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Partners
By Peter Wilhelm
On the sound authority of that renowned (if deceased) dipsomaniac Kingsley Amis, the crucial issue of the variety of hangovers is best described by the names of the seven dwarves in the child-friendly tale of Snow White – or Schneewittchen, when tracing her origin story (like a superhero franchise) back into the foul forests of the Eurozone, heart of Gothic horror.
Of the many names by which the persons of restricted height are known, Walt Disney’s is most specific: Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey. When you awaken on the slopes of Sir Lowry’s Pass, remember that your condition has medical terms – happy, sneezy, bashful, dopey … etc. You are probably not going to die or go mad. Yet.
Doubtless, passing passengers in Mercs will regard you with distaste. You have become an affront to society. That puts you in very different category to, say, your average Gatvol and his bipolar son/daughter Siouxie on their way to Newlands to watch the local team lose while carrying huge orange balloons injected with vodka pretending to be naartjies.
What all opinionistas fail to mention is that, in seeking a solution to our economic woes, one secure innovation lies in the cadre of drunks who provoke our righteous wrath. The Chinese cannot rescue us, since they are going broke buying poodles and face a failure of the noodle harvest.
A vast store of the national GDP is expended on attempting to remove unwanted boozers from sight. They may disappear for a day or two but always reappear, with severe fiscal consequences. Yet with forethought, the tills could tinkle. Consider:
• The viral spread of tent-towns – either private or state-funded – where addicts (often on heavy doses of Panado as well as sweet wine) can safely detox. Word will spread. Dollar-bearing tourists will go there. After all, the entire city of Cape Town and environs is one vast rehab; a truth little understood by those who arrive bounding and grinning to soak up cancerous ultraviolet radiation.
The annual Cape Carnival (August 31-December 30) means visitors can be assured of a necessary sojourn in a tent-town – for which they will pay, redeeming our current exchange rate of R1 trillion to the US $.
• The crowding-out of residential facilities by anonymous celebrity centres for the treatment of cocaine, sex and compulsive Mars Bar guzzling among the infamous will ease. Many famous stars can be spotted wandering listlessly among neglected second-hand bookshops, BDSM parlours, guided tours of prison conditions after being caught DUI, or verbally abusing the rights of the LGBTIV (V = vampire) community so beloved in the Bad Mummy City.
Masses of ordinary folk will become over-excited at the sight and spend madly on indigenous garden gnomes.
• The inhumane burden on the police and political spokespersons will be alleviated so that they can continue their everyday tasks of accepting bribes and freebies. One reads that just the other day 200 litres of illegal liquor were seized by the cops from two shebeens in Nyanga. Colonel Jacques van Lill, who was in charge of the operation, said these raids are carried out daily, amounting to about 350 a month. And the mayor seems to like tough action.
But what a waste of valuable time and effort! If one shebeen in Nyanga needs a mere 100 litres of alcohol a day to satisfy its customers, give it to them free or on a doctor’s prescription. Tax the owners and complete the essential construction of a tunnel through Table Mountain from Parliament to False Bay.
Another drain on productivity and innovation is the national disgrace of illegal sex work. No-one knows how much hard currency passes hands in such transactions – but we have all noted that the leaking of “confidential” information by hackers of an American website facilitating adultery has been met with panic and the deletion of personal posts by millions of US citizens.
It’s too late. Everyone now knows that their partners regularly, invariably, and unwholesomely cheat on them. It is of course the same here, as trawling the streets of Sea Point would suggest. How are we to evade another Great Recession without taxing bawdy houses and freeing magistrates from putting innocent girls (and boys) in cells with perverted drunken tourists?
As Internet traffic suggests, the one assured human quality in each successive era is that no matter what constraints common sense or even religion can place upon assorted activities, the sexual revolution has generated a source of capital that could readily be nationalised. That would bring us closer to the ideal hedonistic society with welfare benefits for which we all long.
As for the suppression of our major (and sometimes only) marketable agricultural harvest, dagga, I leave it to your imagination to find the answer to that as you settle back with your 17th Scotch and soda of the day.
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