I stopped just short of buying a tame politician in a ‘canned” hunt last week. The deal came to an end when I refused to fork out R100 000 to a minor government politician in return for seven sets of authentic identity documents and birth certificates. The quote included the acquisition of blank forms, forged signatures, official stamps and the services of a Department of Home Affairs office manager to navigate all these through the system inside a week.
My investigation into canned politician hunting began when I was alerted to a website offering a wide variety of South African ‘political stock” for outright sale. The introductory passage on the website was forthright:
As a result of so-called ‘transformation” in South African politics, access to public coffers has become easier than under the old apartheid administration. In those days various factors inhibited overt looting of the public purse. Residual Calvinist righteousness still infected large slabs of the old National Party and getting its politicians to own up to their filchings of a prodigious national wealth was extremely trying. The politicians of yore preferred to keep their swindle methodologies to themselves — and the loot.
Nowadays that’s all changed. Acquiring contemporary politicians for use in diverting South Africa’s riches into both local and foreign hands is almost too easy. Various factors are responsible for this, one of the most important of these being the sense of sublime generosity which has become the hallmark of the ruling African National Congress.
Unconditional dedication to ‘transparency” has also played its part. These days the newspapers fairly vibrate with tales of the imaginative mechanisms whereby canned politician hunters have been able to embezzle, misappropriate and generally plunder the throbbing cornucopia of the South African equity. It is most refreshing to see that no one wastes time and energy trying to hide anything any more.
The R40-billion ‘Arms Deal” is the leader in the field and serves as a brilliant example of emergent democratic fabrication. By diligent manipulation of fact and fantasy, the South African government has managed to convince its electorate that the country is in desperate need of a Stalinesque war-force of assorted ordinance, tanks, submarines, corvettes, fighter aircraft that no one in the South African Defence Force has the faintest idea of how to fire, drive, sail or fly.
It is calculated conservatively that canned politician hunters have already subsumed more than half of this giddy bonanza. This has not been entirely without consequence. The ANC minister of defence, who devised this pillage, suffocated to death under the sheer weight of his subterfuge.
The website offers guidelines as to the costs of canned South African politicians. These costs are calculated by reference to actuarised indices. As an example: a canned politician’s price depends primarily on the potency of his or her influence in the government. Secondary factors, such as the politician’s vanity, sexual preferences, natural-born duplicity and naked avarice, all affect the price as does the politician’s record in self-righteous bluster when previously caught with his or her hand deep in the cookie jar.
The website recommends avoidance of a rare and critically endangered sub-species of politicians showing signs of ‘malignant honesty”.
There was a tempting display of ‘current canning offers” on the website. Prices ranged from an ongoing retainer fee of only R500 000 per annum for ‘intercessionary arms deal inducements” at ‘very high level”. R1,7-million puts a provincial minister, in charge of tenders for surgical equipment deliveries in one of the provinces, right into the canned hunter’s sights. A mere R600 000 will buy an under-the-counter R2,2-million Cape Town City Council contract for road-upgrading and maintenance in a disadvantaged township. Special fleet-owner discounts were on offer for canned politicos in the Eastern Province.
Using an alias, I contacted the website, asking for help in acquiring authentic identity documents and South African birth certificates for seven bargain-wages Zimbabwean labourers in my imaginary ‘small construction business”. I was referred to a local cellphone number and given a password. I phoned, used the password and was asked to meet the contact in person.
Dressed as an elderly Greek woman, I went to the appointed place where I was met by the contact who, although clothed in a faded green burkah marked ‘Souvenir of the Sustainable Development Conference”, spoke in Royal Xhosa. A deal was struck whereby a ‘canned” official of the immigration department would meet me to get photographs and false names for my ‘illegal” Zimbabwean labourers. Payment would be R50 000 when I met him, and R50 000 on delivery of the official documents. In cash. ‘We’ve got very careful since that Billy Downer came on the scene,” joked the burkah king.
It is that easy to acquire a canned politician in the South Africa of today. Although the website offered willing canned politicians for sale in other countries — right up to the presidency in Haiti — the South African range offered by far the most lucrative returns on investments.
Whats more, much and many goodies will be up for grabs when Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s plans for fast-tracking land redistribution come into effect. This will herald the all-time African closing-down sale.