I thought God had finally put me on silent mode. You know that phase, when nothing is working, your bank account is doing hide-and-seek and even your own thoughts start speaking to you with attitude. I was there. Properly there. Sitting with my life like it’s a group project where everyone else passed and I’m still waiting for feedback.
I even started questioning my career.
Maybe journalism isn’t it. Maybe I misread the calling. Maybe I should have tried stand-up comedy. At least comedians get paid to struggle. Me? I’m out here struggling for character development, unpaid, unreviewed and apparently underqualified in creative accounting, because clearly, that’s where the growth industry is.
Just when I was deep in that spiral, boom, law enforcement woke up. Not just locally. Even across the border. It was like God said, ‘Relax. I didn’t leave you. I just needed a few episodes to build the plot and gather receipts’.
suddenly, everything started making sense. Those people we thought were moving fast. Oh, they were moving. Just not in the direction we thought. They weren’t building. They were eating. Let’s not dress it up with big English. They were eating.Tender comes in, they eat.Payment clears, they eat.
Another deal lands, now everybody’s eating.
At this point, it’s not even dishonesty. It’s catering and not the neat kind with waiters and trays. No. This is the kind where people are piling plates like they don’t trust tomorrow, which, to be fair, they probably shouldn’t have, because the numbers coming out now? Yoh.R300 000 here. Gone.
R38 000 there. Also gone.And the money is moving in ways that don’t even try to hide anymore. Into a butcher’s account. A butcher.
At this point, the crime scene is seasoning itself. Even the evidence is getting tenderised. You can’t even be shocked. You just sit there like, ‘Of course. Why not? Let’s involve meat’. For, if you’re going to eat, you might as well marinate.While all this is happening, you’re outside trying to live a normal, honest life. You take someone out and suddenly you’re under pressure. Not emotional pressure. Financial pressure, because now there’s something called girlfriend allowance.
Like I’m raising a dependent. In this economy.
So now, in addition to rent, transport, groceries and the Eswatini Revenue Service taking deductions so sharp they feel like personal attacks, I must also fund a lifestyle?
Hair. Nails. Soft life. Occasional emergencies that look suspiciously like shopping. At this point, I’m not dating. I’m budgeting.Actually, let me be honest, I’m catering. Just on a smaller scale, because apparently, love now also needs a menu. And if you don’t keep up? Ah, society is ready for you.
“Look at so-and-so,” they say. “You’re in the same field.”Yes. Same field.
Different farming methods, because so-and-so is not irrigating with sweat. So-and-so is irrigating with tenders. Fully fertilised. Well-fed. No drought, just buffet, but nobody says that part.They just see results.The car. The apartment. The glow. Nobody sees the paperwork warming up in the background like leftovers in a microwave, because make no mistake, the paperwork always warms up.
And when it’s ready, everything changes.
The same people who were loud about success suddenly become very quiet.From: ‘I’m blessed.’
To: ‘No comment.’From: ‘God is good.’
To: ‘I was misled.’From: ‘Hard work pays.’To: ‘I don’t recall.’You don’t recall? You recalled every transaction when you were eating. Now your memory is also on a diet. And the lifestyle? Gone. Those cars we admired? Auctioned. Those flats? Repossessed. That furniture? Discounted like it owes someone an apology.
Everything must go. Including the appetite.
Now people are learning laws they never planned to study. Not from books, from experience. Real-life tutorials. Very practical.Very hands-on. Like eating. And here’s the part that really got me. All this time, we thought these people were building wealth. No.They were building appetite, because the more they got, the more they ate. And it was never enough. Not the first payment. Not the second. Not even the one that made them suspiciously successful overnight. They kept going. Like people at a buffet who are no longer hungry, they’re just committed.
Committed to the process. Committed to the plate. Committed to finishing what they started, even when nobody asked them to start.And that’s how you know it was never about survival. It was about consumption. The kind that doesn’t stop when you’re full. The kind that keeps eating… even when people are staring.
Now look at it.Every story sounds the same. “Where did the money go?”
We ate it.What about the cars? We ate those too, in instalments. And the relationships? Part of the meal plan. At this point, even love has receipts. Romance is now a line item. Affection is processed monthly. You’re not dating anymore. You’re auditing the menu.And the irony?
For years, we were out here feeling behind. Feeling like we’re failing. Comparing our honest lives to somebody else’s highlight reel, not realising it was a takeaway menu.
Meanwhile, the only thing these people were ahead in was chewing speed, because here’s the real punchline and this is the part nobody says out loud: ‘They didn’t get caught because they stole.’
No!They got caught because they couldn’t stop eating. And eventually, when you eat like that, fast, loud, marinated in your own confidence, without even checking who’s watching, you don’t just finish the food: You become the evidence.
I thought God had finally put me on silent mode. You know that phase, when nothing is working, your bank account is doing hide-and-seek and even your own thoughts start speaking to you with attitude.