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Opinionista

Abyss Gazing: Welcome to the Dark Side of The Moon

Recovering Mad Man, occasional writer, wine enthusiast, coffee addict and unpredictable wildling, Justin is a lifelong student of behavioural economics, politics and the irrational human psyche. Commercially he focuses on the intersecting stacks of media, marketing and technology, particularly in the telecoms, consumer technology, retailing and media sectors. His opinions represent no organisations or interest groups and he receives no recompense save for namedropping. He also likes nuts. Follower discretion @justininza is advised.

We are being sacked, pillaged and plundered. Our savings are being looted, our taxes sapped to ply the ample derrieres of insatiably crapulous appetites gorging themselves in concealment behind smoked glass, enveloped in the sumptuous leather swag of gleaming European sedans.

We are being spat upon contemptuously as our venerable institutions built upon the restless souls of tortured activists are drawn and quartered, limbs torn savagely from their sockets, eyes gouged out and trampled spitefully under Louboutin-shod heels. We are being boiled slowly into a soupy swamp of impuissance by a cabal of expedient hijackers adorned in the colours of a once proud and noble flag-bearer of hope.

This is the State of our Nation, and the pace at which it is happening has caught even the most cynical observer off guard. What’s emerged in the last year alone about the nefarious proclivities of our president and his toadies is enough to dislodge a tear from Sauron’s Eye. To the most cynical, gnarled and battle hardened of hacks it’s been hallucinatory. Since 2007 Jacob Zuma has corralled a cavalry of low-browed bloodthirsty orcs, connivingly trammelled once principled leaders into incapacitating webs of deceit and masterfully crushed tongue, lung and resolve out of any who stood in defiance.

Pink Floyd: “Us & Them”

No institutions or the individuals who populate them remain inviolate, few intact. The Mephistophelian assault on the Treasury, the Cullinan diamond in the crown jewels, is so nakedly transparent as to be readily observable from Neptune’s fourteenth moon by a drunkard blind in one eye and unsighted in the other. Such is the bodacious insolence forged from cock-sure ascending dominance that nobody bothers any longer with feigning demureness. The officious arrogance bristles and crackles, radiating in throbbing pulses from every government pore, empowering waves of orcs with the assurance of an exalted taste of everlasting victory.

Pravin Gordhan is a farmed turkey awaiting an undiarised Thanksgiving. Forty years of selfless service to a greater cause has bequeathed him a ringside seat at his own crucifixion. Damocles stalks him like a deranged shadow, covetously anticipating the opportunity to snip that singular strand of horse’s hair and usher in the tyrant’s sycophant.

This will herald a stampede of capital outflows, an immediate ratings downgrade to junk, a currency in free fall and the crumpling of marginal industries. The ranks of unemployed will tumesce like a tremendous septic boil, leaching pernicious poison into the system already decaying under relentless waves of corrosive assault.

SAA will be gifted yet another bailout, gloated over by their odious chairperson, the one who recently stated the airline would continue operating without guarantees because its “aircraft are always full”. If ever you wanted a choice example of wilfully ignorant boorish impudence born of officious arrogance, there it is, gift-wrapped in tarnished tinsel.

Pink Floyd: Speak to me/Breathe

Of much graver import is the ineluctable green light that will seal the Rosatom nuclear deal. This isn’t Zuma’s pet project based on a penchant for nuclear fission and Kalashnikov vodka, but because it will flood more lucre his way than his entire family can collectively enumerate. Estimated officially at around a trillion rand, the gonzo scheme could cost the country two to three times as much; it always does. Today’s university graduates won’t see the back of that debt in their productive lifetimes, and their generation may be beholden to the state of Russia to warm the tin of U-Save own brand baked beans they traded a kidney to afford.

Wherever we turn, sometimes several times a day, smolanyana skeletons tumble out of shadowy recesses into the glazed scrutiny of the public eye. Like the proverbial frog in steadily heating water, we grow jaded by the escalating skull count until we can no longer see the mortuary for the bones. And when we manage to pull our heads high enough for a broader glimpse we recoil in horror at the magnitude of it all, lowering our expectations another notch below that we should find intolerable.

Pink Floyd: The Great Gig in the Sky

There is no messiah in this story. No Nelson Mandela or Oliver Tambo or Walter Sisulu or Ahmed Kathrada can rescue us from this engulfing nightmare. Those revered names had the might of an organisation of principle behind them. Thuli Madonsela, Pravin Gordhan, Nhlanhla Nene and Mcebisi Jonas don’t. Today we have the might of an army of lickspittles and thugs, sycophants and goons, slobbering and snarling for seats nearer the vortex of malevolence from the verdant hills of Nkandla.

Pink Floyd (David Gilmour): Wish You Were Here – unplugged

In truth that vortex is beholden to another, greater, more sinister power. The lowly herdsman from the verdant hills may well command an evil eye over the mechanisms of state, but he doesn’t wield the biggest stick. That resides beyond the sovereignty of our national borders with moguls who couldn’t give a fig leaf for the betrayal foisted upon the nation.

Pink Floyd: Money

We are but expendable commodities. History has repeatedly demonstrated there is no escaping this hurricane. It’s up, it’s running, it’s set on a path of total destruction and there is no way out. Hunker down, citizens, we’re just entering the orbital traverse of the dark side of the moon. DM

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