Somehow I suspect they are not complaining about the people who are such bad salesmen that they are giving our country away to anyone who wants a bit of it. Some customers seem to be refused because their skin is the wrong colour, but when we see how much property has been acquired by some refugees of that complexion from justice in Britain, it is clear some other reason must be influencing decisions.
If we Look East, we find our friends, who are certainly no fools when it comes to driving a bargain, queuing for generous shares of loot. We heard recently that some smooth oriental gentlemen with ingratiating smiles have been offering $3 billion to buy all our platinum. That doesn’t mean only platinum you might see lying around at a mine or being shipped south for processing.
No, our eastern friends want all that is there in the ground under our feet. Recent estimates put the value of our total platinum reserves at around $40 billion, so that is really a bargain basement price. But then our smart salesmen wouldn’t be too surprised if you pointed out that this amounts to giving our new Chinese masters a 92% discount on enough platinum to keep them in business for a few centuries.
Someone clever person sold five years’ supply of electricity to our Namibian comrades at a similar discount a couple of years ago and we don’t even produce enough electricity to export a single megawatt. The agreement specified that we were bound to deliver the goods even if we have to buy it at the full market price. That’s a really smart deal, isn’t it?
By my reckoning it cost Zimbabwe about a billion dollars. Of course, we know that the people who arrange deals like that make a cut for themselves. But I am constantly surprised how little the crooks make for themselves. 10% commission on the electricity sale would only be $5 million and I can see the fixer might have settled for less than that.
That’s the trouble with most of our crooks. They don’t think big. Anyone who takes a bribe should remember the one who offers the bribe is making a big saving on the deal compared with what it would cost him if it was open and above board. The first rule our anti-corruption commission should give to anyone who might be offered a bribe is Demand 10 times what they first offered. The second is, of course, if they accept that, report so that we can catch them.
But the bribe-takers throughout history have been as moral as Judas Iscariot while they were as clever as the guys who sold Manhattan Island for a handful of glass beads. Our guys can’t even expect their names to live in history like those, for good or ill. What do they really get out of it? Maybe they’ve been promised refuge in China or Namibia when the International Criminal Court starts chasing them. But if I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t trust that promise.
Post published in: Opinions