The major problem with the Gupta scandal is that it didn’t come off as a deal; it came off as some rich toff with political connections using them to get one over on the rest of us.
But if that rich toff actually pays for the VIP experience, that changes things.
The Guptagate scandal has - aside from horribly embarrassing the country - revealed a bit of a gap that our country could possibly exploit.
So far as I have heard the plane landing at the Waterkloof Air Force Base didn’t actually inconvenience the base all that much, and the various elements to the landing sound rather pleasant.
Couldn’t we, as a country, sell this to rich foreigners who want to get married? Sure, we would make them pay for it... But just imagine someone with more money than sense, say the sort of person who would buy a diamond encrusted car, wants to get married.
We could sell them a marriage unlike anything in the rest of the world – with everything from snacks at landing, to the blue light brigades.
The way the Gupta scandal went off sounds like it was rather pleasant on the day – sure, the political fallout hasn’t been, but I am pretty sure the bride and groom had a fun wedding.
If we could turn this from something you buy with the president’s name, and into something you buy with actual rands, well why not?
What we really object to isn’t as much the blatant corruption, as the fact that we aren’t getting in on the action. Bribe one person and its called corruption, bribe an entire nation and its called investment.
Sure it makes a bit of a mockery of our national defences to turn our military bases into ultra-luxury airports for the stupidly rich, but it isn’t like we're a particularly militant nation anyway – war has never really worked out well for us.
This on the other hand could. Just imagine the slogan "Come to sunny South Africa, where your green can buy a 22 carat gold wedding"
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