If I Were the Devil of South Africa

Welcome to the politicians, priests and paedophiles. To the wonderful Paul Harvey, from Hell on Earth.

“Today, I am the Devil, sharing our thieving, bloody South Africa. I do so in the Hope you will see through me. Take back control of your lives. Defeat me. I dare you.”

A July 2014 post of mine began that way. I'd been pondering the death of Nelson Mandela, and the theft of South Africa by politicians. That contemplation gained a layer when a derivative of Paul Harvey’s essay, ’If I Were the Devil’, hissed into my mailbox.

Harvey was a national radio commentator in the USA in the Sixties. He postulated what he’d do to corrupt civilisation if he were the Devil. Since then, each generation (and different countries) have expressed their zeitgeist version of Harvey's essay.

It was perfect timing as the debate in my head had again resulted in there being no difference between the ANC and the DA, the former the leaders of the country, the latter the main opposition. One smirked with crime, the other more devious about it.

South African bias wasn't going to change the fact that corruption is proportional to the amount of power wielded. With less power, the ANC would be less corrupt. With more power, the DA would be more corrupt. The UK and the USA know this dynamic well.

Bad thoughts and that email climaxed me into this gush of words:

If I were the Devil in South Africa, I would whisper to our leaders that they must never listen to the Public... but ironically yell as loudly as they can to the Public, "WE'RE LISTENING," so that is all the Public hears;

I would convince the Public that right and wrong can only be determined by a few who call themselves Authorities;

I would persuade the Public that character and community service are not considerations when choosing leaders, and that all that matters is ANC gold or DA blue;

I would delude their minds into thinking the power they entrust to self-serving Politician are blessings from voters traded for a better future;

I would promise the voters austerity and transparency, and then laugh as I did the opposite, knowing they are powerless to seek justice for another 5 years after they stupidly failed to seek justice the previous 5 years;

I would make the ANC rage against capitalism whilst driving fancy cars and feasting in the biggest houses;

I would make the DA rage for liberalism whilst practicing socialism;

I would suck goodness out of society whilst sending the Politicians to church, giggling as I made some of them pastors;

I would convince the Public that big business is there to help them, and that they can help the economy by gambling what they have. And for those who will not give in, I will give them unions that will ask for more, more and more whilst ignoring the poor;

I would tell them that bankers are their friends and then start my own bank to transfer their wealth to Myself;

I would make their pay so small and the price of food so high before convincing them that they can live their dreams now with the loans I give them, enslaving their sperm to Me;

I would make the Police aware they are powerful, and that the powerful can do as they please;

I would make human issues so helpless that humans begin protecting the lives of animals more than the children I made poor;

I would abuse animals, making a million more that the activists could never save from the butcher's floor;

I would make meat so convenient and cheese so creamy that carnivores eat guiltless and vegetarians pretend dairy is anti-carnivorous;

I would de-bone the Middle Class because that is every country's backbone;

I would control the Media, every night polluting the mind of every family member with my agenda until they love Me, or hate me because they want to be me;

I would promote needless toys and hair accessories to the youth, and get their sports heroes and music idols to wear them;

I would ensure teachers are frustrated and schoolbooks missing so that uneducated, non-individualistic children grow into adults like their parents who do what I say;

I would, with all these things, make the lives of parents so miserable that they stop parenting whilst blaming teachers into depression expressed through the greed of Unions;

I would promote chauvinism and radical feminism so the majority of people in between would be afraid to express opinion;

I would promote ego so that heteros oppose homos based on my brother's Bible instead of fact, corrective rape enact;

I would ban euthanasia and marijuana oil so that those in pain can enjoy others in more pain through the eyes of wide-screen TV;

I would take advantage of the dread of AIDS and make the victims ostracised; let the desperate think they can cure themselves with dicks in babies traumatised;

I would dull or scare the minds of good people, making them believe morals are optional, sharing unimportant, and that hiding is not hiding, just keeping to themselves;

I would replace love and trust with the weak and needy dating narcissists;

I would tell all of them that they are not responsible for their choices, that some one else is always to blame;

I would promote wilful ignorance so they can pretend they are doing something whilst doing nothing, a society of social media warriors;

I would promote helplessness because they have the power to defeat me;

I would get them to say “Fuck this!” and “Fuck that!” whilst fucking them;

And then I would start the fun over, giving them elections again and again...

I guess I would leave things exactly the way they are now, perfectly imperfect.

"There's that biblical story where small David bravely stands against a hulk of man called Goliath. With courage and skill, David slays Goliath. But David fought only one man. And Goliath has been resurrected into a modern hydra beast composed of billionaires, multi-national corporations and their government servants, all wielding immense power. They've proven they're willing to use that power in the interests of the few rather than the many, knowing that the many, most often, will let the few get away with it. We are the many fools."

When the countries of Earth signed an agreement that they wouldn't stake claims to the moon, they never excluded private interests from possessing that right. It was inconceivable to them that anything but government, the collective wealth of the people, would ever possess the wealth needed to travel so far.

But now Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin, Amazon) and Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla) are in a race to space. It's conceivable that corporations will be mining the Moon and landing on Mars. Their adventurous capitalism will further mankind. And the politics of it all will likely be crazily out of mind.

For now, the majority of the rich, especially the corrupt, are more interested in immediate, earthly desires - their pleasure at our expense. We, as a society, are perversely willing for Earth to be our Hell.

What Government data clerk will stand up for what's right if he'll lose his salary of which half is spent on rent? And it's all too easy to compromise and compromise until the innocent become the corrupt. The higher in government, the more likely someone will look the other way from wrongdoing or participate therein. It only seems ironic that the one earning the million-rand salary is more likely to be corrupt than the one earning one tenth of that. Humans are addictive by nature. And money and power make addicts quicker than heroin ever will.

There are exceptions to every rule and being rich or wanting to be rich isn't a crime. There are those who've been exceptionally generous, and I'd love to be rich so that I could be like them.

But, for the most part, it takes regular citizens to be the counterbalance e.g. to be oversight over Government and corporations, to defend the rights of the majority and minorities. That's where voting (or not voting), community service, investigative journalism, and activism come in.

Every Devil deserves a Thousand Angels.

PS: I substacked this decade-old writing last year but share it again considering the important elections happening globally this year, especially South Africa’s on May 29. I saw the shit coming down the river, dedicated myself to fighting it, but never realised it was a tsunami. So much has happened so quickly.

Image credit - Gordon Johnson