Someone sent me an article about something interesting unfolding in the municipality of Makana. 

According to the article, the High Court granted a civil rights group’s application to have the municipality’s council dissolved because “it had failed to provide adequate services and properly manage its operations”.

Apparently, this decision has sent tremors through the country’s ruling party, which controls many other towns that according to the article are “hobbled by corruption and mismanagement”. 

I fixated on the word “hobbled”, and it took me back to one dark night in Nautilus, before our municipality had erected the high mast fighting in the suburb. 

There we were, sitting around the table, each busy with our own activities while the radio played softly in the background when we heard this weird sound outside, Gobba-tlok, gobba-tlok. 

My uncle went to see what it was. My brother and I also wanted to take a look, but my aunt warned us that someone outside could throw a brick at us and we wouldn’t see it coming.  It was then that I first started to suspect that our aunt has been a ruffian in her younger days because she always knew of the most sinister tricks that bad guys could pull off. However, my uncle told us that it was just a couple of hobbled horses and that should have satisfied us, but it didn’t. 

We had never seen hobbled horses, and this was our big chance. Eventually, we were allowed to go outside so that we could watch the two huge beasts taking awkward mincing steps past our house in the pale moonlight.

Being hobbled looked terribly uncomfortable, and must have been horribly frustrating for animals who are designed to run free. My mind then returned to the present day, to the “hobbled” towns in our country, and I chewed on the metaphor. It occurred to me that the corruption and mismanagement were initially not bad enough to cripple communities. However, over time, it grew until it became the problem it is today. But that’s the nature of things. Problems usually start off small and insignificant, but grow if they’re not attended to. 

Recently, I watched an irate customer barking at a cashier who had said that at her till, customers were required to have 10 items or less. “I only have 15 items. Are you trying to tell me that these five little items are such a huge problem?”, he asked. “Are you telling me that these five items will make such a big difference?”. 

The cashier could say nothing in her defence. After all, a customer should be treated like royalty, not so? The problem comes in when other customers see one person getting away with bulldozing their way through a till point with extra items. They could be tempted to wonder why they should keep to the limit.

A friend of mine had a real conundrum one day – he had exactly 10 items, but when the cashier rung up a plastic bag, he had 11 items…he was suddenly a bad man. He says that he left quite guiltily. 

What I am saying is that we nag and complain about large-scale corruption at all levels, even at municipal level, but we must remember that large-scale corruption grew from a tiny seed, and maybe it was something as small as a few extra items at a till.

I don’t know, but to me following the 10-item rule can be a good indicator of what we would be like if we had more power. If we feel empowered when we bulldoze our way through a till point, what would we do with more power, or if we believed more people were – “inferior” to us?

Each time we try to benefit at the expense of others, I believe we are hobbling ourselves just a little more. Perhaps if we started to settle into the small laws and rules that we have, our leaders will realise that the people who are making high demands on them have set high standards for themselves.