No, I’m not talking about the good old days of apartheid. Just times and places and aspirations of comparative innocence. As Joan Baez used to sing it: When will they ever learn?

Some of the most telling pictures on the way down, for me, were those of the funeral of crooked mining tycoon Brett Kebble, attended with respect by the Who’s Who of the ANC, including representatives of the President’s Office and the Youth League. It could have been the Mafia.

Kebble’s killers have never been brought to book, though one of our known resident gangsters, Glen Agliotti, at one time made incriminating confessions. Police Commissioner Selebi, friend of Agliotti and, embarrassingly, head of Interpol at the time, has been pulling pay on suspension for a year or two but will be making a court appearance soon. Don’t hold your breath..

For all the years that I have been around, the police force (service?) has been arguably SA’s biggest single problem. Apart from cascading headlines and statistics, I have had cause to visit a couple of police stations recently and observed little to change my mind. Our judicial system takes forever, largely at tax-payers expense. And a few of our judges have come across as not much more loveable than the next racist.

I liked the sounds of President Zuma’s warnings of strong action against public servants and politicians for corruption or incompetence, and on the positive side we have had Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan opposing the appointment, as Transnet CEO, of suspended executive Siyabonga Gama – in connection with questionable contract awards. The decision is still in abeyance, but Zuma has been supportive of Hogan’s responsibility in the matter, in spite of Gama having the support of other Ministers with interest in the contracts.

We do not know to what extent Zuma’s influence counted, in the failure of WC Judge President John Hlope to make the short list for the Constitutional Court, but we would like to think it did. In connection with the much publicised, intersexed athlete Casper Semenya affair, the Government has roundly berated lying Athletics SA chief Chuene and his Council, though it has taken no action. Zuma has minced no words in condemning the behaviour of striking soldiers at SA’s administrative centre, the Union Buildings – and gone further to say there is no room for unions in the Defence Force, in spite of angry reaction from unionist alliance partner COSATU.

On the negative side, there has been no corrective action against hopelessly performing public enterprises like SAA( a golden handshake to be announced Wednesday); the propaganda tool SABC (golden handshake R12 million); and the outfit that switched off our lights and nearly our economy , ESKOM (pay rise from R4 – 5 million p.a.).

I have lost a couple of good friends recently because of carrying on like this. “You are just too negative” they say. I read somewhere that others like former newspaper editor Ken Owen are saying the same thing. I would sum up their attitude in American cop terminology as “adopt the position”, except they don’t mean turn your back, spread your legs, put your hands on the car roof”. They mean the SA position, head in sand like an ostrich, and don’t look at the old or the new reality and don’t argue with it.

True, one could look at the funny side. I accompany my wife to the Telkom office because she is cross about our name still being listed in the telephone directory under Rodgers with a “d”, which it doesn’t have, as she explains to the lady at the counter. No, she is told, it does have a “d”. My wife persists. There is a look of disbelief and a shake of the head. My wife is exasperated. The lady turns to her colleague at the counter and asks: “So how do you spell Rodgers?”.”R-o-d-g-e-r-s” is the response. “You see?” the lady says to my wife, sympathetically.

I go to get my new driver’s licence. I move up the queue to the counter and give my details. The lady taps the computer and stares at it. “No”, she says. “There is a problem”.
I am impatient. I have a letter of notification from your office, saying it is ready, I tell her. So what is the problem? “Your finger prints”. I had my finger prints taken here, I remind her. So what’s wrong with them, and whose fault is that? “No, it is nobody’s fault”, she says, “but you know sometimes when you get older your finger prints don’t work any more”. (Subsequent advice is that years of heavy labour can do that to you).

Yes, perhaps there is a sunny side, but since I walked out of the bowling club the other day and found my beautiful old car had been stolen, I have been really seriously pissed off.