President Jacob Zuma’s former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, took to Facebook to comment about prison life, leadership, integrity and friendship. Here is an edited version of what Shaik wrote.
Read: Shaik’s Facebook post ‘not about Zuma’
Seek happiness, one day at a time, live your life to its fullest, laugh and cry, fall but rise again, hate none, love all great and small, if there are those you can’t love anymore, then in your heart wish them well and move on. You will find that life somehow is much more enjoyable without them.
Hold dear to your soul, your family, for this bond goes on for eternity. Most of all, have integrity in whatever you pursue – even if it is just simple friendships, and this is where I get a bit serious with you all.
I have learnt many things in life but realised very few, having met many interesting people all over the world.
Kings, princes, lords, grand lords, sirs, presidents, prime ministers, ministers of all sorts, shapes and sizes, billionaires and multi-millionaires, and of course – how could I forget – real gangsters, arms dealers, bankers of all kinds, models and holy men.
Few impressed me. All of them had varying appetites in their love for wealth and power. A few of them I can really state were intelligent or brilliant about it. They all simply felt they deserved it. Yet one of my most profound realisations dawned on me, in a dark mosquito-infested prison cell.
I realised that the one single mark that separated men from the boys, it was integrity.
You would be surprised just how well this quality is appreciated in the underworld and in the prisons of today.
I found real honour among thieves in prisons, more than I found on the outside in the so-called real world in politics and business.
So learn one of many lessons in life, discover quickly which of your many friends possess this invaluable ingredient. If integrity is not in them, walk away quietly and softly.
Keep them at a far distance preferably like a continent distance away – you get the drift.
I failed dismally in this regard. I died, went to hell then to heaven and returned back home the wiser.
This is what had pained me so deeply, once displaced my soul so far from me, left abandoned and alone in a dark mosquito-ridden cockroach-infested cell, torn away from the loving, caring arms of my dearest priceless and only child, then a mere 3- going on 4 months old.
What of that friendship, said I every night, every waking day, those false promises, those Buddha smiles, and the advice, “watch for the head of the snake before you strike, lest you hit the tail and there is more than one snake under the bed – wait, watch, don’t rush”.
Where are you, my friendship, now? Ah you have not noticed, the only snake I was telling you about has swallowed me up and s**t me out.
There were no other snakes under your bed, that snake I told you about whispered to me to get out, leave the room, don’t let you know it’s hungry only for you, that it’s only you, my dear friendship, it wishes to bite, swallow and then s**t out. But I got swallowed up instead, didn’t I, from shielding you from its strike?
You took cover and ran to the waiting, cheering crowds praising your success for the kill of the snake under your bed.
By then the venom, the many painful bites, the tight squeeze, the bone-crunching grip took its toll and I was cast into some distant prison cell.
There I laid in the gutters and sewers of daily life, abandoned, ridiculed and scorned for your crimes. Your words would echo in my ear, slowly and painfully it faded, all your empty promises of freedom.
Friendship, I know you have not forgotten, you simply don’t care, for your words had no value, your smile a poison arrow to a blessed, caring and giving heart.
You took unfair advantage of our friendship. Had you defined the rules of the game or what friendships really meant to you, who knows… who knows? I thought we were friends in life. Yes, now I know or, should I say, I have rather come to painfully realise what I considered good and pure friendship, friends in life and for life.
You planned and plotted until you got to the other side, then cut the rope, leaving me abandoned to the wolves, alone for me to survive.
Hey, friendship, guess what? Yes the wolves took their pound of flesh, the mosquitoes their pint of blood, the cockroaches my daily crumbs.
Eventually, I could see in the dark, the jail food got tastier each returning day, the noise clamoured down, the concoction of smells varied from day to night and life strengthened me day after day.
The world has now come to see the wolf among the sheep, the shepherd boy who was fast asleep lost his father’s cattle to a roving tribe, awakened and surprised, then hit his head with a rock, claiming to all that he was innocent of all crime or negligence. Others were to be blamed, not I.
We all come into world with nothing materially and shall depart with nothing materially.
Integrity is one of the many God- given gifts we are all born and blessed with. Try your very best never to compromise or give up this beautiful and priceless gift for selfish reasons, whether it is to save yourself and harm the next, or sell your friendship for a pot of gold whose material value fluctuates every day.
Integrity cannot be compared to a commodity or even be likened to the best performing currency.
Take care and let’s remember each other in our prayer, for peace, love, prosperity and, most of all, to all those that wish to govern us commoners, remember you are the servants of the people.
You are supposed to serve the poor and needy, the sick, the hungry and the homeless. You should be living a paltry life and not a life of luxury or in the pursuit of self-riches.
For I warn you, if you fail to do so, then you condemn not just yourself but your family and their children, you all will become pariahs and outcasts in society.
Your ill-begotten gains will have no value, your life work forgotten, your name a starting note for a joke to every joker opening his or her show.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
The Mercury