Kleptos rule, okay!
(Kleptocracy from ancient Greek: Rule by thieves )
The display of motor oils on the forecourt of a filling station a couple of blocks away is impressive. But the containers are filled with water.
It’s not because there are no lubricants available in the tumbling economy. Imported brands are packed away in a storeroom at the back to be fetched when needed.
When no-one is looking oil kept outside is stolen by passers-by, the manager explains to me.
Top level thievery has left the poor poorer than ever. If the fat cats, the chefs (common usage from jefe, leader or overlord, not the cooking kind of chef) can steal so much, why can’t we?
With the present state of our schools, most alarming of all recently was that the government found it necessary to deny assertions that it plundered funds from its Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) to help pay for a lavish regional summit in Harare last year.
Normally purveyors and publishers of such heinous “falsehoods” would have been arrested. That didn’t happen this time around.
BEAM is an aid and state-funded programme to help vulnerable children stay in school.
It is clear, however, that school dropout rates continue to soar in the chaotic, already broke education system.
The summit last August of the Southern African Development Community took place in luxury. Not least, exotic palm trees were planted along streets and roads leading to the venue.
The trees are dying now, they need more water and many were yanked out of the ground in a hurry elsewhere without due care and attention being paid to the roots.
Life saving for people, scarce water goes to the trees
Amid crippling electricity blackouts for ordinary mortals, partially caused by broken or outdated equipment, power company workers are seen laying down a lengthy and new state-of-the-art cable to the house of a chef’s mistress.
In our colloquial language a married man with a mistress – most common in local culture – is said to keep a “small house” compared to his family house.
It doesn’t have to be physically small. In the case of the new cable for the mistress, the small house is large, baronial almost.
As we have seen in anti-government riots that take place elsewhere, hoards of downtrodden protesters soon turn to looting shops and the businesses of the privileged few and wealthy corporates.
Is a hungry pauper spiriting away a bit of motor oil to resell on the streets a sign of more drastic looting to come?
Nothing should be seen simply in black and white terms, except, that is, the whisky of my Scottish ancestors.
Misrule of all shades there always has been and it always shall be so.
John Dean, now 86, did jail time for his part in attempting to cover up Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
John Dean in 1973
“A devastating mosaic of intrigue, illegality and abuse of power.”
That’s how Dean later testified on Nixon’s very white White House.
By the way, I am related to James Buchanan’s Black and White whisky through my maternal grandfather Maj. Gen. Sir Kenneth Buchanan Kt CB CMG DSO, a gallant soldier in war and a whisky aficionado.
