Well this one was interesting because I knew I would get a giggle out of it.
This post has taken me a couple of days to write because I just had too many questions.
Basically the South African Police Service has 722 brigadiers and generals on its payroll and they get paid R4.99 million a year each. Thats R3.6 billion in total. . . . What!
Now I loved the article because there were so many questions and answers that were addressed. So I got my giggle. Giggle - why giggle ... well its something that is so indicative of this modern age. We call it the age of information, well I also call it the age of greed. Greed is everywhere and is not equatable to good and evil, the moral and immoral. South Africa is a wealthy country. A good country but sad to say expert at the "Fraud and Abuse" that we all so often hear banded about. S.A. is also a tolerant country because we rarely see the ying and the yang of it all.
There were a few questions that started to sneak up on me, but the one that kept rising to the top was how many generals do you need? Was my concept of history skewed by the thought that the higher the rank the fewer there were. I mean would you have 50 or 100 generals on horse back leading the charge into battle. I don’t think so. One general is sitting on the hill at the back, behind his army - directing everything. Isn’t he. How would 2, 5 or even 10 generals function.
Do 700 odd generals tell each other what to do. So does that mean there is a top general and then a succession of 700 generals that sit around and make the bottom general direct things. I mean at what point do we start using the other definition of the word.
When I left school, you could either go to university or you were drafted into the army for 2 years of national service or police if you wanted a career. Learning the hierarchy of things was at the core of just about everything. Rank and what that looked like and meant, was drilled into you everyday. Recognition and respect was learnt and practiced. Now you also got around while you were troop, so you had to recognise all the shoulder and arm ranks, the stars, castles and stripes so that the correct etiquettes were followed. But there was no need to learn past a certain rank, because you would never see them.
I have visions of 400 hundred generals wandering around the corridors of the headquarters all saluting each other. “Morning General.” “ Morning General”.
Now I wanted to know how many generals it takes to change a light bulb. So I took to the internet to find out if there was any information. I hunted for past quantities of generals over the years and found something the University of Pretoria had put together.
In the 1990’s there were 14 generals.
This made me feel better as something in me felt guilty questioning the need for over 700 generals.
I found historical facts stating that 14 generals were sufficient 20 odd years ago.
Somehow this made more sense to me as I could understand a country of 1.2 million square km with four countries bordering SA would need a few people in command.
Now I have been witness to golf days that are hosted by Municipality Mayors and their entourage. I certainly hope that our top police brass don't have that behaviour in them.
