I am looking forward to the day – and I hope it’s not too far away – when I can look back on a year and consider how mundane, how ordinary it has been.

Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com

A day when soil conditions dictated that special foundations had to be used on a major housing project; a day when a computer system fault delayed property transfers by two or three weeks; a day when bank charges were scrapped like the rest of the banks in the modern world.

But that day is still a long way off – and will remain a distant dream until South Africa’s entire society normalises and its people are adjudicated as people not as representatives of one or other part of a deeply polarised society.

So when I look back on 2010 several disturbing facts spring to mind.

Such as the fact that we as taxpayers will spend more than R1-billion on repairing houses that were so badly built that they have to be demolished and rebuilt.

We have our government to thank for that: Our former Housing Minister, Lindwe Sizulu who was responsible for allowing the houses to be built in the first place and then our Human Settlements Minister, Tokyo Sexwale who condemned those properties and insisted they be torn down because they were built so badly.

Thank you both for wasting our money so well (although, of the two responsible officials, I think Sexwale was the more respectable of the two).

The next thing that springs to mind is the debacle unravelled in the Deeds Office where hundreds of fraudulent property transactions were routinely taking place until someone questioned how it was possible to transfer a property in a single day.

Within a matter of weeks widespread corruption in the Deeds Office was uncovered and, while the investigations are continuing and criminal investigations are underway, it seems the initial practices have partially been prevented.

We know that several allegedly corrupt officials have been suspended and, with a bit of luck, they might even been charged and convicted. I fear that the outcome is more likely to be a slap on the wrist and a redeployment within the corridors of ANC power – but we will have to wait and see.

Who do we have to thank for this form of corruption? A skewed society, a culture of entitlement and a lack of a common understanding of morality? That’s quite a mouthful to be thankful for (and something we probably wouldn’t ever mention to even our very best friend).

These same three factors can probably be applied with equanimity to every other form of corruption within our South African society – whether we are talking about land reform, housing, share deals, tenderpreneurs or even jobs-for-pals.

And it exists in every facet of our very skewed social structures too.

Then, I look back on the fantastic World Cup football event that we hosted so successfully. For six weeks South Africa was on holiday as tourists streamed into the stadiums that had been built in record time and at record costs.

It was a tribute to the ingenuity of the engineering community and the many thousands of workers who built each stadium so well. At least that’s what it seemed at the outset. Now, we have to measure how successful that event really was: and the only way to do that is on the basis of what unfolds in the future.

I’m not about to make a pronouncement either way because both are probably spurious at this stage: There is no measure of the long-term successes of the tourism drive, just as the longevity and sustainability of the stadiums themselves cannot be measured in the first year of their existence. Time will judge how successful this event actually was and my view, therefore, is let’s give it time.

But the cracks are starting to appear when it comes to the sustainability of the stadiums themselves: dire warnings about Cape Town Stadium and the fact that it’s a white elephant that will cost ratepayers millions to run each year.

Other similar commentaries about Nelson Mandela Bay’s stadium, the Mafikeng, Polokwane and Manguang Stadiums all seem to predict a lack of sustainability in the future. Let’s not prejudge this but rather wait and see what actually transpires.

Interestingly though, there have so far been few allegations of corruption around the stadiums themselves and the only one that springs to mind so far is the move by the Mpumalanga and Bombela officials who tried to rip-off the local community by buying the land on which the stadium was built for just R1.

There might be more aspects of corruption that come to light some time in the future but so far there have been few allegations of tender fraud, self-enrichment and dirty, dodgy double-deals.

For once, it seems, South Africa achieved an engineering and building feat without slavishly resorting to corruption to achieve is goals. And that, perhaps, is the most important legacy arising from the 2010 World Cup: the recognition that, just maybe, we can complete projects without being corrupt.

Wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could say the same thing about service delivery within our councils and 283 municipalities? Of course we can’t because, like so many other government departments, these outfits are hotbeds of corruption and possibly represent the real kindergarten for tender fraud in South Africa.

Our councils and local authorities are, frankly, a complete embarrassment for our country. The smaller councils are systematically destroying our water supplies, wasting our taxpayers’ money and enriching themselves to the detriment of the entire society they represent.

And the larger metropolitan operations – like Johannesburg – are not much better either. At least it seems that way when we look back on a year that has been marred by violent, unlawful and unruly service delivery protests by rebellious residents who are sick and tired of promises from powerful councillors and municipal officials.

Somehow the irony of their lawlessness doesn’t seem to register in the minds of the protesting masses. They don’t seem to see that the destruction of council property, the rioting and looting that accompanies these protests represents a flagrant disregard for the laws of this land.

These protesters seem to think that laws only apply to someone else and that their behaviour, while lawless, is justified.

And that’s where we seem to reach a bottomless cavern in reasoning. These protesters – like so many others – have yet to recognise, understand or accept that the laws of South Africa apply equally to everyone, not just to those few who feel like obeying them.

And it is this notion that represents just how deeply polarised and skewed South African society is.

A society that has scant respect for the rule of law; a society that believes that laws are made for someone else to obey; a society that convinces itself that it’s okay to break the law and then does so with impunity.

And that summarises just why, one day, I would like to look back on a year that was mundane in its events. For that would represent, to me anyway, that at last we were living in a law-abiding society where the rule of law is respected as it should be.

Of course, those days are way, way off.

But I, like many of you, can only hope that next year will be that little bit better than the last one.

Property 24 wishes all its readers a fabulous 2011, filled with renewed vigour, hope and prosperity and tempered by the rule of law and a deepening respect for our judicial system.

*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddy@neomail.co.za.

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