Spitting in the face of the reasonable person

Imagine for a moment what people would say if we decided to throw a lavish banquet for our wealthy friends on the streets of Duncan Village, tucking into fine meats and wines as the starving poor looked on.
The reasonable person might think this to be in bad taste and such a feast is not even a remote possibility since most of us are reasonable, sensitive people.
We can only assume from recent examples that our government is not staffed by reasonable, sensitive people.
That is the only conclusion to be reached when we read how the national transport ministry spent nearly half a million rand on a party to celebrate their minister’s Budget vote speech earlier this year.
In good times such profligate spending would raise eyebrows but during the worst recession in living memory, such an extravagance is like spitting in the face of  citizens.
The national transport department clearly lives in its own bubble of unreality – a place of ambiguous morality. This must be a place where there are no uncomfortable truths and where  500 000 more people did not join the unemployment line in the second quarter of the year.
This must be a place where salt exists only for rubbing into the wounds of others.
But the transport ministry is not alone. Government ministers have spent a reported R45m on fancy new cars for themselves over the last year while at the same time urging austerity and an end to wasteful spending. Perhaps they were unable to hear their own words above the roar of their fuel-injected injections. They clearly missed President Jacob Zuma’s own demands for an end to wasteful spending.
National planning minister Trevor Manuel now admits that it was an “error of judgment” to have agreed to buy a a new car for R1,2m.
“The Presidency purchased the vehicle – I chose the colour,” Manuel was quoted as saying, adding that he could have chosen a cheaper car.
Now he says that it is no longer cost-effective to return the car since it has been used.
What parsimonious thrift! But we can ease the minister’s mind.  We don’t mind if he returns the car and we lose a bit more of the taxpayers money we’ve already stumped up.
At least if he traded down we would believe him when he says he made a mistake. We might even forgive him.
As usual it is left to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to point out the obvious, that this spending is an immoral extravagance which flaunts wealth in the face of the poor.
Will anybody heed his comments?
We doubt they’ll even be heard above the grunts coming from the tough.