Mail & Guardian

Personalis­ed oppression for all y’all

- Shaun de Waal

I was relaxing in my fire pool the other day, you know, and wondering if there was any way I could oppress the working people of South Africa any further.

As a big, white monopoly capitalist, I feel it is my duty to constantly look ahead and make sure that White Monopoly Capital (WMC, pronounced “WhiMoC”) is ahead of the curve on this oppression thing.

I mean, it’s not just a matter of having a whole lot of jerk-off politician­s in your pocket because they want big houses and luxury cars and two-week trips to Disney World for a family of eight.

No. It’s also a matter of making sure that each and every one of the oppressed is feeling that oppression more fully, more personally and more deeply. As we move increasing­ly into the age so accurately described as “atomised”, one has to stop thinking of the poor, or the underclass generally, as one big undifferen­tiated mass.

I’m talking personal creative solutions here.

The indolence and grabbiness that WMC induces in politician­s of all stripes and, indeed, polka dots, cannot be allowed to remain there, at the level of the elite. It must trickle — no, not trickle! It must be driven downwards, pushed all the way down to the grass roots.

Cough. Sorry, let me just pour myself another Laphroaig … and relight this Romeo y Julieta … Mmmm. Yummy.

Okay, so, as I was saying … Right, we’ve got to make sure corruption spreads throughout society. Corruption of all kinds is a key pillar, or perhaps I should say piledriver, of the programme WMC wishes to impose on the world, and indeed has been either imposing on or insinuatin­g into the body politic since, oh, let’s just say time immemorial.

Of course, WMC can’t take credit (ha, ha, that’s a little joke) for everything that goes wrong — for everything that contribute­s to the further immiserati­on of the working class in particular and, in general, anyone earning below parliament­ary salary level. Much is contribute­d by the state itself, you might say spontaneou­sly. We must encourage such tendencies. We should be in dialogue with the government all the time, giving ideas, planting seeds.

We cannot oppress just the working class, either. We have to ensure that the middle class, especially its lower stratum, feels the constant gnawing anxiety of a fall in status, otherwise they wouldn’t spend all their time trying to claw their way up, would they? Heavy taxation is essential in this regard.

We’ve outsourced the immiserati­on of the very poor and the indigent to, well, the very poor and the indigent, with a little help from the police and other local authoritie­s, so that’s been a big saving.

Keeping 99% of South Africa oppressed isn’t cheap, you know. And we wanna up those numbers.

Cough.

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