Security guards are there in case your tombstone gets stolen

Anyone who has stood guard duty (an army speciality) will know that in terms of boredom only listening to a six-hour thank you speech by a frayed politician can beat it.
Guarding a place you don’t particularly care about can elicit feelings of mass murder, solving the ancient mysteries of how the pyramids were built and how a guy with a wonky computer, who sells pens, gets a municipal tender to patch a pothole.
At night, you can easily turn into an astronomer and pretend you are Neil Armstrong as you consider which part of the moon, the dark or light, to eat first.
Guard duty has now been supplanted by security guards as the out-of-control crime rate in the country ensures that the industry is now a multi-billion rand one. Guards are everywhere.
Even at the hospital, bless them, where they insist that you open your own boot for them to inspect, in case you are making off with a deranged patient or a pot-plant, but they don’t bother to look under your car seat where you have carefully concealed your AK47.
Guards are at the Oval to ensure you do not get to play on their fields unless the gates are open. The guards do not seem to bother when they are totally overwhelmed by those mass gatherings at the Oval, which usually involve a tent and piles of polystyrene boxes that are discarded once the masses have moved off.
Guards are prevalent at the municipality.
Now, this is understandable. Despite this, there are constant bomb threats (okay, we know, these were only hoaxes), acting municipal managers from out of town get beaten up by workers (which nobody sees) and Councillors sometimes get heated up to such an extent that John Cena has to be called in to beef up security.
There are guards at the cemeteries too.
Not to keep in the bodies but to keep out the living ones who steal headstones and the cattle that wander around.
There are always guards at supermarkets.
Theft is bad. We all know of the legendary ladies who manage to walk out undetected (well, up to the exit anyway) with seven roast chickens stuffed up their skirts.
I suppose the guards chicken out when it comes to searching them. Hotels also need guards. Late night guests, sometimes councillors disguised as tender-preneurs, with short-skirted ladies on their arms, who always want discount.
Then there are those guests who leave their room keys behind when checking out but also have a penchant for making off with the duvets, towels and even light bulbs.
Yes, man’s worst behaviour means that security guards will be with those until at least Nkandla is once again inhabited by a former President.