Scene: The bedroom of a Tuscan-style mansion in Morningside, Sandton, one of the homes of a cellphone company chief executive. Protective barbed wire fences, machine gun emplacements and heavy artillery can be glimpsed through a window.
The CEO speaks: "I don't get it - these chatty chaps in Parliament getting all aggro about us. Reduce our charges for connecting between networks by half by November this year and from R1,25 to just 15 cents by 2012? They're mad.
"If they knew what we had to spend to keep them nattering. I'm always telling my staff: 'Remember: we're not a charity. Everything costs. And don't forget that those dummies - our beloved clients - expect to be charged. They like it."
Continues Below↓I told the Association of Morticians: "The cellphone industry is a triumph of our new democracy. We connect people whether they like it or not.
"We're the ones making those African dreams real... all that stuff from that oke whose name I've forgotten - with the General Smuts bokbaard and quoting Keats the whole time... we've done South Africa, now it's Africa's turn."
I told the Council of Sanitaryware Professionals, democracy is flicking a finger to chat with anyone. And "if you don't like what others say or, if you do, we'll drop the call".
Don't the Parliament okes realise: Africa can't feed itself, but we can feed Africa phones at Proudly South African rates?
No one bothers to thank us for the unique experience of listening to the music while holding on for an operators. They forget we're good corporate citizens who spend others' money on good causes, like rugby and whatnot. Hell, we even pay a bit of tax here and there, maybe. Hey, babe, where's the J&B?
Those agitators who sit around all day just talking on our cellphones - they accuse us of collusion.
They reckon we rig prices and we don't publish our minutes. Of course we don't publish minutes: we're saving the rainforests.
Jeez, last time I looked this wasn't some sick nanny state where decent business competitors get jailed if they sit around and chat about business conditions.
Anyway, it's unfair. Bet the lawyers and the accountants don't get together in their professional associations to moan about the weather or brag about golf handicaps. No ways.
No ways we discuss prices with the competition: a wink, a couple of fingers in the air, a nod - hardly discussion. Minutes? We weren't born yesterday?
Then this parliamentary oke said we were in bed with the regulator. Hell, we're got our pride: have you seen the guy?
No man, the regulator and us are like a couple of nags who whinny, snort and say howzit over the fence.
In our meetings - been going since 1996 - we get the process right. If something goes wrong, we wait a year and start again. And again and again.
We're not sleazeballs; if anyone contradicts me, I'll make sure they'll have to get into bed with Telkom. Shame!
Why'm I so uptight? Hell, we've survived worse: we fixed the Competitions Board; we handle moaners - our stakeholders.
Parliamentarians... they've got open minds: the wind blows straight through their upstairs.
So we'll tell them democracy is lots of choice. We'll go on about thousands of different packages and prices.
We'll drown them in detail; after two days they'll do what the stooges - I mean our valued customers - do. They'll back off, yelling "Mummy!"
Hey, what's yer name, where's the bottle?
greig.rj@gmail.com
