FatCats and BuzzyBEEs

OUR happy little planet began its trip through time between 14 billion and 4000 years ago! The Birds and the Bees appeared; the race for the survival of the fittest was on. Later, from the old song, true heaven arrived with ‘the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees’ to enhance the cooled streams of Richelieu and Coke and Windhoek Lager.

Imagine returning from a successful mammoth hunt, plenty of meat, warm skins and ivory; the little woman has the fire going. Pick some cigarettes, fill the goblet, manna and vleis – Utopia. And so it was on earth for many moons.Then with Orwellian predictability and Darwinian inevitability the snake of greed and avarice reared its head and individuals with velvet tongues and idle hands wanted the other less worthy beings to do the work while they stayed around the fire smoking, drinking and womanising. If they could exploit the occasional blips of an ideal existence, like plagues, mammoth shortages or warm lager, such failures could be blamed on the inherent wickedness of the few; original sin, rules and punishment were invented. Divide and rule was born; and subservience. In short, these individuals invented religion and politics and took over the cigarette trees and sources of alcoholic refreshment.As an SMSer in this paper recently noted intellectual gymnastics now expect us peasants to thank our leaders every time they do something with our money for which we have employed them! And never must we complain or the lager fountain will stop. So the mammoths died out, us peasants became cleverer but the parasitic became omnipotent with excesses of wealth and military might. Intimidation and oppression is justified ‘in the national interest’ and they even made us peasants pay for our pleasures – cigarettes, booze and women! Now we have BEE.Black empowerment always had me confused so I am grateful to Messrs Kaaronda and Norval who in the Windhoek Observer (November 7, p14) have neatly explained all. ‘With empowerment transactions the BEE participants do not have the money to pay for the shares so they are normally funded by the organisation they are buying into ….’ Create debt to buy your own shares for someone else; a new twist to raising equity.However such an arrangement appears to satisfy tender submission criteria; the 15%, 25% and 50% boxes can be ticked as appropriate thus giving an inside track to the BEE bidder. As Kaaronda says, ‘this is quite handy’. No doubt a few TeaCop like ‘off the shelf companies’ companies are handy to shovel a few millions for ‘business assistance’ and water the political world (money, not blood). And Chinese bursaries. Wonderful system.The Birds and the BEES are reinvented with shaven heads, big black cars, talk in ‘mils’ and those anorexic matchstick things sans breasts or bum, with pivot hips from which protrude spindles on 15 cm heels – oh, and the Lamecks (sunglasses) equal Birds.But, a fundamental problem – white reflects all, black absorbs all and the visible spectrum is continuous. As one of swarthy skin (grubby white), maybe due to poor personal hygiene or too much time in the sun on my motorbike, together with a dubious relative who cavorted with many in Africa, what am I? Surely I should be BEE empowered by some percentage and such measures should be used to adjust contract eligibility by ‘how black’ BEEs are!Was this not how equity was viewed in our Constitution or are the FatCats just living off us peasants wallowing in their excesses ? BuzzyBees do not benefit all. csmith@mweb.com.na