EFFORTPOST A Collection of Short Stories about Corruption

Greetings Dramatards

I've had a crushing weak, and I believe I've had my soul broken by the confluence of corruption and societal-dysfunction amalgamating this week, into one unendurable boiling point.

I've spent the past year informing dramatards through various neurodivergent ramblings about the corruption and dysfunctions in modern South Africa, often trying to disguise them as Drama-effortposts, but usually they were vehicles for me to b-word into the ether of the internet about my daily problems, and bore dramatards about happenings in Safrica.

By this point in my lifespan, I've become accustomed to corruption and infrastructure-decay due to the poor leadership in government, and in usual circumstance are not affected by it. All the endless potholes, the serial theft unchallenged by incompetent police, all of the endless infrastructure-decay I had become so hardened to, that they were like inconsequential raindrops soaking down my skin, and i have never minded getting wet in under storms.

But I reached an abnormal breaking point this week, as various corruption related insanities had me aghast and my temper-fuse shortened into half a broken matchstick - felt an emotion of hopelessness and anguish which I could not process, and was physically twitching like spazzing druggy the whole week, with no mind as to how to vent out my compounded frustrations.

IRL i would snap at people not deserving of it, and even here on rDrama.net I behaved erratically; I believed I behaved very cruelly to Sneedman, and took out my frustration on him in a really mean-spirited comment, but i was so mouth foaming I dont even remember the cause of my triggering, or what precisely I had said, but I'm to cowardly to even go back and check in my shame.

I then remembered that the last time I was at such a corruption related breaking point, was more than I year ago, when I bitched into the void on rDrama.net about Loadshedding at its peak in RSA, and how surprisingly many dramatards would be curious and inquired about the circumstances of the country.

And in that time, I found the humor and stupidity of the corruption, and how fun it was regale other online autismos about the insane corruption stories of the country, instead of being angry all the time.

So let me regale you r-slurs about some depraved stories of corruption

MUNICIPAL TRASH-COLLECTORS STRIKES:

In South Africa, every municipality, or large Capital City government (like Cape Town), is supposed to be responsible for organizing the collection of trash and refuse from all homes within the vicinity of their rule. Once a week a trash-lorry is supposed to come to the neighborhood/suburb/township, and collect the refuse which is typically expected to be contained within plastic black bags.

In small towns (like most of the Free State province), the trash-collector teams are small, and thus spread out the collection of trash over the workweek of Monday==>Friday. With every sector of the city/town getting a designated date upon which the trash-collector teams will traverse through and collect the expected trash-bags placed upon the street curbs or outside the gates of the various homes.

IF you are lucky and live in a less-dysfunctional municipality, then the local gov will even have a timetable communicated to the residents of the town, and each city sector or suburb will know which day of the week the darn trash-lorry arrives to fricking come and collect the refuse and trash. Most municipalities in the Free State are so inept, and are such a black-hole of non-communication towards their residents, that you don't always know exactly WHEN the trash lorries arrive, or what your neighborhood's designated day of the week is supposed to be

For most in the Free State, you either guess by hearing in the morning the trash-lorries busy emptying the large wheeled plastic bins in which trash or trash bags are placed, and then come to the conclusion that Thursdays are your sector's trash day of the week, or you have to ask your neighbours. Sometimes even then, there is no absolute certainty, as the incompetence of both the municipality leadership, and the Trash-lorries Trade-unions can have the darn timetables in complete fricking disarray!!

Now most of you may be confused as to why I'm harping on about the trash-collection dates and timetables, most of you in functioning countries will say: kaamrev, you autismo spaz, just place the refuse-bags outside your house the whole week, and the trash-lorries will arrive eventually to come pick them up! Which is true, even if the trash-lorries are late by two days, leaving your refuse bags or filled up plastic bins outside will lend the certainty that they will be picked up eventually.

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But in South Africa there is an additional feature of living in our dysfunctional society: namely trash-beggars or trash-pickers. These are souls who are so low on the totem pole, so poor and destitute that they unveil themselves to a decrepit lifestyle which even ordinary beggars would not succumb to.

Many foreigners and tourists are familiar with the spectacle of beggars hounding the Robots of Stop-streets, as they beg and make themselves a nuisance to tourists to unaccustomed to such behaviour, and often make themselves a target of petty theft.

https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/kwazulu-natal/police-urge-motorists-not-to-give-to-beggars-at-robots-44581093

https://www.news24.com/news24/community-newspaper/tygerburger/beggars-the-ire-of-table-view-and-milnerton-residents-20220913

These types of beggars can range from benign desperate poor old people (black and white) trying their best in a ravaged economy, selling brooms by old black ladies, or selling fudge and other bread by old white ladies with no retirement funds - and can range to the insidious charlatans who scope out easy theft-targets, and harass tourists, and sell chinese crap.

https://old.reddit.com/r/southafrica/comments/8cykkl/do_you_give_to_people_begging_at_the_robots/?sort=controversial

https://www.tripadvisor.co.za/ShowTopic-g312659-i9466-k10165035-o20-Aggressive_beggars_at_traffic_lights_robots-Cape_Town_Central_Western_Cape.html

Then there are the really REALLY insidious beggars who go so far as to destroy and sabotage traffic-lights, so that the traffic in 4-point stops are deliberately slowed for more begging opportunities, I'm not joking.

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Yet even these types of traffic-robot beggars are less despised by all of safricans, that trash-pickers, who are people who dig through the trash which more fortunate South Africans place out in their black bags for their Trash-day. Even trasffic-street beggars are a whole economic level above trash-pickers, and it's hilarious to hear a streetcorner beggar talk about trash-pickers in disparaging terms, as if he himself wasn't clad in torn haggard clothing.

What makes these beggars and trash-pickers such a menace is that they have very little regard to what mess they make when searching through the trash and refuse bags of people they deign to malign.

God help you if it's a windy day in autumn, as especially callous trash-pickers will just rip open refuse-bags and dump them on your sidewalk. You come home to papers and plastic debris having flown all across your front yard, and all across your driveway, as the trash-lorries crew will only ever pick up the whole plastic bags, regardless if they have been emptied.

Thus it is a timing race between homeowners to place their refuse-bags outside of their gates/fences just in time for the trash-lorries arriving, without giving trash-pickers the opportunity to pollute your driveway, or bring ruination to your bags or trash-bin.

I've seen black owners lose their temper and chase trash-pickers away with their gardening rakes, as they had to time and again clean up the disgusting food remains of old fly-ridden bones or rotting apple cores from their polluted sidewalk. I've seen white owners unleash their bulldogs after waiting for trash pickers to frick up their trash bags. I've seen black gardeners chase trash pickers away with gardening sheers

Many homeowners don't even have the option to strategically place their refuse outside for trash-day. They have to go to work, most usually at 8AM, and have to leave their trash "exposed" for pilfering before the trash-collector crews can arrive to pick up the refuse-bags.

You can thus see the importance for homeowners in having at least some idea of when the trash-lorries will arrive, as leaving you trash-bags out for days, will expose them to looting and ruination by trash-pickers who will leave your sidewalk with I'm told that a similar race and strategic placements occur in Burgerland in the regions where the animal known as raccoons reside, as raccoons are also known for polluting a burger's driveway with their carefully placed refuse.

Additionally I've seen liberals in places like UCT moan and minge that mistreatment of trash-pickers, especially as they are so stiflingly poor, usually black, is a mistreatment and human rights abuse especially by the white upper middle class Bong Capetonians, and thus was emblematic of the economic disparity between races - but trash-pickers do not relegate themselves to merely vandalizing wealthy white neighborhoods, they malign lower-middle class coloured neighbourhoods just as frequently as the absence of security allows. In black inland townships trash-pickers live closest and cause the most pollution

This is not some Robin Hood story of the decadent elite whites being robbed by poor desperate people of color having to dig through trash to survive, the trash-pickers are a true menace for everyone who owns a home or even rents a place.

https://groundup.org.za/article/jhb-waste-pickers-face-routine-harassment/

On the other hand there are more benign and desperate poor trash-pickers who make a living collecting plastic for Recycling in these huge bags they pull on trolleys, and actively try to make themselves less of a nuisance by carefully filtering through trash, and even tie the black refuse-bags closed, once they are finished, and deliberately don't try to aggrieve the homeowner whose trashbags and bins they are picking from. And these are desperate people doing the best that they can in our godforsaken economy .

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Thus you can see how misery of Safricans are compounded by our incompetent trash-lorry crews, in that they often arrive late, if they even arrive. And for most small towns in South Africa there has been even MORE dysfunction by the Trash-Collector's Trade Union, having a massive scuffle with municipalities like the Matjabeng and Moqhaka leadership.

You see for the past year, our butthole trash-lorries crew had the galaxy brain idea to only work during overtime which is the weekends. All manual labour jobs, such as trash-collector teams usually have an overtime clause in their contract as per Safrican labour laws.

But our corrupt Trash-collector trade unions, have abused this clause, by deliberately not doing any work during the weekdays of Mondays==>Fridays, and only arriving to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and thuse collect double-pay for overtime. This is usually when everyone is at church or away for shopping ,and not at home to place their refuse-bags and bins as they hear the trash-lorries appraoching

Thus these corrupt fricks have raced through suburb and township and collected the minimum amount of trash, and claimed they have done their job, the residents are the ones at fault for not having place their bags outside, it's not their responsibility!!!

And thus many people languish with up to 4-8 weeks worth of trash in their yards, gathering flies and maggots after the rot of inevitable food refuse. And sometimes the frickers when they eventually arrive, refuse to pick up more than a set amount of bags, cuz one house is only supposed to be allocated 10 bags per driveby, but there's more than 10 fricking bags because these bozos have been absent from their job for 8 weeks REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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For the past 4 months, in this staggering sweltering heatwave in the Free State, almost every municipality had trashlorry strikes, and the union laws are so powerful, that they cannot even be fired. Public Unions are in my worldview a menace to humanity, Private sector unions have a place in society like actor's unions or whatever to confront Corporatism. But Public sector Unions like teacher's unions and trash-colelctor's unions have crippled societies to a standstill.

Even more r-slurred in the Central Free state region, the munipality have refused to pay the Trash-collectors for the time in which they had striked in the 1st two month of the year - SO NOW THEY ARE STRIKING BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PAID FOR STRIKING 1ST.

I had to personally clean up literal maggots from the driveway of the place I rent front this week, as once again the bags had not been collected on the designated day, and the refuse had been spilled everywhere by indifferent trash-pickers

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But the climax of the insanity of this situation has not yet been reached. Because having to wait literal months for the trash-lorries to arrive had become so intolerable, and the municipal leadership so defunct to deal with the situation, many entrepreneurial Safricans have been quick to advertise their services as private trash-collecting companies. I'm not joking.

Many companies for the past year would advertise their services and making a living, by plastering their phone numbers all over malls, cafes, school notice boards, and so on. And they have reached widespread use.

https://www.facebook.com/CJDromDienste/

Here is an example of a guy literally just fricking advertising his services on Facebook, which is a popular place for Boomers in SA still.

They even have officially painted cars after 2 years of existence by now!

Just imagine the reality where residents have to actively hire a private company to come and collect their refuse, and drive it away to dumpsites, because the ruling government is parralized with corruption and infighting. Worse yet still, it is once again the poorest who suffer the consequences of this dysfunction, middle class and up are able to afford the measly sum of R160 per month to take their refuse away, but even such a paltry sum is too much to bear for those living in the poorest regions of a township.

Then there is the Nala municipality, which by reputation and gossip is apparently the WORST place in the entire province, as entire streets are just covered from pavement to curb in plastic and paper, OMG.

TRAIN ELECTRIC WIRES AND COPPER CABLES STOLEN:

Transnet is South Africa's government public company responsible for our trains, rails and ports, just like ESKOM is for our electricity. Well their ineptitude towards security, has meant that a staggery and crippling amount of cable theft has taken place in the past 4 years all over the Western Cape and Free State region.

Both me and my employer have personally witnessed with our own eyes the lack of electric cables, for the electric trains are dependent upon to traverse across our railroads, just gone for hundreds of kilometers, all the way from the Western reaches of teh province.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-and-courts/free-state-man-found-with-stolen-transnet-copper-cables-sentenced-to-15-years-behind-bars-762b2bdb-bc06-4e14-b981-1e769c00faef

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https://www.ofm.co.za/article/centralsa/317873/free-state-municipality-suffers-huge-loss-over-cable-theft

The police are too worthless, lazy and corrupt to either investigate these thefts, or to patrol our railway lines.

And to compound our national misery, the constant loadshedding have afforded thieves the opportunity to easily steal these copper electric wires, while the power is off, as they had never been built with anti-theft in mind, as it was presumed in their construction that the power would always be on, and thus deadly for anyone physically touching them.

Regular electrical cables for transporting power to homes are just as frequently stolen. The suburb I'm renting from, had 3 cable thefts in the past 14 months, leaving us in the darkness even after Loadshedding was over.

https://groundup.org.za/article/cable-thieves-target-mangaung-communities-during-loadshedding/

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But the worst are when specific gangs target a suburb or railway line. There are two traffic robots between where I work and sleep, that have remained unfixed for over 2 years, because each time the municipality actually come and repair them, thieves just steal their wiring, as they are out of town, and out of sight, thus they have been relegated as 4-point traffic stops.

Other gangs will target traffic stops to steal all of the copper wire from the power poxes in a suburbs power-station when there is loadshedding. This has become so frequent that municipalities and private security have to place armed guards

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2023-05-08-government-spends-r146m-for-soldiers-to-protect-eskom-power-stations/

In some critical power-stations, ESKOM and the national government even places armed SADF patrols and watchposts to prevent cable theft. But they couldn't even do that permanently because it was too expensive to have so many patrols and watchposts for SADF.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/south-african-military-to-guard-power-stations-after-record-power-outages/

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2023-05-08-government-spends-r146m-for-soldiers-to-protect-eskom-power-stations/

Many corrupt informers work with the cable theft gangs, informing them of the precise timetables of loadshedding, and many scrapyard owners are also corrupt and buy stolen copper wires.

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/18313-south-africa-s-illegal-copper-trade-dismantles-critical-infrastructure-at-all-levels

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Every day in South Africa, petty thieves and transnational organized crime groups siphon off the country's copper supplies from pennies to millions of dollars at a time. The result is billions in losses every year and a dismantling of critical infrastructure that shakes the public's quality of life to its core.

From mines to construction projects to any sites where copper cables are found, criminals steal whatever they can, no matter how much or how little. So pervasive is its allure for a quick score or a big payday that the yearly losses negatively impact the country at all levels, from energy, to transportation and mining, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

From mines to construction projects to any sites where copper cables are found, criminals steal whatever they can, no matter how much or how little. So pervasive is its allure for a quick score or a big payday that the yearly losses negatively impact the country at all levels, from energy, to transportation and mining, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

But such opportunity for growth and expansion means that criminal interest for the soft metal is widespread, especially when buyers can purchase it stolen for a third of the price, according to GI-TOC.

It's not only small-time thieves who are responsible for the grand scale larceny of the country's copper reserves. Syndicates made up of dozens of individuals have the resources and funding necessary to steal bulk amounts and transport it offsite to black market dealers, GI-TOC said.

While some of the stolen copper filters through the black market and back into the country's economy, a lot of it is ultimately exported to clients able to pay more. This problem is made worse by the fact that holes in the port industry and cases of customs fraud see the metal slip out undetected, either mislabeled or with the right people on the ground paid off.

By far the biggest buyer is China. In 2021, China acquired roughly 85% of all scrap metal exported out of South Africa.

Though that is not to say that importers are aware their purchases were procured illegally, Chinese triad groups reportedly have a strong interest and presence in South Africa. They are also well-integrated in local smuggling networks that siphon off the country's natural resources, according to GI-TOC.

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Yes we have literal fricking Chinese Triad gangs working with local copper-cable thief gangs, to smuggle stolen recycled copper to china!!

CONSTRUCTION CORRUPTION:

We've seen several projects this week completed for the development of RDP homes. RDP homes are government subsidized homes which provides beneficiaries with a fully built house that is built free of charge by the Government.

This was an initiative by the Nelson Mandela admin back in 1995, and in my personal opinion on of the best persisting initiatives of the RSA gov. You guys have seen the steriotypical south african squatter sink homes?

Well the Mandela admin made the initiative that the gov should build proper brick and mortar homes for all residents, and over 30 years several million homes have been built taking people out of homelessness and squatting, and into a properly built residential township, with planned laid out water and electrical utilities, approved by Town Planners, and laid ouw ith streets.

Of course like all government programs under the control of the ANC, this has also withered into shit over the decades. The absolute amount of money siphoned off by corrupt offcials, meant for buying construction materials, or paying builders is staggering and mind-raping. The amount of nepotism and tender corruption is just crushing.

The result of the usual ANC corruption, is that the costs of building these homes ballooned to many magnitudes to what they are supposed to be! And thus the planned 100 new RDP homes for which a municiplaity planned to build in their annual budget year, will inevitably be restricted to a mere 30 homes or such.

As an example to the atrocious effects which tender-corruption of nepotistic Municipalities can have upon a project, I have for example an uncle who builds windpumps in the Free State for a living.

He tender his services for government and farmers alike, and on average he would ask about R25 000 to construct one windpump, to either supply an animal crib, or supply additional water for a water tank for a newly built residential RDP township.

In that R25 000, it includes the labor costs and building material, and maybe he takes home 15 000 at the end. Well in order to even ALLOW the construction of any project or feature like a windpump withing the jurisdiction of a municipality, a tender waiver needs to be signed and approved by several clerks. I've heard horror stories where the same tender approval needs a concurrent bribe from official to offcial within the labyrinth of a Free State municipality's bureaucracy.

And that same R25 000 needs a further bribe just for the PERMISSION and approval of construction to begin, and sign and stamp of an illiterate individual who's never even seen a windpump, or even touched it, and they have to give their approval for the project to begin. And one the tender had proceeded through conveyor belt of bribes, that same R25 000, will cost the municipality a colossal R110 000 just to finish the construction

So some fat clerk can pocket R50 000 just for his signature and stamp, while the men doing the hard labour, will have to eat the cost of the orginal construction. In this manner the price of RDP construction balloons and far exceeds the originally national budget allocated for each provincial government, and every fricking year the national government will come screaming to each municipality, asking where the frick are the RDP homes!!!???

The worst part is that RDP homes are a lifeline and a hope for many poor impoverished black peeps, who often are on a literal waiting list 10 years long.

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This week and the months before, we surveyors had encountered a crushing level of corruption in the finished RDP homes in one of the townships we regularly survey in. It was brutal and blatant the corruption and stupidity involved with these two projects that it was like a cold iced bucket frown in your face.

The 1st: The fricking engineers didn't install a sewage system in a multi story building.

Whatever brilliant foreign Nigerian was hired had this brilliant 3 story building building constructed, which we had to come and survey the Sectional Title of, and to our disgust and dismay discoeverd that there were no sewage outpipes installed. Water could come in, but could not come out.

You could not flush your potty and water from the sink had nowhere to go, but through your flat. The whole building was a catastrophe. There were like 12 families waiting with lights in their eyes to come and live in this place after waiting literal years on the RDP waitlist, and we had to go inform them and the municipality who had hired us for this job, of this impending shitshow. The people could not life there, the whole structure would have to be overhauled or destroyed and rebuilt.

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Finally this week my employer and I would visit another worksite where RDP homes had been built by dodgy developers, and once more we would be utterly dismayed to the corruption and stupidity involved with the entirety of the project.

I had no personal stake in the matter, and no matter how badly the homes were built, our private company would be paid regardless, yet even I was in shock at the horror which was before us, on behalf of the poor people who would realize that their homes would be near unlivable.

The buildings were built by amateurs, the walls and roofs were scewed. But most of all, the walls were SOLID

The corrupt developers had not installed the electric wires and water pipes as they were supposed to between the walls, as the brick and mortar was gradually built. Instead as sloppy job of walls and roofing had been done in a massively hasty manner, without any attempt to even install electricity and water piping or sewage outflow.

Worse yet still, was that the frickers had disguised their ineptitude with mock ups. They had received pottys and taps and baths, and had actually installed them, in the sense that they had just placed the taps and shower heads into the raw concrete to make it look like they were attached to piping within the solid walls.

Light switches were basically plastered into the painted concrete walls, with no electrical utilities behind them. The poor souls arriving in these homes would turn taps unconnected to any water flow, and push switches, unconnected to wires, into the walls.

My employer had ripped the bath taps out of the solid walls, and pulled out light switches to show the municipal representatives this utterly kak job

As surveyors we are often the 1st in the field, before there are even bulldozers to clear the overgrown worksite, and I am often inquired by desperate poor peeps when the RDP homes are complete. We dont work for the municipality, we are independent private contractors who are hired by them.

Whomever corrupt official signed off on this tender is always unknown when the questions and anger starts flying, and we surveyors are often inline by desperate peeps when their homes are basically unlivable.

Anyways that's all the corruption stories I have for today.

GOOD night.