Involuntary donation

 We were driving a well established tourist road to Kruger when one of South African’s finest traffic officers stopped us. Usually there’s a tent and a radar detector along side the road and when they wave at me to stop I just wave back and keep going. It has always worked until now. Officer friendly stood out in the road making me bring this hard to stop tank to a halt. Big balls, small brain. Not going to end well. 

“Good day officer, how are you?” This was met with some niceties on his part followed by “driver’s license “. Then “you were doing 98 in an 80”. I informed him that this vehicle could barely do 98 downhill with a wind. He then pulls out a faded, wrinkled and shredded piece of paper that only has numbers on it. He shows me a line that consists of 80 100  1200 with no words. It could have been his kid’s homework with obviously bad math skills. He explained that was the fine I needed to pay. He wasn’t clever standing in front of a supposedly speeding tank and now tells me if I was doing 80 in an 80 I still must pay 1200 rand. I was tempted to point out he should have typed 81 on this phony document but let it pass. Never paid for extortion before and insisted he bring the camera over and show me. Instead he offered to make me a good deal By reducing it to 600 ($40 usd).  Bullshit. He clearly was getting agitated as the longer he argued with me the fewer tourists he could stop and his hourly wage would deteriorate. I was tempted to ask for his supervisor but that would mean two payments. He wasn’t going away. I imagined him asking to inspect the vehicle and demanding customs declaration for electronics only to confiscate them. He probably had another piece of paper done by a 5 year old. “Not paying 600 rand for something I didn’t do “.  “What would you pay?” Now we get to the point. He’s like the knock off Nike seller in Asia - asking 50% of retail for something maybe worth 10%. Tiring of Mr. big balls, little brain, I said “300 rand no more “.

I am completely ashamed and disgusted with myself for caving. I find some comfort in believing it was an involuntary donation to a policeman’s retirement fund but most likely went to a couple bottles of cheap whiskey.