Two Bits – November 29, 2013

The Tongaat mall tragedy happened a few hours after we had sent last week’s paper off to the printer, so we missed the story in print.
But the ensuing scramble to get the story gave our new digital presence a good workout. As it happened, our reporter Nokuthula Ntuli was the first journalist on the scene as she lives nearby, arriving only minutes after the mall collapse.
She filed reports and photos to our Twitter, Facebook and website straight away, and kept updating them regularly as the rescue drama unfolded. The story was picked up by the national and international media and within hours was around the globe.
I know this because our niece, who lives in Sweden, emailed Rose the next morning to say it was all over the news there. It was also clear that the international agencies had mined our material because they used survivors’ stories word for word from our website. Which raises the whole question of plagiarism and theft of intellectual property, but I’ll save that topic for another time.
Interesting though, that a mall accident in a one-horse town the world has never heard of can become world news. I suspect that, following on the Nairobi mall bombing, a disaster at another shopping mall in Africa makes it a hot item. To most of the world, Tongaat might as well be a suburb of Nairobi.
The weekend press certainly went all out on the story. The Sunday Times  called developer Jay Singh “Mr Scumbag” and the Tribune said his cheating ways were definitely at an end and he would never get another municipal contract.
Well, I think we can all reserve judgement on that. Sorry to say it, but the local government system has proven to be so open to corruption that you can never say never. Singh, who owns a home in Zimbali, has a string of black marks against his name – fraud, bribery, flouting laws left, right and centre – but that didn’t stop Durban Metro pushing contracts his way.
How can this happen, you ask? Occam’s Razor   is a principle of logic that states that the simplest theory is most likely to be the truth. Hanlon’s Razor is a variation on that (influenced by Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) which states: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Or in other words, look for cockup before conspiracy.
So, how is it that our political representatives at every level of government continue to give business to people who are clearly unsuited to applying public money in the best interests of the taxpayer? Have our politicians got together and decided that they will favour the unsavoury, to right old wrongs?
I have no doubt that lucrative contracts are given, and blind eyes turned, to those who give cash to the ruling party. That is a worldwide problem.
I cannot believe that every politician and government official is corrupt. That is statistically impossible. However it has become abundantly clear over the past decade or so that the endemic corruption in our society is fed by an insatiable desire for self-enrichment. Snouts in the trough.
If we apply Hanlon’s Razor, the most likely answer is that the system is so dysfunctional that even good people cannot get things done.
Otherwise how can it be that after Durban Metro told Singh to stop building, then went and got a high court order ordering him to stop, he still felt untouchable? Why didn’t Durban Metro get the cops to go around and force building to stop? What’s the point of getting a court order if you’re not prepared to enforce it right away?
This unwillingness to take action, this habit of everyone sitting on their hands, is affecting all levels of our society.
Just down the road, the Field’s Hill tragedy is fresh in our minds. Residents there have been imploring government for years to restrict heavy trucks on that road. Nothing was done. Why? Because the system has fallen into disuse – through corruption, through the wrong people doing the wrong jobs, through whatever – and nobody knows how to make it work any more.
Every one of us has a moral duty to expose corruption where we find it.
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“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.” – Henry Kissinger