Carnivorous Cow

"Women are a costly business!" the Cow muttered to Gramsci. "One moment the press is full of Shaik paying for uMalume's various wives and their spawn, and the next it's some other dubious character funding some other shady official's women and offspring!"

Gramsci skipped closer. "You mean," he whispered hoarsely, "Jackie Selebi?" Gramsci glanced nervously over his eight shoulders. In the Spy vs Spy saga between the cops and the good guys, anything you said was likely to be taken down and used in evidence against whomever was in the rifle sights at the moment.

The Cow nodded. "It seems so," she sighed. "His wife and girlfriend, as well as their kids, were the recipients of the latest dirty money aired in the press." 

Gramsci shook his head sadly. "Perhaps the State should be more like the Catholic Church," he suggested, "and only appoint the celibate?"

The Cow snorted. "Just think of the costs of defending all the paedophilia claims!" she retorted. "That's unlikely to work out cheaper!"

"I suppose we should be thankful it's druglords and not taxpayers funding it," Gramsci sighed. "Though i suppose we do end up paying for it, through the legal costs of the trials and the subsequent accommodation costs of the guilty."

The Cow shuddered. Shaik's accommodation and medical costs were probably enough to run a small Third World country - or at least, one whose leadership was getting its women and children funded elsewise.

"Still," she mused, "it would be interesting to know who funded uMalume's latest: the lobola, the wedding, and presumably the First-Lady-in-Waiting outfits."  

Gramsci chuckled. "I'm sure there are no end of applicants for that vacancy!" he mused. "After all, the next government will have lots of business on offer..."

The Cow was a little bemused. "Do  you think that was intentional?" she asked Gramsci, pointing to the lamppost bearing weekend newspaper hoardings. Directly beneath a Weekend Argus headline about Jacob Zuma was the Sunday Times's "Dumbest Crooks of 2007" headline.

Gramsci chuckled. "Perhaps he's realised Dave Bullard and Zapiro aren't going to hand over the R6 Million-odd he's demanding, so he's going for the man in the street - literally!" 

The Cow sighed. The uMalume soap opera was even longer running than Sewende Laan, and far less interesting, albeit with a cast of 218 planned for the new season. And the storyboard, well...

"R25 for a mini-valet for his car!" Gramsci announced. "You'd think they'd provide the contact details. Unless it was another 'special deal'?"

"Like Yengeni's discounted luxury vehicle?" the Cow mused. "Certainly possible. But how about all those kids' school and technikon fees? Do you think that is the estranged wives getting back at the absence of formal education uMalume boasts?"

 Gramsci shrugged, rippling a Mexican wave through his multiple shoulders. "The wife payouts are interesting, too. Nkosazana gets R22K over four years as a divorce settlement, whereas poor old Kate, for '24 years of hell', gets pretty much the same amount!"

"She was only 44 when she killed herself," the Cow noted. "She must have been 20 when they married. Her entire adult life, worth R23K!"

Gramsci looked up. "Do you think Shaik paid the lobola, too?"

The Cow chuckled. "If many of the payments to uMalume were allegedly 'loans', what was Shaik going to do if he defaulted? Repossess his wives?"

Gramsci blanched. "Perhaps that's why the man is in such a state of stress," he observed wryly. "He was afraid Sarafina and Co. were coming to stay..."