You've been fleeced by your own mates..

I don't feel that great about having contributed significantly to the massive bonuses paid by the big 5 SA construction companies and their alliance partners.  Bonuses paid to their directors, thanks to their corrupt contract rigging and profiteering that went on between them in the lead up to and post the SA Soccer World Cup. To think, that the cost of the World Cup preparation was boosted purely by greed and personal bonus gain.  I know of a few, who suddenly became debauchedly wealthy during that time. 

Interesting how those folk, always quick to jump on the 'political corruption' bandwagon are rather quiet at times like this.  We're talking Billions of Rands here, and yet it's not a major newspaper headline on every paper in the country or news network. Why is it that the likes of Brett Kebble, Peter Gardener (Leisurenet), Glenn Agliotti, Dave King (hiding out in Australia), John Stratton (hiding out in Australia too), Greg Blank and their ilk (all of a pale hue incidentally), are not seen in the same light as our most corrupt of politicians.  Double standards, racism?  I'm not sure. These companies have fleeced far more from from the state coffers, contributed by you and I the tax payer, and unsuspecting shareholders, than Jacob Zuma and all his cronies put together - allegedly..  We should be outraged!

I'm often intrigued as to how it is that the most vocal of doomsayers in this country and many of those who have emigrated it seems, are the very same people who run red lights, complain about taxi drivers, political corruption, traffic and police corruption and the like.  Yet ironically it is often these very same people, many of them friends and family members of many of us, who head up some of these organisations and those who are quick on the draw in pulling out their wallets when stopped for a traffic violation.  

Corruption breeds corruption, and those who paid our corrupt arms deal negotiators (German, Scandinavian, French, British arms dealers and others), tax dodgers, and those who attempt to pay off traffic cops and rig contracts are all just as vile as the people who accept them.  The same goes for large financial institutions that have gambled the money of trusting, unsuspecting investors to the point of destroying the global economy, yet not their own wealth ironically.  I don't see too many of them in jail or getting angry on the streets of Athens, Cairo or Paris.  They're all playing golf and sipping on Johnny Walker 'Deep Purple' at the same golf courses as the likes of Schabir Shaik and Agliotti, whilst eating sushi off naked ladies navels all with your hard earned tax paying money. 

Perhaps the 'Arab Spring' should refocus its aim at the source of their pain, not the symptom.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, and sadly it's a growing global phenomenon.  It is up to each one of us to stop it in its tracks.

For more on this story.. http://mg.co.za/article/2013-07-19-00-the-flaw-that-broke-the-construction-cartels-back