Dealing with www.dodgydudes.co.za

EVER heard the lament: there’s never a cop when you need one? In our, er … well, nation, it’s the second verse of the national anthem. Most of us whiteys don’t know this because we only get as far as the first verse before our tongues look like some old rope in the knot-tying event at a Scouts’ jamboree.

Well, if cops are hard to find, dodgy dudes are a dollar a dozen. It’s only their advertising that’s below the line.

This is a plea: be kind to your light-fingered friend for you never know when you’re going to need him or her. Hey, look, it is the season to be jolly and dodgy dudes deserve goodwill too.

I’m not talking about the rapists and murderers, the child abusers and drug pushers, the ruling elite and their comrades. They’re just plain immoral, soiled and sordid criminals

I’m talking about new social networks born of necessity. Where you can get your cellphone fixed at a decent price and within a day or two. Or where you can have that whine in your car silenced without creating a dozen other unrelated costly troubles. Where you can get a dude in to fix your electrics without having a four-block queue of municipal officials wanting a handout.

There should be a site called Dodgydudes.co.za — though that may pose problems ’cause the flotsam and jetsam from the Scorpions’ assassination by the ANC are so gormless they’ll be all over it like an outbreak of idiocy at an ANCYL opskop.

Maybe some of the bright young geeks out there can come up with a way of forming a clearing house where you can get things done efficiently, effectively, first time and within budget by dealing with the dodgy dudes.

I hear your lament: but wouldn’t it be illegal?

Well, probably. A bit. But who cares? We’re so enmeshed in day-to-day petty rule bending and misdemeanours just to survive that there is arguably a sound moral justification for Dodgy Dudes anyway. And even if there isn’t one, Dodgy Dudes can probably find one.

After all we pay crippling taxes don’t we? You don’t drive anywhere without a slush fund under the front seat for “Vehicular Expenses” at roadblocks. You deposit and withdraw money from banks, don’t you? You fill up your car at the garage. You go to political rallies. You litter. You speed. You pay workers miserable wages. These are all dodgy practices. What’s the difference in merely bringing dodgy dealings out of the closet?

Look what Prohibition did for the American economy. Once it was lifted and bootlegging was no longer necessary, they stopped killing guys with Tommy guns and pouring hectolitres of good shit down the street. Overnight a thriving multimillion-dollar illegal industry became a ready-made multibillion-dollar legal one that makes Graham Mackay of SABMiller more than R15 000 each and every hour — before perks!

No more secret signs in back-alley doorways and mistrust and unreliable logistics networks and poor quality products. Overnight it all emerged above ground and perfectly respectable.

Dealing with the Dodgy Dudes is no different to voting or pressing the flesh at chambers of commerce or attending an alumni gathering or going to a casino or hiring some dodgy strippers for your buddy’s bachelor party.

And, since by now everyone has been a victim of theft, burglary and hijacking, the biggest industry in the sub-continent, why not make it work for you instead of against you?

Think of the possibilities. Cheaper goods (and not just at flea markets), cheaper services (especially panel-beaters, car towing, plumbing, washing machine, TV and vehicle repairs), quicker dispute resolution (a quick physiology presentation about knee caps by the Dodgy Dudes and Nkola Motata, Tony Yengeni or Robert McBride would have been sorted), more efficient wealth distribution closing the gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Which means less poverty and less crime and more jobs. Oh, the benefits are endless!

The Dodgy Dudes have the best intelligence networks around, so no more being abused, oppressed or exploited by some latter-day Sheriff of Nottingham posing as your boss. Click onto www.robinhood.co.za and the problem gets sorted out without CCMA and onerous red tape. You’ve been waiting eight months for your passport or ID? Call 0860-BASHER and you get it in three days.

All for a small fee, of course, but I bet the tshongololos of public service would quickly become roadrunners of efficient delivery.

The ripple effect of these improved efficiencies would free up cops to direct traffic so we could get to work quicker, reduce wear and tear on our cars, keep taxis out of the emergency lanes and cut fuel bills in half. Given a year the country will have saved enough to build a brand new hi-tech hospital in every dorp from De Aar to Dundee and Musina to Mossel Bay.

The biggest problem the Dodgydudite Movement will face, of course, is how to stop it being taken over by the giant public-private partnership congloms. Try as I might, and having consulted numerous resources including Jamie Oliver, Mythbusters and the authoritative Het Zuidwestern en Overbergnuus, this will remain a challenge.

One thing is for sure: they will want to take it over and we must protect it from exploitation at all costs. Just look what happened to La Cosa Nostra once Washington got its teeth into it. Only by moving to Pietermaritzburg did the Yakuza avoid becoming an affiliate of Yamaha and the buccaneers off the coast of buccan Somalia are on the brink of an African Union-brokered deal to make them the Glorious Navy of Horn of Africa, complete with black, green and yellow skull-and-crossbones.

But dealing with the Dodgy Dudes is not so dodgy really. My cellphone works just peachy. My car cost me next to nothing. I’ve made such great friends. Biltong and red wines and use of their beach cottages … no, sweat my china. There’s none of the politically correct rubbish that bedevils everything else. It’s just business, nxa my bra’.

I’ll give 45:1 odds that the global financial meltdown would never have happened had the Dodgy Dudes been operating world markets. Hell, I’m so passionate about this movement for good that I’ll give you 100:1 the Dodgy Dudes would never have allowed global warming in the first place!

For heaven’s sake, people, it’s bad for business. And that’s the bottom line.