Nepotism is favouritism granted to relatives or friends, without regard to their merit.
Who needs merit when your kid needs a leg up?
Thank goodness for nepotism or I else would not be sitting here feeding my children dinner tonight.

You see, it’s a long story and it goes back a long way, to the good old days in 1816. Shaka Zulu and his warriors went to take the kingdom by force. One of his winning battles was against the Buthelezi tribe winning their territory. I think Buthelezi got it back in 1995. Shaka Zulu had won most of Southeast Africa and Natal in 1820. In 1824 the Englishmen arrived in Natal to find Shaka Zulu wounded from one of the battles and they treated him to health,The suck ups. From that day on wards he thought highly of the Englishmen and signed over land to them. First mistake which the boere still carry the can for today.

Now let’s look how nepotism worked back then. My great great great grandfather was Andries Pretorius and I am somehow related to Piet Retief too. I think he slept with one of Andries’s daughters. This put me in a very good position to exploit my privileged genetic pool. I was as close to royalty in South Africa as the Kennedy family are in the States today.

Problem number one, there were three powers fighting for the jobs. The English, the Afrikaners and, to keep it simple for the moment let’s say there were “the blacks” who the Afrikaners thought were not clever enough to do a civilised job.

The English thought the same of the Afrikaners. The English were they boys in the kraal and called the shots. All good work was reserved for them and very little was passed down the food chain. Well things changed and Shaka Zulus killed my grandfather while having a braai to celebrate an win -win deal (so we thought) which obviously all went horribly wrong. This made our family very upset so they formed a laager with a river behind them and they shot the hell out of the Zulus when as they attacked.

The rest is history but from that day on my family and fellow Afrikaners decided, “to hell with this”, and they started to learn how to read and write with vengeances. This is when my great grand grand parents decided to send their children to English schools so that when they grew up they could get a job. A lot took place but the short story is the Engelse were kicked out of power, which sank our plan A.


The Afrikaners who learnt a quickly from the English, brought in Job Reservations meaning you had to be pure Afrikaans to get a job, no English half breeds like us were allowed in the front door and if the pencil stuck you were out of luck..
Because of my grandpa’s forward planning we went backwards. No sooner had we learnt to speak and think like the English, when Vervoed fottered everything up.

Oh dear what now? My family were again talking the wrong language. If it was not for nepotism we would not have survived. Our kids and cousins have always leapfrogged the existing more experienced staff members at their expense when they came into daddy’s business ,selling cattle.

So this English speaking Afrikaans family tried again to reconvert their children back to Afrikaans by sending them to Hoërshool Ermelo.Who to this day are still fighting the boer war. During break the English kids had to endure the eerste span rugby players making them bounce on their bums during break repeating the words,"Harde gat word sag."

To us this was no great sweat because we had a plan and knew that if we learnt to speak Afrikaans we were guaranteed a membership in the Afrikaner Broederbond and a good job too.
Hell man, we got it wrong again. No sooner had we learnt to speak Afrikaans when Mandela was released and he spoke Xhosas.

The Xhosas brought in a law which said the pencil had to stick and you could not look like a white man. What now?
Plan B was to get someone in the family to marry a Xhosa and then we would be guaranteed a government tender and a nice job. Just as well we canned that idea and learnt Zulu instead.

Today we thinking far ahead, we thinking Chinese is the language of the future.

My boy has just finished his degree at Stellenbosch and he looks like mini me, and he too is eyeing my desk at the office and the good news he will get the job. Te moer with BEE and up with nepotism. Legally he can have it because I work for myself by myself.
So I say, Nepotism is the answer let’s look after our kids and let them leapfrog over every one and to Alan Knott Craig senior, I say” Mooi so Alan,mooi so Alan,mooi so Alan ,jy het jou kind gedra”.

Hamba gashle

Andre Sipho Buthelezi Sing
Tell me where I went wrong, lets fight it out like good South Africans. To BEE or not to BEE.