Carol’s Column

Flushed with success in toiletry trade

The Government has gone mad. Again. If it has its way, South Africans will be up to their ankles in sewage and up to their eyeballs in refuse.

They’ll be taking cold water showers and crocheting by light of a candle, not to mention warming baked beans and wors on paraffin stoves.

“Your nostrils are flaring and you’re foaming at the mouth,” said my husband. “I can see you are not happy.”

“Ma’s having a crisis,” said Nicky. “She broke a finger nail.”

It’s at times like this that I know I should have become a concert pianist instead of a mother of many. I could have composed magnificent symphonies by the noteful instead of committing myself to a lifetime of parental servitude.

“This is a crisis,” I snarled. “The entire fabric of our life is being threatened by Gene Louw.”

They gazed at me blankly. “Who is Gene Louw?” asked my husband querulously.

He always queruls in the morning before he’s had his glass of ice-cold orange juice.

“Gene Louw is our Minister of Home Affairs who told supporters at the Free State National Party congress that Government plans to cut off the municipal services of people who fail to notify the authorities of changes of address.”

“You’re joking,” said my husband.

“No,” I reiterated. “If you change your address and don’t notify the Department of Home Affairs, then your name is removed from the voters’ roll. And if your name is not on the voters’ roll, you will be punished by having your services such as refuse collection, sewage, electricity and water cut off.”

“This sounds like a Monty Python show,” said my husband, crunching his muesli viciously.

“The situation is potentially explosive. Our happy little family unit of eight people and 10 animals fills four dustbins every three days, has an average of 84 baths a week, eats 168 meals and uses the WC approximately 560 times during that same week.”

“Cut off our services and we’ll have the total onslaught of the dustbin or worse,” muttered Jamie darkly.

“But think how well our vegetables will grow,” said Nicky, always a positive thinker.

In time of need, I phone my good friend Betty. She was equally distressed.

“I worked out that with my family’s lifestyle we’ll be surrounded by seven cubic metres of rubbish within a week. I have sacrificed the lettuce and asparagus patch and in its place we’re digging a 20 m pit into which we’ll throw our rubbish.”

Meanwhile, on the home front there was plenty of activity. I went downstairs to discover Jamie surrounded by a pile of textbooks.

“Do you know that in India and Japan sewage is used to fertilise crops and that both countries reputedly grow the finest vegetables in the world?”

I was suitably impressed.

“I’ve solved all our problems,” he said. “I’ve made a downpayment on a bakkie, I’ve spoken to the city’s town planning department and have organised a contract to deliver all refuse to allocated building sites that need ground levelling.”

Within two days, Jamie had erected a large billboard in the garden which offered a refuse collection service and, by the end of the week, he’d taken his siblings into partnership, they’d paid for the bakkie and their profits were soaring.

I noticed that several of the neighbours had followed suit. Unwittingly, the Minister of Home Affairs had caused an industrial revolution throughout South Africa’s suburbia.

And then, yesterday morning, 500 000 brown lead-lined envelopes were delivered to the house.

“What are these for?” I asked my son who was methodically stacking them on the stoep.

“We are expanding,” he answered. “We’re going into the mail order business. The company will be called Excrementals Unlimited and we’ll be exporting local droppings to Japan where there is a great demand for natural fertiliser among vegetable growers.”

Naturally, I was extremely proud of my enterprising and creative offspring. But it was Jamie’s final declaration of intent that brought tears to my eyes.

“Furthermore, Ma,” he said, “there’s a strong conservation element involved in this project as there’s no doubt we are preserving the faecosystem.”

Quite.

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