Dear Helen

I never thought I’d have to write you a letter.  Thus far your leadership has been brilliant up until now and did not warrant me correcting you, but now I feel I need to help you out. It is a little long, but hang in there.  I have dug up as much information as I could about your “unprotected sex constitutes attempted murder”.  It is to say the least one of the most ridiculous concepts I have heard, well not entirely.  There was that one time Eve suggested I wear a condom while we were having having phone sex, which I tried, but wearing the condom on my tongue was really uncomfortable and I sounded ridiculous, plus the taste is horrible, I should probably try flavored condoms next time.  Jokes aside, let’s get down to business.

Firstly, the idea that a man can be charged with attempted murder for not wearing a condom if he is having sexual relations with multiple women is quite offensive and sexist.  It is a woman’s choice who she sleeps with, if that man does not wear a condom, she has the right to say no.  If he does not honor that and forces himself on her then that constitutes rape for which we have a well established law system.  Although I would like to see harsher punishment for such crimes such as castration or a kick the balls three times a day,  we have a system, imperfect as it may be.

Secondly AIDS has been seen to be more prevalent in poor uneducated rural areas, which leads us to believe that the root of the problem lies in poverty and education.  So your job is to increase education levels, not fill prisons with men who do not wear condoms.  I am no financial analyst but I suspect keeping a criminal in jail for 15  to 20 years (I will assume a baseline number here for attempted murders) is probably far more expensive than keeping a child in school for 12 years and 3 years in a government funded University.  I could be wrong, but I suppose we could do a financial analysis on this.

Thirdly, let’s say we adopt such a law, enforcing such a law would be near to impossible, we already have such huge problems with policing existing crimes, how do you propose our law enforcement and public prosecution and public defense systems can handle this?  Because if we boil down to the demographic that this law will mostly be targeted at, they are not the rich and affluent but the poorest of the poor.  So they won’t be able to afford private council and the state would have to provide council.  More money spending.  I personally would love to see the financial analysis of  what it would cost to arrest, prosecute and keep an offender in prison for the average number of years someone gets for attempted murder.

All that being said though, I understand where you are coming from.  Why should the state spend two billion per annum on ARVs to people that take no responsibility for their actions?  Surely the tax payer of this country cannot keep on footing this bill.  But we need to find sustainable ideas that continually focuses on educating the masses.  Democracy only works in an educated society. It is otherwise an utter failure in uneducated societies as the populist and leader of the poor will always be at the helm of the country as is currently the case in South Africa.

If I were you I’d aim to make prisons less full and schools fuller. I know what you are asking, how do we do this?  I am glad you asked.  I have several ground breaking ideas that I think you will like.

Firstly, prisons are a mess right.  Prisoners costs the state a fortune and they get opportunities many poor people on the street doesn’t.  I know the prisons are tough as there is crime inside the prison but that is because criminals have too much energy at the end of the day.  So, what am I saying.  I am calling for chain gangs of course.  Not inhumane and not in a way that is not constructive.  I say we decentralize prisons into smaller units and criminals are spread across the country and will be made to maintain roads and infrastructure which otherwise cannot be done by the municipalities.  There are many creative and interesting ways we can assure they won’t escape.  Like explosive collars, perhaps explosive is a little far, maybe just electric collars.  If they exit a zone outside of a certain zone… zap.. enough energy to put them on the ground.  Ingenious I know, you can thank me later.  But we need to be fair.  The money that would have been paid to workers can go into accounts for these prisoners of which 25% they can use to either a) pay back a debt to their victim or families of the victim b) pay for schooling for an underprivileged child or c) donate to a charity of their choice.  The other 25% would go into an account which would be kept for them once they leave jail, so that they have something to fall back on and re-integrate into society.  The 50% saving will go back to the state to be used for further educational purposes. There are many more ideas with prisoners but our time is limited.  The basic idea is, criminals have a debt to repay to society and they should do so.

In terms of the land claims here is what I suggest we do.  We buy land at reduced costs from farmers (not quite willing buyer willing seller, but not just taking outright), but they get to stay on the land for their generation and the next, so we give them a chance and for their grand kids to make alternate plans.  They get a cash injection which they can use to whatever nefarious purpose they see fit, plus we give them a small percentage in the farms profitability for the two generations.  What we do then is some of our lesser offenders, thieves and the like,  will get to work on these farms alongside state employed staff.  They will get a portion of the money which is made and anything left goes into upgrading farms and upskilling workers.  Government has first right of refusal to produce from the farm at a pre-determined rate which is marginally profitable for the farm but more competitive than those of private sector produce. Anything the government does not wish to buy may sold on the open market which is even with that of the private sector, so that government does not compete with private sector in exports.  This way the land serves the original farmer, plus the people of the country who benefit from fresh produce which can be made part of a government grant.  We can also use these government farms to spearhead green initiative.  Two birds one stone and all that.

Education is a problem, there is no way we can deny that, but we need to realize we cannot save everyone all the time.  We can only save some people sometimes.  But if we get clever about how we deal with our money spending and not propose ideas that flies in the face on the constitution, like criminalizing not wearing condoms and having to “have to disclose” your status to someone, then we can make progress.  Your continued defense of this topic does not bode well for your support and speaks to a very small ultra conservative constituency. Your young voters will think again before voting should these ideas continue to be raised.  My advice would be retract the statement, apologize for the offence caused and let’s start brainstorming real solutions.

I have many more ideas but I will leave those for another letter.

Get in touch, I’m sure we can make things work.