Publication: Cape Times Issued: Date: 2005-07-05 Reporter: Ben Trovato Reporter:

Tendering Policy : SA-Style Post '94

 

Publication 

Cape Times

Date

2005-07-05

Reporter

Ben Trovato

Web Link

www.capetimes.co.za

 

In the old days, when the country was run by a cabal of ill-tempered white men in pork pie hats and warthog moustaches, government departments awarded contracts to companies controlled by men who were quite at ease with either a Bible or a gun in their hand.

Both had proved to work equally well in keeping the heathens at bay while the business of civilised men was conducted.

Then came 1994 and the embarrassing realisation that they might not, after all, be God's chosen people. Funny handshakes and veiled references to Blood River were no longer the preferred currencies of trade between the public and private sectors.

The one good thing that democracy has brought to South Africa is a revival of the tender system *1. This never occurred out of any deep sense of fair play, but instead was born from necessity. Previously, civil servants were permitted two standard-issue children - girl (1) blonde; boy (1) blonde. Dark-haired offspring were kept in their rooms *2 until they were old enough to become train drivers or alcoholics *3.

This means that at any given moment, every company - apart from the Koeksister Kollective in Orania - has a certain number of employees with an uncle, cousin, brother or father in one or other branch of government *4.

But now that everyone in the public and private sectors are related to one another in some way, it has become increasingly vital that the tender system is rigorously implemented.

Not to prevent corruption, but to prevent internecine conflict from spilling across the provincial borders when one relative is favoured over the others. Previously, it was quite safe to give your uncle the contract to supply schools with lengths of bamboo (whipping: for the purposes of).

But no longer. Nepotism has become an altogether more complex affair. And although the principle of extended families is based on love, there is no mention of peace. That's where the hippies were different. All that free love and raising everyone else's children as your own was largely inspired by enormous quantities of lysergic acid diethylamide, but they always stopped short of hacking one another's heads off with blunt machetes when it came to resolving family squabbles.

So the tender process is used these days as a mechanism to minimise the chances of losing a limb to your first wife's brother while on leave in the Tugela Valley.

But somebody has to be given the contract, so a complicated system has been devised. For example, in the mining industry a king of diamonds is usually enough to beat a pair of cousins *4.

Nobody is leaving anything to chance and everything is put out on tender.

With acknowledgements and apologies to Ben Trovato.

*1   viz. Section 217 of The Constitution of South Africa Act of 1996.

*2   The overloaded definition of PDI - a "white" person with non-Aryan characteristics - a previously disadvantaged individual before '94 and a presently disadvantaged individual forevermore.

*3   Or an electronics engineer driven to drink or lysergic acid diethylamide trying to fuse Section 217 with the reality of current tendering policy.

*4   More commonly it is a wife - sometimes a common-law wife.

*5  Always beaten by a quad of brothers under top cover of the King of Spades.