And yes, I know it's April 1, but I'm not even joking.
Knowing what day this is, there are many who will think I am playing the fool with what I am about to say: corruption is not such a bad thing, especially in the context of a developing country like ours, where there is still a huge gap between rich and poor.
Corruption is one of the ways wealth is being redistributed, but so is the hidden, second system of social grants, known as the civil service. This came to me this past week as I drove westwards from Polokwane towards Tzaneen on the R71. About 10km outside the Limpopo capital is evidence of a huge, but largely unreported and unacknowledged, boom.
Some of the cash comes from employed people in distant places such as Joburg, but a lot also comes from the booming provincial civil service. This has ballooned in size since 1994, but its effectiveness has declined precipitously. That brings benefits which spread much further than the large hardware giants selling materials for on-selling. It’s also a capitalist-driven phenomenon – by operating outside the formal system, these home builders and their suppliers are minimising their expenses by eliminating things like municipal fees and taxes.
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