The voucher fiasco: How good ideas turn into disasters

If you want to turn a good idea and a fairly decent initiative into a major fiasco, here’s how: put together a benefit for the poor. Then make it available to only some of said poor, needy and desperate.

Make the organisation and the criteria so loose and vague that there’s lots of room for fraud, theft, nepotism and favouritism. Make sure that the communication is so vague as to be almost nonexistent, so that jolly rumours can abound and have people scrambling around like chickens at feeding time.

Strip these people of the last vestiges of dignity that they may have.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the great South African voucher fiasco.

I first heard about the voucher initiative about a year ago. During a break at a function, someone whispered to me that the local councillor was giving out vouchers to the needy. This was a “don’t tell anyone” sort of whisper, accompanied by furtive glances left and right.

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I later forgot all about it but that was certainly an early sign that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. When such things are whispered in corridors, one needs to ask.

Lest you think I exaggerate, let me simply tell of what’s been happening at a residence for senior citizens. There have been accusations that ANC members have been listing the names of other ANC members to receive vouchers.

That’s a pretty good way to divide people and to stoke up the animosity – something that we’ve always been very skilled at in this country. It’s also clearly unethical and, I would guess, illegal. The money does not belong to the ANC.

And yes, there are stories of chicanery involving our honourable councillors.

One morning there was a long queue of people anxious to have stamped proof of address documents. I suspect that some people did not even know what the queue was for but joined it because it was one more of the many queues we have grown to know and love.

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There have been as many versions of how the entire initiative works as there have been people to tell them. That tells you that this is as good a cock-up as any that we have seen over the years.

I could go on and on but let this suffice to give an idea of the witches’ brew that this has become. Anger, anxiety, accusations are all part of it. So yes, if you want to transform an initiative into utter chaos, this is one way to do it.

This begs a few questions: Why give a benefit so desperately needed by so many to only some?

If cost is an issue, then why not find another way to benefit the many, many needy?

Why in South Africa would you open the door to more looting, nepotism and favouritism? While there are many competent, conscientious councillors in our country, it is common cause that far too many others excel only in dishonesty and incompetence. The voucher affair reminds me, perhaps unfairly, of the ANC penchant for tossing things out to the so-called masses.

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We are talking about T-shirts, braais and other goodies. Never miss an opportunity to strip people of their dignity.

In the classic Western movie, The Magnificent Seven, someone speaks of a man who took his clothes off and jumped into a cactus bush. When asked why he did it, he replied: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Someone, somewhere in government, is probably, head in hands, saying the same thing. We have got to stop running with half-baked ideas that lead to more of the same as we’ve experienced down the years. Think things through.

Quoting a few lines from the cannibalised version of The Heart Will Go On:

Once more you open a door

It’s an invite to loot even more

You touch it one time

It’s stuffed for a lifetime

And never will work any more.

ANC, wherever you are, I believe that your nonsense will go on… and on.

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