Pikoli! The Musical!

We know that Judge Hillary Squires, when he put Schabir Shaik away for 15 years, invented a new kind of corruption law. It was not necessary any more to show that a payment had been made “in consideration” (as the law used to say) for a particular thing. Because Judge Squires could see, as clear as can be, just as clear as he knows that the moon is a moon and not a balloon, that this was a “symbiosis”, and that was bad. Very bad. Fifteen years bad! What we didn’t know then was that the old-fashioned kind of corruption was now quite o.k! When Squires brought the new kind of law in, the old one was no longer a crime. In fact it seems that anybody who is anybody is doing it. One minute Gwen Gill is reporting you in her gossip column, and the next you are wheeling and dealing like a good ‘un, and it’s quite all right! Almost de rigeur, in fact. Only a few days ago we saw how jolly it was to be in on the Gautrain boondoggle. So the Communist University is today conducting an exercise of the imagination. The idea is to see what it would look like if Squires had not turned the law upside down. We will suppose that the people who were reported on in the linked articles from Beeld, the IOL and the Moneyweb yesterday were still liable for the good old-fashioned crime of corruption as we used to know it, where there is a simple, direct exchange of one thing for another, and not a “symbiosis”. Just imagine these sentences: Titus Mafolo – 15 years Ronnie Mamoepa – 15 years Gavin Watson – 15 years Linda Mti – 15 years Seth Phalatse – 15 years Patrick Gillingham – 15 years Carol Mkele – 15 years and Nozuko Pikoli, the wife of Vusi Pikoli, national director of the National Prosecuting Authority – 15 years. Ag, shame! What about Speaker Baleka Mbete, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa- Nqakula, Education Minister Naledi Pandor and Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, all in the Bombela Consortium, and standing to benefit from the Gautrain project? How could you even think of such people being locked up! The very idea! Here is a headline from today’s Star: “Top Scorpion sees red at 'harmful media probes and sensation seeking'”. The top scorp is Vusi Pikoli. People are singing, and he doesn’t like it. Ha, ha, ha! The Communist University meets this evening at the first floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, at 17h00 to discuss Lenin’s two pamphlets on Adventurism and Insurrection. Next week’s session will be on the topic carried yesterday. Next Thursday is going to feature one of the events of the year. Even Gwen Gill ought to be there. It is the 21st Anniversary of South Africa’s favourite democracy, the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Everyone who is anyone is going to be at Boksburg Civic Centre for the whole day. Don’t miss it! You’ll regret it if you do! See the linked invitation, below. Click on these links: New twist in prisons scandal, Basson and du Plessis, Beeld (512 words) Mbeki man named in irregular tender report, IOL (327 words) DCS scandal has Simmers links, Julius Cobbett, Moneyweb (504 words) COSATU 21st Anniversary all-day seminar 09h30 7 Dec 2006 (Invitation)