People, part of the Grand Plan is to offer you a terrific read. That’s why we’ve been stealing James Greener’s terrific economics. Now we’re also stealing Gus Silber’s terrific everything-but-economics. The hidden aim is that while you visit them you catch up on the unfolding of D2. The unhidden aim is to breed a real magazine here, and a great one at that. You’re seeing the embryo. Watch this space. Meantime: welcome, Gus (see his Twitter Overflow Blog)! Whoo-hoo.(Drums, trumpets, balloons).

Vince Musewe certainly is pointing up the same avenue as D2. The main difference is that he is saying there should be, there ought to be, it's be nice if there could be, a mechanism for bringing the voice of the people to audibility. I'm saying there is a mechanism, it's an easy one, and when the Vinces of the world latch on to it, it will rapidly become a reality.

(I was tempted to say "unstoppable reality", but that would be interestingly misleading. It implies that someone would try to stop it. It'll be unstopped because no segment will fear it.)

Gems in the Ugliness 

This is the column that Mark Peach refers to in Forum (damn nicely -- "... an uplifting piece, with delicate shades and hues of D2 ..." , watch it, Mark, or you'll find yourself Honorary Marketing Manager). It's a return to Moneyweb where I write a weekly column, recently dormant. From now on I'll run those columns here. They're supposed to be theory-free and to lure you to the site even if the D2 theme leaves you cold (so that you keep picking up subliminal refreshers until you see the light). This first column also has a specific purpose, which I see that I state over-subtly in the article below. A marriage is waiting to happen, between a teetering institution with value and a big-minded person with the Make A Difference yen. If that person might be you, hey, I'm here, I want to be match-maker. And, as you see below, I am definitely not over-selling the bride.

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There is a part of town that, in the old days, I was glad was not my part of town. It is not just that, when I was a lightie, this part of town was associated with Portuguese and Afrikaners, both of whom were a fearsome foreign species to us Little Englanders in Leafyland. It was that this part of town was associated with dust. This part of town had minedumps, and when the wind blew, the minedumps were everywhere. They were in your car, they were in your candyfloss, they were in your teeth, they were in your eyelids.

This week I revisited.

The empowerment lady was quite sweet, to start with; concerned, more than disapproving, warning us about our moral souls. She explained the criteria in the new Charter. How many black managers to have, by which year, at what levels. How many black suppliers. Which gender.

She produced rating tables. The “target” figures and the “existing” figures were far apart. Having observed in passing that “it is unlikely that many of these targets will actually be achieved” the empowerment lady explained how to mitigate the damage.

The principle is: get your empowerment rating higher than your competitor’s. Then he is the one disqualified from tenders, rebates, and contracts.

The method is: juggle; your empowerment consultant will show you how.

Option One is simple. Acquire more than 50% black shareholders. Do that and, I quote the empowerment lady: “basically, you have nothing more to worry about.”

Five or six customers were waiting in the post office. Everybody was in the second half of life’s span. Everybody had had the vote since before ’94. Nobody was joyous.

I had tried to be slightly joyous. I offered a greeting when I arrived, but people mmmphed in that embarrassed bourgeois manner, scandalised at unlicensed breaching of queue silence. So I like everyone was a stalagmite, separate to the other stalagmites, waiting in our separate spaces while the counters proceeded with lo-o-ng transactions.

Then a girl came in, a black girl in a school uniform. She looked around in the manner of someone in an unfamiliar place.

“Excuse me”, she said to a tannie at the back, “where do I go to send a parcel?”

A tribute to people who have made my day; a tribute and a thanks, prompted by Martha.

Future works for IMS in Alrode. Reward sells plants at Garden World. Teacher is on trial for murder in Pretoria. Kaizer Chiefs’ PRO is Putco.

Doubt is a waiter at Sophia’s. His other name is Ntandabuzo, which is “doubt” in Zulu. He was a sickly baby; they thought he wouldn’t pull through. He did, and has one-liners of his own, a la: “without Doubt you would be lost.”

The chap who fixes the fishpond is Sandboy. Sarah Britten claims in her book to have been served by a waitress named Petulant.

Njabulo Nduli is deputy director general of agriculture. She has the boy’s version of the name, girls are normally Nonjabulo. All her life people have said “wrong name”. She replies “my name is my name”. At school, a teacher changed it. Njabulo changed it back. She doesn’t know why her parents chose it. She has an unusual surname, too, Nduli. Alongside legions of Ntulis, it comes across like Snith or Jomes.

Why they can’t or won’t or don’t send licence renewals any longer, I do not know. I soon will know, because I have just made a date with the boss, and I’ll tell you. Meantime I know this: that I took till midsummer to discover that I’ve been illegal since autumn.

Whereupon I phoned Licensing.

The guy said; “There’s a penalty, R481,80.”

I said the things that outraged citizens say in this situation, the least useless of which is: “But you never sent a renewal.”

Mr Licensing expected this. He had a patter in reply: “It is the responsibility of each and every vehicle owner to ask himself or herself each and every day, ‘am I driving my vehicle lawfully today?’”

I loved this notion, poetically speaking. I imagined confronting the shaving mirror each and every morning: “am I driving my vehicle lawfully today?” I wondered if you got dispensation on public holidays or your birthday.

This nation is in vital and urgent need. We need a petition, a petition to save our leaders. From their bodyguards.

Once I drove through Transkei with Jay Naidoo and a ministerial escort. This should have been an excellent trip. We were at beautiful places and Jay is a real mensch. Great socio-econo-polito-allroundo debates happened, at times we were able to breathe.

Unfortunately this was seldom. Mostly we were holding our breath in terror. We burned up dirt roads at double the speed limit. We saw not much but dust. Our driver considered it chicken to drop more than a yard behind the lead escort in front of us.

Coming into Umtata an aged farmer in an ancient agriculture-laden bakkie delayed us. The guys in the front car leaned out their windows, screaming and brandishing guns. I still see the driver’s flummoxed face as he lurched off the road into a wide shallow ditch where the bakkie tipped gently onto its side with lettuces bouncing out like pale green soccer balls.