Pay and tuck in

Look, I know that the ANC in parliament has just passed the secrecy bill through the national council of provinces, which means that a few “clever blacks” — as the president calls them — will soon be inspecting the paintwork on the ceiling of a cell somewhere.

But I do want to talk about tuck shops. Now, according to the useful organ Wikipedia, a tuck shop is a “small, foodselling retailer”. It is a term principally used in the UK, Grenada, SA, New Zealand, the Australian states of Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, and occasionally in other parts of the former British Empire. In New South Wales, the term is interchangeable with the word “canteen”.

The reason I want to talk about tuck shops is this: President Jacob Zuma is in the process of installing one in his palatial home in Nkandla, KwaZulu Natal. A tuck shop in your own home?

When I read about this I placed a quick call to my lovely wife. “I want a tuck shop!” I said. There was a deafening silence from the other end. That, I guessed, was the end of that conversation.

But it did not put me off. Why, I asked myself, can’t I have a tuck shop in my own house when the president of this fine republic can have one — not at the corner down the road from him — but right in his own yard. Why? Why can’t I?

It’s not just that the president has a tuck shop in his yard, but that he thought it a priority. I am a food guy, and am in agreement with the man: one must have one’s tuck shop quickly. Time is of the essence.

I wept when I read Adriaan Basson’s dispatch about this matter in the City Press newspaper recently: “The state did not only pay for security upgrades when it spent R248m on Zuma’s Nkandla compound. [We] can reveal that the department of public works also used taxpayers’ money to build the following: a culvert (tunnel) for cattle; new homes for three families who had to be relocated due to the Nkandla development; an entrance road to Zuma’s residence; and . . .” wait for it now . . . “a tuck shop.”

Here’s the bit that really got me excited: “Correspondence by consecutive former public works ministers Geoff Doidge and Gwen

82 Mahlangu-Nkabinde, and senior public works officials lay bare the frantic rush with which the project was pushed through — and that Zuma was kept abreast of the extent of the upgrades.”

What a leader! If you want a tuck shop you have to keep an eye on the project yourself. This is something that all good CEOs know. The best guy to do the job is not Joe Bloggs down the corridor. It is you. Hence the president was kept abreast of all developments regarding the tuck shop — and he applied the requisite pressure.

Which brings me to my question. Why would one want a tuck shop in one’s house? Imagine dear old MaKhumalo, the president’s first, long-suffering, wife. She is feeling peckish, say. A club sandwich would be nice. Or some tinned sardines. Whatever.

Now, dear reader, you would stretch your arm out and fiddle around in the old cupboard, or the trusty pantry. Not in Nkandla. Poor MaKhumalo. Now, she has to fiddle around for some change and then go off to the tuck shop. Jacob’s Tuck Shop. This cannot be right. Imagine my lovely wife coming to order a little something at my tuck shop, in our own yard.

Is the president so broke that he is making family members pay for grub in his own yard? Obviously I am all for the profit motive and the entrepreneurial spirit, but I draw the line at charging my own kids for a sandwich.

This whole thing is also bad for real entrepreneurs. In Nkandla, for example, I notice that there is a bona fide tuck shop, the Biyela Tuck Shop. Now there is one less family shopping at this surely well-stocked store. All because Zuma has built himself his own personal tuck shop. This is hardly nation building of the nature we expect from our president.

It’s all very depressing, which is why I hooked up with a friend of mine and we sat in the sun at Piza e Vino and had a glass of wine and some seafood pasta.

Piza e Vino is arguably the most unremarkable restaurant chain I have ever been to, and were it not for the fact that it is on a busy thoroughfare, I would not even have gone in.

They are better than a tuck shop at the president’s compound, though. Way better.