IF I were you, I’d head straight to the kitchen and empty your fridge right away. An empty fridge means less food to waste. It also means less stress, because buying food at today’s ever-increasing prices is pressuring and prohibitive. Besides, a full fridge is also environmentally unfriendly because it warms the planet.
But perhaps the biggest advantage of all is that if your fridge is empty, you stand a much better chance of picking up a cash handout from some bleeding-heart politician who believes “it’s the right thing to do”.
A woman in Philippi in the Western Cape was the beneficiary of such generosity when the ANC’s crisis-prone secretary-general, Ace Magashule, visited her home during a door-to-door election campaign last week. He was videoed opening her fridge, and when he found it empty, he reached into his pocket and handed the woman R400 in cash.
You should have seen the look of shock on the woman’s face as she accepted this unexpected windfall.
“Thank you, sir,” she exclaimed, “I’m very grateful.”
“Yeww ANC! I will never leave it, my God! My fridge will have something in it now. I’m filling up the fridge with food from this money.“
That was like manna from heaven for the poor woman, but what she may not have realised is that by accepting the cash, she had inadvertently opened a can of worms for her new benefactor.
While Magashule insists it was an act of benevolence, others believe he was buying the poor woman’s vote.
The opposition DA have already pounced on the issue, calling Magashule’s “stunt” an infringement of the Electoral Act, which prohibits the use of financial inducements to gain a vote for a political party.
While Magashule has stoutly defended his donation, his troubles are far from over.
Campaigning for the elections has obviously been an uphill battle for the embattled politician since the publication of Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s book Gangster State: Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture, which details allegations of his murky dealings while premier of the Free State and his role in state capture.
Magashule has threatened to sue the author, but that has done little to stop some cynics asking whether his R400 Philippi donation was just small change from the loot the greasy Guptas ran off with.
Now, it appears Magashule has dug himself into an even deeper hole by exhorting Philippi residents not to vote for an umlungu (white person) in the May poll.
What unadulterated racist rubbish. If there’s anyone we should avoid giving our vote to, it’s the greedy political gangsters who’ve looted our coffers so devastatingly, our cupboards and fridges lie bare.
The moral of the story?
The next time you get an offer of free groceries, avoid those cans with worms.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.