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Two plus two = four. Period. Not 22 or any other weird and apparently clever but really stupid answer you may try to dazzle fellow social media idiots with.

If you want to live a high life, you need to be rolling in cash. No two ways about it. I know you can hang around with the rich and inundate social media with pictures of yourself as one of the beautiful people. But at the end of the day when you go home, you will still not be rich.

In the same way, if you want the opportunities and the snob value that come with dropping the snotty name where your child learns, then be prepared to pay for that privilege. Do not irritate us with your whining about how these schools are charging fees in the stratosphere. You chose to take your kids there because you admired their champagne standards. But now that you are in, you want to pay beer money and still expect to drink champagne?

It is people like you who leave a trail of lowered standards and then start complaining about how everything is going to hell in a basket.

There are a lot of beer and “masese” institutions to choose from. Like water, find your own level and stick to it. If your wallet water table is now low, you must downgrade your precious little bundle of stress from a very snotty school to a just-there institution.

So just cough up the fees or go away quietly.

Winnowing wheat away and storing the chaff
We hear that the long arm of the law is reaching out to grab the machete gangs and they will soon be a thing of the past. Sip. Pause. Long pull. Scratch the head.

Yes, there are more questions than answers here. Top of the mind is where were all these gallant, efficient and capable security force teams that can wipe out machete gangs in a few weeks, when the menace germinated, sprouted and mutated into its present hydra like form?

Whose strings had the security forces tied up and unable to act before now? Of course I cannot repeat bar talk as the gospel truth, but between you and I, didn’t we all hear whispers of security forces being indirectly cautioned against acting on the machete wars?

Anyway, so now we hear that illegal artisanal miners are being cleaned up. Cue to gulp down my drink. This sounds much like building a large dam across a mountain next to the valley through which the river flows.

Because machete killers are not miners. The illegal miners were just an easy target because they could not exactly rush to the police to report theft of the proceeds from their highly illegal activities. They would likely end up being prosecuted themselves.
So on record no crime was committed because there were no complainants. Perhaps that is why no one was worried about the machete gangs.

But now the gangs have clearly left the panning wilderness to storm the concrete jungles of the city. Therefore, the arrest of the illegal artisanal miners is likely to only push the machete killers more into the cities where a whole lot more easy targets are ready for plucking.

But again, maybe it will remain a case of criminal versus criminal and us poor drinkers should not concern ourselves with such matters as how the machete menace seems to be growing rather than being removed. For we have no stashes of cash to attract the attention of robbers.

And who knows? Maybe soon, and real soon, these machete gangs will target a few irritating show-offs who like to flaunt their Hollywood lifestyles to the suffering masses without wanting to similarly shine the spotlight on the sources of such wealth. And we shall weep. Not.

For if we end up with no illegal artisanal miners the pro-environment activists will be happy, the mining companies will be happy, the claim owners will be happy, so the whole world will be happy. Who cares if the machete killers will now be openly mounting road blocks wherever they wish?
For like the hydra, unless the right head is crushed, I will wager that the machete menace will keep on sprouting more heads and slithering into more corners.

Let such cups pass you
Your favourite bar fly received a call last Saturday. “I have a friend who needs a reliable and friendly driver to take them around the city. There will be drinks aplenty once the job is done,” a voice on the phone said after introducing himself as an acquaintance.

Music to the ear in this month of the vicious school fees. And Bra Gee makes the acquaintances of new people almost every hour. So the voice received my attention.
The friend duly turned up and did not just want to be driven around. He also wanted to put yours truly in the centre of the business. And suddenly instead of just a few drinks, the stakes had been raised to more than a few bricks. Plus the mortar and roof and the land to lump the whole lot on.

I stood to walk away with half of US$ 17 600 for alternately pretending to be the representative of some shady characters on different sides of the table. Long story short, I dumped the friend at the earliest opportunity and high-tailed it out of there with the vague excuse of needing to rush somewhere and a promise to be back shortly.

I know some of you are asking why I turned my back on such a windfall and you are wondering if my ancestors cursed me with a poverty loving affliction. And you cannot figure out that the opposite is true and the dear departed I never met, whose faces crumbled into dust long before the advent of the camera, are always fighting in my corner.

For on that day they saved me from loss of the little that I have. The moment some improbable amount of money was put on the table for me to earn through my mere existence, my ancestors spotted a tsotsi immediately and told me to get out of dodge fast.

Dear drinkers, like all other criminals, con artists are on the rampage. And their game is to make you believe. So beware of opportunities that seem unbelievably opportune. Ask yourself why this person has no kith, kin or friend that they could offer such a wonderful chance to, and instead they choose you, a random stranger.

Let such cups pass you, and do not drink from the poisoned chalice. For we are drinkers, not dreamers. And we did not attend any crossover service where some prophet assured us that 2020 is our year with a miracle around the corner. Leaving us dangling low, ripe and succulent for the first con artist to come around and take a huge bite out of us.

Have we already forgotten that in the month of a goat a couple years ago we learnt that The Job cannot and must not be personalised. Maybe I was a bit drunk. But I really believed that was the reason we held that huge street carnival.
When did we make it a crime to be ambitious in this country? In fact, it should be criminal for someone to reach the level of COO or CFO without that individual dreaming of being the CEO one day. Nonsense!