We Need A Country review: A prophecy about SA

The striking similarities between the details emerging at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, particularly the Bosasa saga, and We Need A Country make Monde Nkasawe’s book appear to be a prophecy.

In his story, Nkasawe cleverly cross-pollinated the Guptas and the Watsons of Bosasa notoriety.

It all begins in a Hong Kong bar, where the discussion between Mr Cook and Mr Pradesh has the Guptas written all over it, complete with “Bell Pottinger” and their “white monopoly capital” and “radical economic transformation” propaganda.

Readers will probably feel that the plot Cook unveils to Pradesh over a glass of whiskey was how the Gupta brothers hatched their scheme before they came to this country to capture it with the help of government.

An illegal, underground highway is built to loot the state’s resources. The brains behind the highway, stretching from Bloemfontein to Queenstown, are those in the Dark Cabinet.

They are 10 cabinet ministers carefully selected and fed bribes to loot the country’s resources for Mr Cook and his righthand man, Mr Pradesh, who are two mafioso from China. The Dark Cabinet is bent on draining every available resource leaving the nation bankrupt.

Fuel prices shoot up, there’s an exponential increase in mineworkers’ deaths, unaccounted for use of electricity and service delivery strikes break out in every township.

Most believe it’s mismanagement of state funds, but General Lucille Bester doesn’t buy that. She believes it is much more sinister. But she will need to prove it.

She teams up with Constable Nombeko Ncovana, a police officer just out of college, who discovers that the country has been captured and its resources are being looted through a state-of-the-art secret highway.

The result? The 10 cabinet ministers implicated in state capture are arrested. The president resigns. The president’s son is in hiding. This might just be a new dawn for the country … or not.

Isn’t this what has happened in South Africa? Will SA’s politicians implicated in state capture end up in jail?

One of the characters, Victor Skali, resembles the former chief operations officer of Bosasa, Angelo Aggrizi. He plays a central role in the construction of the underground highway and knows every facet of it.

After he is arrested by Ncovana, he spills the beans on everyone else involved in the construction project; the bribes paid to the cabinet ministers and those who lost their lives in the process.

Skali is killed, Pradesh is killed by Cook who then flees back to China – just as the Guptas fled to Dubai.

This is just too close to the reality we are currently facing in SA. Does Nkasawe know something we don’t?

Monde Nkasawe.

The country is watching this saga unfold and asking what will be the result of the Bosasa and state capture sagas? If indeed Nkasawe was prophesying in his book, should we then be looking at it to find out what happens next?

I know Nkasawe to be a great writer. I read his regular comments on Facebook and I said to him that he should be a novelist. He replied: “Yes, I am a novelist.”

He posted several of his self-published novels and I was impressed at his creative story-telling and use of familiar events that make readers feel like they are part of the story.

All his books are easy to read, not too lengthy and affordable. Nkasawe also penned Journey of the Heart; Pieces; The Death of Nowongile; The Madness of Rodney Makhelwane; Liziwe, The Fullness of Time and Go to the Eastern Cape.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

Info

We Need A Country

Author: Monde Nkasawe
Publisher: Sifiso Publishers
Price: R189
ISBN: 9780620810838

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