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In a world-beating move by the Department of Education, fraud and corruption study is to be added to secondary school curricula.
A department spokeseducator, Delilah Cohen-Matzos (Ms), says that this new subject — along with other specialised life skills like advanced SMSing, protest marching and higher drug evaluation — will further outfit learners for a prosperous life in the New South Africa.
The addition of fraud and corruption study to the curricula is as a result of a five-year research project by the Special Human Sciences committee set up by Dr Kadar Asmal during his reign as minister of education.
According to a member of the committee, who prefers to remain anonymous, the purpose of the project was to recommend ways whereby youths will be properly trained in the arcane techniques and execution of the thievery of public and/or private funds.
‘Far too many of today’s South Africans are revealing that their education and training in the fields of deceit, dishonesty, subterfuge and blatant mendacity is far below a standard to be expected in emerging democracies,” said Cohen-Matzos (Ms).
‘Every day more and more otherwise highly profitable scams are being interrupted, with apparent ease, by the Scorpions and other dedicated police units.”
‘Countries like Uganda and Nigeria are leaving us in their dust,” Cohen-Matzos (Ms) went on.
She added that in Nigeria, underhand payment for services was part of a proud national culture. ‘You don’t get anywhere in Lagos without a bribe or three. In South Africa you can walk right through customs and immigration without having to slip a few rands to anyone.”
‘Nigeria is even exporting its top perpetrators. The local drug trade has all but been overtaken by these highly trained operatives, thereby banishing many genuine South Africans from the lucrative plunder. We simply have to keep up if we are to become meaningful in these areas.”
Leading educationists and judicial officers have welcomed the news of the new secondary school subjects.
‘For a start, if corruption becomes so subtle that it never gets uncovered, let alone investigated and brought to book, this will see a tremendous drop in the heavy load borne by the police and the courts,” commented Judge Justice Lulungwenya of the Mthata High Court bench.
He added that the correctional services authorities would also welcome the study as it will, in the long term, relieve the pressure on prison staff and accommodation.
Judge Lulungwenya further observed that truly professional fraud, deception, perfidy and dishonesty is clearly a worldwide phenomenon.
‘Just take a look at the newly liberated satellites of Moscow. They haven’t got a political leader or business comrade among them who hasn’t already got a penthouse in Monaco or bought an English football team. It completely beats me why the Cabinet and their cronies satisfy themselves with chicken feed like 15% ownership of Telkom.”
Professor Emeritus Jimjam Botha, of the Department of Dialectic Materialism at the University of the Western Cape, added his ‘hearfelt approval” of the new school subjects: ‘The aims and practices of the purest forms of socialism are often interpreted by the running-dog white media as graft and swindling. When our youth learns to disguise their devious activities in ways that even the most dedicated capitalist fascist investigators cannot unravel, we will have made another giant footprint on the cant-struck collective beach of human equality.”
While fuller details of the new fraud and corruption study syllabus are not yet finalised, it is understood that it will be introduced in grade nine. Like mathematics there will be standard and higher grades, the latter for learners who are preparing themselves for careers in positions of authority in government structures and NGOs. —