A fair cop

On Monday I stumbled, eyes wide shut, into a metro police roadblock in Main Reef Road in Roodepoort. I will now have to contribute 500 smackers to their Xmas gooi — talking on a cellphone. What a doos, Kriel!

I don’t have any alibis. It was a fair cop, as my mates in Wimblefontein would say.

But the street-theatre of real-life extravaganza the cops put on was worth every cent — and more enlightening than a Julio Iglesias concert.

First there was the Cecil B de Mille scale of the production. I counted 23 cops, excluding the SAPS and the plainclothes UCs who stood out like distended dark thumbs. There was even a “supervisor” on site — though his mind was clearly focused on demonstrating his status to the suits (officials) whose entourage of China-eyes had pulled over not because of sin but to whatty-whatty.

The crazy labyrinth of higgledy-piggledy orange cones caused a traffic jam that would have made the LA beltway look like the road between Marydale and Draghoender. So the platoons of police mostly stood around drinking coffee and doing the how’s-yaw-granny-these-days.

Then there was Robert, my pet policeman. He asked for my driver’s licence, which I keep in my wallet. I asked for his ID, which he keeps in a similar but much more posh sartorial accessory. His eyes widened in dazed anticipation as I extracted my wallet — anticipation either of a bribe or nailing me for offering one. And in front of his “supervisor” (not that he would have noticed).

At the same time he opened his zooty wallet, and R20 notes filled the air like David Blaine was doing some street magic. It was all a rather comic, but telling pantomime of LiSA.

In the hands of a better social poet the chaos and ineptitude Robert demonstrated would be a metaphor for the utter havoc and incomparable ineptitude of the overwhelming majority of those who protect and serve. One wonders what their “skills development” needs are.

The Great Robert told me he had been a metro cop for six years and I duly congratulated him. Life as a conjuror’s assistant must have been really tough, I said. He politely paid no heed, as Robert Plant and Jimmy Page mutedly sang Dazed & Confused on the CD player.

It took Robert 23 minutes to write up my ticket — partly because he wasn’t quite sure what crime I had committed, but mostly because his 20-plus colleagues kept interrupting him. There is no doubt where small talk ranks over efficiency with our metroglodites. Then Dear Robert had such difficulty reading his own chicken-scratchings that I did it for him, showed where I had to sign, gave him his non-working Bic back and signed with my own “pen” — he didn’t seem to think a retractable pencil was a problem as I chuckled inwardly.

Then we discovered that the joint chaos efforts of the “cast of thousands” had parked everyone in, thanks to some high-ranking desk-jockey’s zhoozh black official Merc in front of me, so that it demanded the combined efforts of eight cops, all of different mind, to extricate me.

Forty-five minutes later I left. And 702 was reciting the usual list of Jozi’s traffic problems (amazing memories they must have, ’cause it’s easily as long as The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner).

And it occurred to me that in the midst of our low-level civil war, our safety depends on the likes of Robert, and his buddies, and his supervisor, and his supervisors all the way up to Charles “Whinger” Nqakula and his buddy Tabs and their mass debate (pun intended) next month in Limpopo, and I couldn’t help thinking how far we have come. Fifteen years ago this would have been unimaginable.

And then I thought how far we should have come had competence prevailed. And I shuddered to think how long it would be before we finally have something to be proud about. Except the Bokke and Jake.

Then again, it’s not my worry because I will have been long scattered to the winds by the time that miracle happens.