Corruption Speeches; 10 large cardboard cartons entitled Presidential Musings on HIV/Aids — these latter are sold voetstoots.
The Department of Sport and Recreation has a bulging storehouse sorely in need of thinning out. Chasing after the hosting of the Soccer World Cup left behind it a dense paper trail. In order to shed more light on the current soccer match-fixing scandal, the sports ministry will be throwing out what it has jealously guarded on past cricket, rugby, boxing and hockey match-fixing scandals. Much material here for a courageous publisher keen to boil up some sporting gossip.
Watch the newspapers for details of the sales. All cheques must be bank-guaranteed, uncrossed and made out to cash.