Strategically, we need people to get out and see problems for themselves

Why do politicians have bodyguards?
I mean, these days the Councillors are voted in by the majority of the ‘people’ so you would think there is no need for them to live in constant terror.
Sure, candidates have been gunned down and, of course, that’s tragic. Sadly, around these parts it is usually the victim’s same party colleagues who are behind the ‘taking out’.
So much for democracy. Anyway, you would think that the Councillors from the bad old days would have needed bodyguards.
I mean, only a few wit ous voted them in and that was all very comfortable except when the National Party members and the UP members had full on boxing matches in the Moth Hall. No, strangely those Mayors used to drive themselves around – or maybe hire old Ivan Kloke or one of the traffic cops of days gone by – if Number One wanted to be a bit larney upon arriving at the Dundee Show – just before the fight in the bar started.
Seeing that a minority of people voted them in you would think that those Mayors would be running scared. But they appeared not to be. And with democracy comes a great need to spend on yourself. Like this Strategic Planning Meeting underway at a fancy resort outside Newcastle.
How 54 delegates – including several bodyguards and drivers plus some hangers-on from Treasury (those guys who waste our tax money – R46-billion nationally, according to the Auditor General) – hope to solve the problems of Endumeni is beyond most who simply battle to pay their rates account every month. What they should do is get a very small think tank of top dogs in the Municipality – a maximum of 16 – take them out for bunny chow, give them clipboards, hire a taxi and drive them around every nook and cranny of this Municipal area – from Thelaphi, Wasbank (where a goat thinks he is the Mayor), right down to Vegkop and up to Stratford farm. Note the number of potholes, the broken and vandalised street signs, the illegal back-yard businesses that do not pay business rates, the overgrown veld, the illegal dumping, the poverty-stricken huddled in their hovels, the jobless who hang around for the pubs to open, the cars that disobey every traffic rule and, yes, those infernal park parties that drive the Rot and old James to drinking cane and listening to Dolly Parton.
That would be a practical way of doing things at a fraction of the cost.
Or take the Mad Hatter’s cue and hire old Uncle Bobby who will simply slash that huge talk-shop budget with his bush knife while playing cards.