The buck stops nowhere

Iwas appalled to hear that our Minister of Money, Enoch Godongwana, has increased the social relief of distress grant by a staggering R20. The poor already have an overweening sense of entitlement. Now that they will be getting a full R370 a month, they are going to be insufferable.

They will think nothing of standing at the robots in a cheeky hand-on-hip way, making direct eye contact with us hard-working taxpayers who are having to fork out extra so that they may upgrade their already comfortable lifestyles.

The increase comes into effect on April Fool’s Day, which confirms what I have always suspected – the government is muscling in on my turf.

That extra R20 can go a long way if you're smart. Speak to Mike Moon from this very newspaper. He knows horses. Buy him a drink. He can tell you things. Your R20 can easily turn into a million bucks or more, depending on the race and whether or not Mike takes a liking to you.

A word of warning, though. Mike prefers horses to people so you might want to adjust your attitude.

Civil society organisations have said the increase is not enough. This is outrageous. Who are these people? Have you seen civil society in this country? A more treacherous bunch you'd be hard-pressed to find. The Haitians have a more civil society than we do. Don’t for a moment think that Johann “Papa Doc” Rupert doesn’t have his own Tonton Macoute selling shitty cigarettes and fake handbags on street corners, just waiting for his signal. And is Patrice Motsepe our Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier? It’s okay. I don’t know what I’m talking about either.

How about this Daddy Mabe? He’s the secretary of a shadowy organisation called #PayTheGrants. Daddy? I’d say that speaks for itself. Anyone who goes around saying, “Call me Daddy” is to be approached with extreme caution. He wants the grant to be raised to R530. Have you ever heard such inflammatory talk? I expect it’s only a matter of time before Jacob Zuma’s Mau Mau marauders snap him up and send him to parliament to run interference for the EFF.

R370 is overly generous to a fault, but imagine what havoc the underclass could wreak with R530 a month. The flood of down payments on second-hand cane furniture and lightly soiled handguns. The splashing out on timeshare on a hut on the banks of the Rietspruit Dam. Deposits on preloved Kia Picantos they’re unable to get into first gear after incentivising traffic inspectors to give them a driver’s licence and then bribing lawyers to bribe Road Accident Fund officials to pay out R2 million after they broke a toe while stabbing hysterically at the clutch.

Going from R350 to R370 a month is a leap by any stretch of the imagination. Fortunately for us, the poor are notoriously bad at using their imagination. It’s inexplicable that millions haven’t yet worked out how easy it is to get away with crime in a country like ours.

Perhaps I am doing them a disservice. Blue-collar crime involves bludgeoning, scaling high walls or ironing people’s faces until they give up the code to the safe. It’s heavy work and often too hot for that kind of malarkey.

If you’ve given up on even trying to find a job, you’re not going to be out there walking the streets with a knobkerrie down your broeks in the hope of menacing someone enough for them to hand over their pension without you having to break a sweat.

It’s why successive ANC governments have kept Angie Motshekga in the deceptively harmless position of minister of basic education since May 2009. Well, that’s her official position. Her unofficial position is reclining on an imported chaise longue while a Malawian houseboy drops peeled grapes into a maw that is either presenting itself for exotic treats or laughing at her unparalleled success at ensuring that generation upon generation remains not bright enough to understand that voting for the ANC will always be a vote for their own destruction.

The government’s policy on education is symbiotically linked to its policy on crime. Don’t make any sudden movements, nod and smile, then back away slowly and run. Anyway. None of this explains why the finance minister has decided to indulge the poor at our expense. That extra R20 a month works out to around nine cents a year coming out of my pocket alone. There are some years that I have needed those nine cents. Also, nine cents a year over 400 years comes to either R43 200 or R3 600, depending on your relationship with maths. Either way, these amounts aren’t to be sniffed at.

Also on April Fool’s Day, the old age grant will increase by R90. And if you’re still not floored by such wanton levels of profligacy, how about this? Six months later, the grant will go up by another R10. This is nothing short of scandalous. The government is simply encouraging people to go on living for as long as possible so they might get free money. The elderly can’t be trusted. They are hoarders. And we don’t even know what it is they are hoarding. When we least expect it, which is always, they will come for us.

The child support grant has rocketed by a breathtaking R25. This is the most dangerous handout of all. Once again from April Fool’s Day, people with children who need support will be given R530 a month. In my day as a kid, if you needed support you’d be strapped into a pair of Armscor-designed callipers and given a smack across the back of the head. Get on with it, lad, the priest would say.

Look, I don’t quite know how this particular grant works, but I was shocked to discover that children are worth R530 a month these days. Perhaps it’s a sliding scale according to colour. Are white ones even on the chart? Probably not. Most of them are listed on the JSE so I imagine they’ll be okay.

At last count, there are 28 million people getting grants. This figure is routinely celebrated by the government. Imagine when all 60 million of us are on the payroll. That’s the party I want to be at. See you there. BYOB.

The poor are notoriously bad at using their imagination