Obviously it’s greed, not need, that drives our epidemic of looting and corruption.
It seems that every other story these days is of assets acquired with the proceeds of crime being seized by the authorities.
And, each time, it’s another example showing us how these people are not breaking the law to survive or to buy basic necessities.
No, they are after the sports cars, the garish mansions, the high-end clothes and other material trappings of the wealthy.
While some want the status symbols without having worked for it, others can’t have enough even when they already have more than most.
It was just a month ago when the assets forfeiture unit (AFU) took action against several individuals behind R191 million in tender fraud that ironically happened at the Saps in 2016.
The AFU confiscated 115 vehicles including trucks and high-end cars, plus 19 houses, including at least one ostentatiously furnished, multi-million-rand mansion.
Clearly criminals without a conscience are able to sleep soundly on gold-tinted, four-poster beds, bought with stolen money.
It still boggles the mind how the police themselves flouted the procurement processes and favoured one particular company, but I’ll leave that for the courts to unravel.
All those seized assets “belong” to just eight individuals, who include former senior police commissioners, which I suppose partly answers the previous question about how it was even possible.
But it’s not just thieving public servants or the obvious criminals at the bottom of the social ladder that are guilty of this.
Respectable business people have also been acting like common gangsters running an underworld enterprise.
In the ongoing case against former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste, it was obvious that the man was determined to live a life of absolute luxury at any cost.
The Reserve Bank acted against him – and his partner – last week, attaching a fortune in material possessions while he faces financial fraud charges amounting to billions of Rand.
In this case, he lost his Hermanus mansion, six luxury cars, more than R1.2 billion in investments, jewellery and a whole wine estate.
This man also “owns” art worth close to R100m, which is just ridiculous; this is the kind of conspicuous consumption that only happens when you have so much money that you don’t know what to buy anymore.
And if that doesn’t leave an angry and bitter taste in your mouth, keep in mind that a lot of the Steinhoff money that magically vanished belonged to the Government Employees’ Pension Fund.
That means that this already wealthy man with more money than most people would earn in a lifetime, allegedly stole the nest-eggs of government workers, so that he could hang a Picasso in his lounge.
It’s a sickening thought, and more so when you consider that people like Jooste have no shame or remorse.
What strikes me most is that this sort of brazen greed continues to happen, especially considering all the humiliating stories of assets being seized, as it becomes clear that you cannot hide the ill-gotten gains.
It’s also quite apparent that one day you may be showing off with all your new material things, while the next day you might be ushered out of that fancy house in used handcuffs and into a grimy police van.