Key: When you see the letters FT, it means Factoid. Small facts and figures you may find useful at your next dinner party. Begin the conversation with “Did you know that in South Africa…”
Richard called G at 6 in the morning. He offered to take her to visit S in hospital.
Richard’s name and number had been given to G as next of kin the day before by Sue, while we were waiting two and a half hours for the Cape Town Ambulance service to attend Sue’s broken ankle. “Shit” Sue had said (we were forgiving swear words because after all the woman had just broken her ankle for fuck’s sake. And what would you do.)” I don’t have any friends, and my sister lives in Somerset West and who is going to feed the cat?” And then she had remembered a neighbour she sometimes talked to, Richard. She knew neither full name nor number but knew where he lived, and the brave G set off with a note to pin to his door.
The sad bit was the “I don’t have any friends” and the picture of this 65 year old widow living with a cat alone, on antidepressants, here on the ground surrounded for once by kindly faces. In pain and swearing.
So the next day when G reported the call and the invitation from this mysterious neighbour of course I insisted I come along. G is 14 and I couldn’t let her go alone!
Richard arrived shortly after the call. He drove a massive old Jeep, beautifully maintained, high and mighty. He himself fell rather into that description. A big, bulky man of about 43 in a light pink striped business shirt and ironed light grey business trousers. All clean and pressed, a white African no-nonsense businessman. A man who smiled carefully, spoke softly and with great confidence and reassurance. A good uncle to have in a bad situation.
He didn’t balk even slightly at my accompanying the expedition. He greeted me warmly, but “Richard not Rick”. Fine.
We chatted freely while we cruised powerfully through Cape Town’s mountainside suburbs, all tree-shaded and bourgeois, peppered by multiple peasants, stoners, beggars, those bereft of hope, hanging on to life in a society in which the gap between rich and poor is wider than anywhere else in the world. With no social security. And of course, most of these indigents are black.
FT: Estimates of unemployment in Zuma’s ANC South Africa: official 26%; unofficial up to 46% or more.
Richard is an economist. His main work revolves around commodities – buying, selling, trading. He also gets involved in raising finance internationally for South African industries.
FT: Standard and Poor, the brilliantly named US Credit Rating industry, decided today NOT to demote South Africa’s credit rating to Junk status.
Richard explains that the country, ruled by the ANC since the end of Apartheid (They were elected to government under Nelson Mandela in 1994) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_National_Congress) is now in a state of entropy. The poor stay poor and get poorer. The rich – you finish the sentence. The gap is huge, wider that it was under the Nationalists. There is a great amount of disaffection – students are agitating for free education, and the opposition, the DA (Democratic Alliance) gets stronger every day. They have ruled the Western Cape for many years. In recent Municipal Elections, they gained Johannesburg, the largest city, Pretoria, the administrative capital of the country, as well as other important municipalities. The times are a changin’!
Good thing? The ANC is generally considered to have become so smug and secure, many of the most powerful people have become utterly corrupt. The President is a great example – having been accused of more than 700 infringements of laws governing correct financial practice, he remains in power. The only thing likely to unseat him is a charging rhino.
We arrived at the hospital. Lovely. Clean. Smart furniture. Efficient, smiling people striding purposefully from A to B or even C. An efficient smiling receptionist assured us several times that there was no such person in this hospital.
Richard is used to being listened to, and obeyed. “She must be here. The ambulance came from here. Can you call the ambulance station and check?”
No joy.
“Can you call the wards and check?”
No result sir.
Eventually the penny drops. No, she is not at this hospital. Because this is a private hospital. For people who pay or have an insurance company to pay. She must be at: (lists hospitals) and this lovely efficient lady finds her at Somerset Hospital.
So we set off again on our Sue hunt.
More leafy suburbs. Wherever you go in Cape Town, there’s the mountain. An everpresent craggy presence, neither friend nor enemy, simply awesomely familiar. A reminder that nature rules. And eventually, folks, I will push the lot of you into the sea. Then I will shrug my mighty shoulders and go back to sleep.
“So tell me Richard. What will the ANC do to hold on to power?”
“Anything. Their ruling elite is so embedded into the fabric of the country, into industry, finance, anywhere the money is. Thank God for our independent judiciary!”
“Still?”
“They’re fantastic. They don’t let these bastards get away with anything.”
“We weren’t particularly impressed with the Pistorius case!”
He laughed. “True that hey. But when it comes to holding the government to account they do that when necessary. Have you heard of Tenderpreneurship?’
“Huh?”
“So, there’s this family called the Guptas…”
And Richard unravels a story as bizarre as a tale from the Arabian Nights in which this family of minor princes from the Sahara (well, that was the name of this Indian family’s business) invade an innocent African country, seduce its Prime Minister and snatch and grab every tender for everything going anywhere in the country. “Condoms for Zululand? We’re on it!”Except of course Mr Zuma believes that if you have sex with an HIV infected person a good shower will ensure your moral as well as physical cleanliness.
“Swimming pools for Ministers?”
“Yeh fine but make sure you call them Security measures for the protection of the state.”
“How do you do that?”
“Well, if you put a swimming pool between the fifty foot high electrified fence and the $100 million mansion, well, an intruder might fall into it and save your life, right?”
“Aha. But how are you going to scam spending £100m on the house?”
“Puhleeeeese! – I’ll tell you what: What are you doing tomorrow?
“Uh – you know – family stuff.”
“So this is what’s going to happen! Six tomorrow morning…”
“SIX?”
“Six tomorrow morning this is what you’re going to do. You climb over the fence….”
“WHAT”
“I’m there waiting.”
“WHAT”
“I kidnap you for the day. It’ll take that long to give you an idea as to the madness of this country.”
“BUT”
“You leave a note. ‘Have been kidnapped. Fear not. Back tonight!’”
“I don’t think – “
“Be here. You won’t regret it.”
The hospital car park intruded itself into our conversation at that point, and there began the process of Find Sue.
The Somerset is a state hospital, where people without money are treated free. Much more busy. Much more frantic. Perfectly clean, extremely efficient. Richard tells me the doctors are often interns – and very conscientious and kind too. Which was confirmed by Sue when finally we found her, foot plastered, on her own in a fair-sized room. “They put me here on my own,” she said, “to get me away from the crazies!”
She explained that the public ward was stuffed with people with a variety of injuries, on a variety of drugs both legal and illegal. “Madness!”, she said.
The main difference between this excessively busy healing house and an NHS hospital in the UK?
Hardly anything at all.
SO, dear reader, my question to you is this: Should I allow myself to be kidnapped tomorrow or no?
