A security net is great if you — can cast it freely

Flyfishers know about Parys, Free State. Upstream and down from the bridge over the Vaal River you are free to cast for smallmouth yellowfish and afterwards to find beer and luxuriate over lunch, but just then the Belgian philosopher Philippe van Parijs occurs and things change.

Van Parijs is the contemporary proponent of a basic income grant, a socialsecurity safety net first described by Fabian George Cole, though Van Parijs’s iteration is more about providing capitalism with a way out of its supposed inequality dilemma. Famously, he said the grant should have no strings attached, which roused authoritarians everywhere.

Of great importance to flyfishers is Van Parijs’s qualifiers for what constitutes freedom: in the first instance freedom from authoritarians and their institutions proscribing species such as trout and, second, freedom from physical constraints such as a lack of cash. It means you might be free to fish the Vaal in its polluted state, but if you value your health, perhaps less so, in which case cash will set you free to go fish elsewhere.

But cash is the nub. Let’s say you don’t have it, and then your luck gets worse when you’re in a car accident on the way back from Parys. You survive, but only through expensive physiotherapy will you regain strength enough in your casting arm to go flyfishing again.

So the obvious thing to do is to claim compensation from the Road Accident Fund (RAF) to see it right. Right? Well, good luck with that. Authoritarians are everywhere, also in Tanzania, and if they have their way with parliament, they’ll see a bill enacted to create a roadaccident benefit scheme (RABS) under which the rehabilitation of a flyfisher’s casting form will be deemed a luxury.

Compensation under the new scheme would be instalments paid to stateselected medical-service providers to restore road accident victims’ ability to work, unless of course you don’t have a job, like 27.5% of South Africans, or you’re older than 65 when you shouldn’t have a job anyway.

For them it is just more bad luck. As for the compensation paid on a no-fault basis, it will be capped so victims would all receive the same benefit, making it a kind of socialsecurity safety net, but with nanny strings attached.

The fund’s acting CEO, Lindelwa Jabavu, says the problem with the RAF is that it is chronically insolvent, plus it creates what she calls the lotto effect. Instead of the compensation helping accident victims get back to work, or helping their dependants survive their loss of income, beneficiaries tend to spend their awards frivolously. That is, when they are catapulted from the back of an unroadworthy minibus taxi into wealth undreamt, they splurge on luxuries and two weeks later are back at the fund asking for rehabilitation money.

Such foolishness, so now the RAF is here to help the nation overcome its lust for luxury. The misery that put the accident victim in the back of the taxi in the first place is neither here nor there. La dolce vita is not your due, even if your taxi fare has contributed to the fuel levy that funds the RABS for your benefit, and even if by rights you and only you can tell the difference between a frivolous luxury and a dire necessity.

But let’s not speak of rights when it is administrative fiat that makes your decisions for you. Instead, consider the impairment to your freedom to go flyfishing when your casting arm is out of commission and the impairment to your ability to choose how you lead your life when the transport department has bullied its bill into law. The freedom to do the right thing is vanilla, but the right to act foolishly (and suffer the consequences) has the true savour of personal liberty.

If you were free to choose in the sense articulated by Van Parijs, drivers would carry insurance against road-accident liabilities, and if your government had any consideration for your wellbeing, it would make it compulsory. And if it valued your freedom, it would allow you to choose how to live, where to fish and what to have for lunch.

YOU MIGHT BE FREE TO FISH THE VAAL, BUT IF YOU VALUE YOUR HEALTH, CASH WILL SET YOU FREE TO GO FISH ELSEWHERE