This is more a message to South Africans in general and to the so-called South African “leaders” (more specifically).

This is an extract from the Wikipedia page for Ubuntu:
Nelson Mandela explained Ubuntu as follows:^[6]

A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?

Sadly for the South African community and people in general, Ubuntu have now gained it’s “new” primary meaning from the underlined section of that quote. Except, it is stated differently. The new definition for Ubuntu appears to be “Ubuntu means that people should enrich themselves”.

Working in a field where I have done investigations into corruption I have seen many examples of people enriching themselves. This includes people from all backgrounds, all races, all cultures. Not one section of the community seem to be immune to the cancer that affects every part of our lives. Even though we do not really see the effect in our everyday lives, and more specifically in the short-term, there is no doubt that this is an evil that is DESTROYING our community. I have to admit, that up to now, I was also somewhat oblivious to its prevalence, because it did not seem to affect me personally. But have to get back to the TRUE meaning of Ubuntu. Not the version contained in the South African politicians “bible”. Where Ubuntu indicates our interconnected nature as a community and how the negative affects all of us. Just like the positive will affect all of us.

When I choose to enrich myself by “buying” a government contract, it means that I have to make provision for the buy-off. So I add a million or two to my tender price. And because I am not really doing the work or have the ability to do the work, I need to increase my profit substantially to make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. This means I either have to plainly charge for services not rendered, over-charge for those I do render, or in some cases subcontract with the true expert, but the expert only gets a small percentage of the fee, because he/she is not BBBEE (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment – Previously BEE) compliant.

So, it means the “tenderpreneur” needs to make provision for the buy-offs, the kick-backs, the huge profit margin, and subcontractors fees. So in the end the cost for the R500,000-00 government contract turns out to be the R500,000-00 the subcontractor gets paid, plus the buy-off/kickback of R1.2million, the profit margin of 500% (calculated from a real case). Which means the total the state pays for a service rendered, turns out to be R4.2million rand for a job, the BEE non-compliant contractor could have done for R500,000-00.

And who pays for this? It is you, me, and every other tax payer. Millions of us. So while one person gets paid for what he does (the subcontractor) another enriches himself for doing nothing (the tenderpreneur – R2.5million), and another enriches himself (the government employee receiving the kick-backs R1.2million), millions of other people have to fork out their hard earned cents to pay taxes into a corrupt system). And this is just one small example. Not add another few zeros and you might start to see the picture of the South African reality.

To put it differently, when you look at the figures shown in this example 88% of the taxes you pay is used to fund corruption, through a mechanism called BBBEE. (This applies to the particular example and not the total, but is this the way we are heading in?)

Corruption: It’s just not Ubuntu!