THE ADVENTURES OF ERIC

We were at our cousin's house for a big family gathering for shabbat supper. It was being held in their beautiful garden and the sun was already down as we drank in the cool evening air after a hot Cape day. 

Ariella, my littlest granddaughter, was aware of my penchant for collecting rocks and stones. So she comes up to me holding out a stone - an ordinary brown common-or-garden piece of Table Mountain sandstone - saying, "Oupa, look what I found!"

Now, I know that the most hurtful thing that you can do to a kid is to belittle their imagination so I said, "That, Ariella, is - (thinking quickly) - "that is Eric". "Eric the Rock"

Solemnly she holds the stone to her chest and regards it carefully for a second or two. "Eric" she repeats. Then she proffers it to me again.

"Tell me about Eric" She says.

"Well, Eric lives on the mountain" I begin…

"Does he have a family?"

"Yes of course he has a family"

"A mummy and daddy?"

"Of course"

"And two sisters?"

"Sure"

You can see what's going on here. Eric the Rock lives in a family which is starting to bear a resemblance to her own. And why not? All rocks do that, don't they?

And thus began the amazing tale of the escapades of Eric the Rock. But it wasn't my tale - it was hers. All I did was provide the briefest framework and she filled in the details with great enthusiasm. Her eyes shone and her expression was earnest. She gestured, rock in hand, to illustrate Eric going here and Eric going there; Eric in school; Eric in a deep dark forest; Eric fighting with his sister; now Eric has a cold; and now he's well again.

I am saddened by the fact that children's imaginations have been stunted by TV, and TV games, and games on their phones (and even before that, when they're too young to have their own phones, by the phones which their parents loan to them to keep them quiet in the car, or wherever their parents don't want to participate in their imagination-games).

You see, something which I realised a long time ago is that movies and TV are not the equivalent of reading a book or listening to a story on the radio: they are a substitute for dreaming and imagination. They come with impressions of light and sound, emotive music and visual images. They are so forceful that they completely replace the creative faculty of an active imagination, and like muscles which are not exercised, those "muscles" wither away.

Yet every day our kids spend between an hour and up to four or five hours watching TV or playing video games, which replace their creative faculties. There is an actual case on record of a couple who became so absorbed in their video game that they played it continuously for more than 48 hours and their baby starved to death. They were charged and convicted of child neglect, and rightfully so.

Eric the Rock, however, had a full life, without a single prop. All I had to do was ask a question, give a hint, point the narrative in a particular direction, and her imagination would go careening off on a new adventure.

I told her that there were musicians in England called The Rolling Stones and Eric sang a song;

I told her there was music called Rock'nRoll, and Eric, the Rock, rolled all over the patio;

I told her there was an actor in America called The Rock, and Eric suddenly developed huge muscles and caught bad guys.

And all she held in her hand was a very ordinary stone.

Ariella is a five year old from the high-tech land of Israel. If she had been any older, she would have been too worldly-wise and blase to allow herself to be lead like this, with a simple stone. But she trusts me, and she is prepared to suspend her disbelief for just long enough to go with this silly little tale: and in doing so, she gets to stretch her imagination just a little bit more than she might otherwise have done - and she entertains herself. And the story wasn't some pre-digested rubbish generated by the cocaine-stoked minds of the entertainment industry: it was hand-crafted, as it were: she made it herself.

Perhaps, one day, she'll write something…

© Harry Friedland, March 2022

MY BLOG: MARIMBA: https://hjfriedland.blogspot.com/

THE RUSSIAN GAME

This has got nothing to do with the Ukraine war – nor is the game restricted to Russians – it’s just that that’s where I’ve encountered it, and this name is the name that I’ve given it. There may be other names.

Essentially, this is how it works:

A pretty Russian girl meets a foreigner (a gullible foreigner) and they fall in love. They have some memorable sex and then suddenly she gets a call from her ageing parent back in Russia, begging her to come home because the aged P (to quote Dickens) is Ill and alone.

So off she goes.

Within a short while Gullible Western Lover receives a desperate communication from Desirable Russian Lover to say that Babushka is practically in extremis, dirt-poor and in need of expensive medical treatment and medicine and Desirable Russian Lover is at her wit’s end. 

“Please, please, please, send money!” Gullible Western Lover digs deep and complies.

Not long thereafter Gullible Western Lover receives another, even more desperate call, and he digs even deeper.

Then he receives another message saying that Babushka seems to be on the mend due to the amazing ministrations of a saintly priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is the first that  Gullible Western Lover hears of the deep spiritual attachment of Desirable Russian Lover to The Church (despite the fact that she was a stripper at Mavericks when they met in Cape Town (she has previously explained that she was forced into that by a vicious slave trader, who subsequently set her free after duly performed services).

Shortly thereafter Gullible Western Lover receives more communiques from Desirable Russian Lover, each of which contains some oblique reference to the Priest, who has now been excommunicated from The Church but is still a wonderfully spiritual man and has set up a health spa with the financial assistance of an oligarch, who is a generous benefactor.

Then a long break in correspondence, which deteriorates into a monologue by  Gullible Western Lover, who is getting increasingly antsy.

Then a single, short, final email from Desirable Russian Lover to say that she has married the Oligarch, that this correspondence is causing marital discord and has to end but she is sure that Gullible Western Lover will rejoice in the knowledge that she is happy.

End of game.

Thanks for playing.

My blog: https://hjfriedland.blogspot.com/

_________________ 

© Harry Friedland, July 2022

OLD MAN IN THE NIGHT

Time has changed me

And yet it has not changed anything at all

A full heart still beats.

I have many memories, 

I am rich in memories.

So many old friends

Family near and far

Gone, most of them

Some from this place

This failing land

This hard hard world.

Life is now a gentle afternoon nap

On a warm day

In calm weather

The sun peering gently from behind the leaves of that tree.

It bathes the brick-paved ground in a gentle green light

As it ever did.

Birds, invisible in the thick foliage

Give song to all that lives.

Do they have memory?

What would they remember?

The stillness and the warmth of a moment ago?

Now the sun goes

Darkness descends.

I have not moved from my comfortable chair

I am still, the world moves round me.

In the distance I hear traffic

And then, due to the lateness of the hour, that sound recedes.

And in this night, the memories of millions of years of this continent,

The sea hurls itself at the beach

Crashing, roaring, buffeting

Pounding its fists on the rocks

Punching the air

Taunting the stars

As it ever did.

But as for me, now,

I live mostly in my head.

In the cold, cold morning

I will go down to the waterline

I am increasingly alone

That sound, the seagull’s cry

That’s my voice.

In the empty air

In the thin, cold wind

That scours these beaches, these bushes that will never be trees.

That sound is these words.

____________________________________________

© Harry Friedland 2022 https://hjfriedland.blogspot.com/?m=1

MY WAR AGAINST VODACOM

This is for the “little people”: the private individuals who have been ripped off, browbeaten, bullied, intimidated, leaned on, lied to, shaken down and betrayed by Vodacom.

 

One of the hot topics when I was at law school, was consumer protection: previously, the law worked on the assumption that when two people enter into a contract, they have equal bargaining power and therefore bargain as equals: but when one of the “parties” is a legal persona, a multinational corporation with endless resources and a whole range of skills at it’s disposal – and the law creates a legal fiction that the corporation is a “person” – you have a manifestly unfair situation. Big businesses take advantage of this situation shamelessly, and their attitude is always, “take it or leave it”. All their marketing, all their salesmanship, all their public utterances, are focused on trying to persuade their potential customers that they are open to negotiate – but of course they aren’t. Take it or leave it. “We are the caring company”, they say – but they lie.

 

The principal of consumer protection is about fifty years old, and it is honoured to a greater or lesser extent in different parts of the world. But of course, big business is very different from big charity and big businesses constantly tries to push their boundaries. That’s just the way capitalism works. And this is South Africa – a thugtocracy.

And on the other hand, it is up to us little people to figure out ways to push back in order to defend ourselves, or we just get ridden over. It’s also capitalism - just the other side of the same coin in the previous paragraph.

 

The difference is that the company is made up of many people all working together as a well-oiled machine: the customer on the other side does not develop a common strategy with other customers – he operates alone. So the company can have it’s way with him and he has little in the way of resources with which to push back. Each customer feels that he is alone in his fight, and the big corporations know that “the little men” feel like that, and they take advantage of that too.

 

There are consumer groups but they are few and far between – and some of them are just big corporations disguised as private individuals. Beware the wolves!

 

Phew! That was a long introduction! This is my story, and after that is what I’m doing about it.

 

Cellphones got to SA in about 1990. I was a junior partner in a stuffy old law firm where the average age of the senior partners was about 65. They regarded new technology with huge suspicion – and when a “new thing” arrived, they would sit around with gloomy faces and tell each other how it was going to fail.

(For example when fax machines arrived, a few years earlier, we DIDN’T buy one: when we eventually did, it was set up in the office of the senior partner’s secretary because everything was sorted by seniority, which usually meant age – but in a world of technology, age is NOT an advantage. She looked at it as if someone had brought a tarantula into her office; And when word-processors arrived, the MOST SENIOR SECRETARIES – the people who were least educable in new technology – got them first.

 

I was the most junior partner (it was a firm of Jewish lawyers so in Yiddish I was “the pisher” – a babe in nappies – there was a gap of 20 years between me and the next-oldest partner) so no-one was going to listen to me!

 

So when a a friend of our MOST SENIOR PARTNER came to him and said, “I’m thinking of starting an insurance company – will you join me?” my most senior partner said to him “it’ll never work.” The man was Donny Gordon, and the company was Liberty Life.

 

And when the City announced that they were planning to build a retail commercial centre at “the docks”, I remember as clear as if it was yesterday how one of my partners leaned back in his chair and said (and these were his exact words): “Ah, I can just see it now: a fine Cape rain drizzling down, and not a customer in sight!”

 

And Professor Brian Kantor of UCT excitedly announced it as the most brilliant idea of the century. Which it became!

 

So when cellphones arrived in 1990, of course, we didn’t get them. They were just a gimmick, we were told. In order to report the day’s property registrations from the Deeds Office, I had to join the queue of conveyancers at the Deeds Office tickey box and wait for my turn. But there was strenuous competition to report the registrations before the other law firms because the prestige and competence of your firm hung in the balance and it drove me mad. If only we had our own phone, we could beat that queue hands down, I thought.

 

One morning I had just had it up to my eyeballs and I was fuming as I marched back to the office. And that was the day that the mouse finally roared. “I’ve had it with you buggers!” I yelled at them “You’re pathetic! I want a phone! Today!”

 

And I got it. That very day. But there were strings attached. It was the Senior Partners phone – but I could borrow it for the Deeds Office run in the mornings. He never used it, of course. He just carried it around in his pocket like a trophy. But that phone was as big and heavy as a brick and it distorted the shape of his jacket. I knew that he hated it but there was no way that he was going to admit that. And then one morning not long after that I burst into the office of one of the other partners (technically, my boss, although it would have beneath us to talk like that) – and there he was, surreptitiously whispering into the cutest little cellphone I had ever seen … well, my goodness, that was a revelation!

 

I could understand the temptation – that guy was terribly status-conscious. He was a little irritated by me because I had more university degrees than he did, and I knew that it cranked him, so I played it up. But he’d figured something out – THE CELLPHONE was a status thing, and the cuter the phone, the better (please don’t tell me that you didn’t know that grown adult men – lawyers, nogal – aren’t basically 5-years-old at heart – more or less like the secret desire to be a fireman, or a policeman, or a pilot. Just watch them in court. The things they say when they’re under pressure! They complain to the judge like kids complaining to their mother! Its bloody hilarious!)

 

At that point, the resistance against cellphones crumbled like the Berlin wall. We had to adopt a “policy”: The firm would supply the phones and pay for the calls. They all came from the same supplier, the numbers were consecutive, and everyone brandished a phone like a sword. What fun! And with cellphones come a whole bunch of fun. You can lie like a fisherman: say you’re in a meeting when you’re not; tell your wife that you’re in the office when you’re – er – somewhere else. A whole new series of jokes arrived with cellphones:

Lawyers tell their wives they’re in office when they’re with their mistresses;

Accountants tell their mistresses they’re in office when they’re with their wives;

Actuaries lie to their wives and their mistresses when they’re in their offices. à etc.

 

And have you noticed that today cellphones are virtually characters in their own right in movies? – If you haven’t seen the movie “Her”, then you should. It takes the concept to its logical conclusion. For now. But I’m sure there’ll be greater extremes in the future. And even when it doesn’t go that far, the cellphone is virtually an extension of every actor’s arm.

 

But cellphones brought their own kind of legal brutality: highly desirable pretty shiny things with their own status appeal, plus all the really useful things that they can do, plus all the necessary things that they can do – they overcame price resistance easily. The public would rationalize the cost at almost any price. Humanity practically sold the phones to themselves. And the cellphone companies made it easy – regardless of how brilliant the technical know-how of the phones was, they were practically given away to an eager public.

 

Why? – Because the real product isn’t the phone: the real product is the calls and data flow which the phones carry. Once the infrastructure is set up, it takes relatively little to maintain, and the income from the service is a gift that just keeps on giving – to the phone company. There are about four cellphone companies in South Africa. And we all use (at least) one of them. And we, the little people with our little phones – we are their wealth.

 

But if you look at this from the point of view of the cellphone company, the business has big risks: the customer can run away with the phone, he can duck his bills and change his address without notice, he can change cellphone companies … so the cellphone company builds in mechanisms (legal and physical) to protect itself. And more protections. And more protections. Some of these things are legally permissible, some aren’t, and some are downright illegal, but catching the company is difficult. Just go to https://www.hellopeter.com  and look up Vodacom. There were, at last count, 106,979 reviews for Vodacom – virtually all seriously damning. And their TrustIndex score is 2.4.

What is a TrustIndex  score? – It’s a score between 0 and 10, where 10 is the highest possible value and (thus sayeth the Hellopeter website) that is the score that you/your business should aim towards. “It’s a Hellopeter metric that speaks to customer service, and easily communicates this to the Hellopeter community. We (Hellopeter) use your TrustIndex score to rank your business in your industry.”

Do Vodacom care? – No, not at all. Why should they? You’re just one of the little people – and what’s more, the other 106,978 complainers are also just little people. In other words, to hell with you. Just shut up and pay your bills!

And indeed, what is so wrong about that?

Well, I’ll tell you what’s wrong.

I signed my Vodacom contract in 1990. I’ve always been a spoiled brat and an advantage-taker par excellence, so I signed an expensive contract, collected an expensive phone, and went back to office with my trophy. Then every two years I got the latest phone and the firm blithely paid my crushing phone bills.

Then in 2016 I left my job and went into retirement for 3 years and suddenly money became an issue so I cast around for ways to save. I discovered that I could get a MUCH cheaper phone deal from Telkom and decided to cancel my Vodacom contract and port my number to Telkom.

And then the fun began.

Bear in mind that cellphone contracts are paid by debit order, so the company effectively has you by the curlies unless and until they decide to let you go.

There is a cancellation procedure. The rules are a bit opaque because they’re hoping that you’ll give up and stay with them but with patience you can work your way through the maze. Or so I thought. I signed the papers and submitted them and paid what I was told was the cancellation balance. And my number was ported to Telkom, which to my mind said that I was done with Vodacom.

But at the end of that month my Vodacom debit order went through again. “That’s odd”, I thought, but I’m a tolerant fellow, so I said to myself, well, that must be the last debit order (over and above the cancellation balance which I’d already paid).

The following month it went through again. “Hang on” I said to myself “somethings wrong here”

Now please understand that getting to Vodacom’s call centre is a mission of note – they’d much rather not talk to you – they know that if you’re calling, you’re going to ask for something. But if you persevere, you’ll get through. But that’s not much good unless you can put your message across, so you try. Then you get cut off, so you try again. Different assistant, same IQ. She listens sympathetically, asks for all sorts of information which is already on her screen, and says she’ll call you back.

You know she’s not going to call you back. And she doesn’t. And another debit order slips through.

I called my bank and poured out my heart. “Did you know that you can countermand a debit order payment?” She asks. Damn! I didn’t know that! “All you have to do is keep an eye out and as soon as the debit order goes through, call me, give me a reason to countermand it, and I will!” Well, well, well! The rules had changed – probably part of the “consumer protection” philosophy.

Woohoo! Salvation! I thought.

You see, the only way to get Vodacom to sit up and listen is to cut off their oxygen supply. Don’t pay the bastards!

So for three months I persistently countermanded payments.

Then I started getting threatening letters. I didn’t throw them away, I filed them. Then I got letters from some Joburg law firm threatening to sue me. I filed those too.

Meanwhile the amount they were claiming, climbed steadily. I watched in horror and fascination. As a lawyer myself I know that no businessman in his right mind will actually issue summons for a claim of less than, say, R15 000,00 because costs-wise it’s just not viable – but we were now well past that, so I waited to see what would happen.

Then I started to get calls and letters from their “lawyer”. Then some guy with a brain called me and I told him my story.  “I’ll get back to you” he said. I’d heard that somewhere before. Of course he didn’t.

Then I got the next month’s bill and I was shocked to see that now they were only claiming  R3 000,00! The rest of the claim had evaporated!  So, I called them again (it takes about a morning to do this)

“Do you mean to say that if I pay this, and I tell you that I’m paying it in full and final settlement, and if I write to you to confirm that, it will be the end of the story?”

“Absolutely” said the confidence trickster at the other end.

“Then I’ll do it right now. It’s worth it!” said I.

So she gave me the call reference for our call, I paid the money, and I sent her an email referring to the call reference and including proof of payment and I confirmed that this was a payment “in full and final settlement” – the magic words.

At the end of the next month another debit order went through, and I had to countermand that too (I have to tell you, there’s a charge for countermanding these things and it ain’t cheap) – but now I was really pissed off. When the next inevitable threatening call came through, I said unspeakable things in many languages. For the first time, they put the phone down on me.

Then the debit orders stopped.

Then I started to get smses and emails and voice messages. Then I got hard-copy letters which tried to look like summonses. Three years went by and their claim has now prescribed. Then a few weeks ago I started to get calls again.

“Sue me!” I pleaded. “Please, please, please sue me! I want you to take me to court so that I can make arseholes out of you! And I want to claim massive legal costs from you! There’s a Japanese restaurant especially for lawyers in Johannesburg and I want to take you there for lunch – it’s called SoSumi! Sooooooo meeeee!”

Once again, I was cut off. I was really into this now, and I get it, and I’m telling y’all this because you need to know how to deal with these bastards and I’m learning.

By the end of last week I was getting five calls a day – I kid you not – 5 calls! And every time they call, the call comes from a different number, and I block that number. Every now and then a call gets through but as soon as a voice says, “Hello, how are you?” I know it’s Vodacom and I cut the call and immediately block the number. I have many blocked numbers, all one or two digits apart.

Sometimes they just ping my phone, probably just to establish if my number is still live. It only rings once and then cuts off. If I call that number back I get a message saying that that number doesn’t exist.

I could change my number, but that’s boring. And it’d mean they’ve won. This is so much more fun. This is a war of attrition. Or a battle of nerves. They have endless resources and I have endless patience. It’s so much fun.

One last anecdote (I’m addicted to anecdotes):

I handled my late mother’s deceased estate. Some years after she died, I got a telephone call from Edgars (just like that, out of the blue), asking to speak to her.

“Not any more” I said, “She’s dead. Her estate was finalised years ago.”

“Well, can you let me have a forwarding address for her, please?”

I was a little surprised.

“Certainly” I said, “its plot 941, Pinelands Jewish Cemetery No.2”

“Thank you”, said the polite little voice.

And then I replaced the receiver and went for lunch.

 

 © Harry Friedland

“Read more on my blog: "Marimba"”

June 2020

 

THE VODACOM WARS (Part 2)

I've written about this before, both here and on Facebook. This is my latest move - I want to approach Devi Sankaree Govender of ENCA. I don't know is she'll listen to me, but here's my letter to her:

Extra-judicial debt collecting: Vodacom and VVM debt collectors

Dear Devi

I write to you because I'm not quite sure where to go from here and it seems that
people do indeed pay attention to you.

I am a semi-retired attorney who spent the last 20-30 years of my life as a
conveyancer, mostly as a director at a Cape law firm going by the name of
Friedlander Shandling Volks and when that firm amalgamated with Smith Tabata
Buchanan Boyes, then under the name of the latter firm.

In 1991, when cellphones were making their presence felt, my partners and I all
took contracts with Vodacom, and stayed with Vodacom throughout. But I was
boarded in 2016 and by 2019 I was looking for ways to economise on my lifestyle,
one of my strategies being to seek a cheaper cellphone package.

I attempted to cancel my Vodacom contract and followed all the steps laid out on
their website (several times), but just couldn't shake them. It appears that
Vodacom generally doesn't conduct business in writing, and barring in one
relatively insignificant instance, everything had to be done telephonically, which
involves long holding times, dropped calls, cut-off calls, conversations with people
who could barely understand English (and had greater difficulty in speaking it).
This was a formidable ordeal.

Somewhere along the line I became desperate and successfully ported my number
toTelkom for a phone package which cost a mere fraction of the Vodacom
contract charge. One might have thought that porting the number would signal to
Vodacom that whether the contract was lawfully terminated or not, I was no
longer their customer which meant whatever else they might or might not do, they 

could no longer charge me for their services going forward. But Vodacom did not
react at all.

Of course, customers are held hostage by virtue of the debit order which they sign
when taking out a contract: I was taught that only a creditor could stop a debit
order and that a debtor was at the creditor's mercy in that regard. But I spoke to 

my banker about this and I was advised that it is possible to have a payment by
debit order reversed in cases where the debit order paid out without just cause.
All you had to do was wait for the debit order to go through, then call your bank
and tell them that the debit order was unjustified and they would reverse it. 

There's a bank charge for the reversal, but it's nothing like the iniquity of being
forced to pay a much greater sum of money that you do not owe.

Of course, you take your chances as regards being sued by a creditor for breach 

of contract but where you're right and the payee is wrong. And in my case I would 

be happy to fight such a claim.

The normal business practice with credit agreements in South Africa is for a 

creditor to send a notice after a single missed payment, asking the debtor to bring
his payment up to date or to invite him to make an arrangement in the case of financial
difficulty. Vodacom did not do that.

After the second reversed payment I received a severe notice threatening legal action. 

Now it was my turn to ignore them.

This went on for about a year, with the balance climbing steadily. Eventually I began to 

receive letters from a debt collection agency. I lost my nerve, so I called them and asked 

what I would have to do to stop the nonsense. They gave me a figure for payment, which 

they assured me would be "in full and final settlement": it was considerably lower than the 

most recent statements which I had received so I leaped at the opportunity, considered the 

money well worth it, and paid.

The following month I received another statement, so I called Vodacom's customer service
department (for the umpteenth time). This time, I got through to a person with a brain, and he
went to some trouble to investigate the history of the matter and eventually came back to say
that he could see that someone else in the organisation had started the cancellation procedure
(a long, long time ago) but had not completed it, for reasons unknown. He undertook to see
that it was done. Naturally, I requested, received and noted the call reference.

Then I received more statements with the balance fluctuating between about R300,00 and
R10 000,00 monthly. This has gone on for about two and a half years now. By November this
year, all their claims will have prescribed, regardless of the amount. I am counting the days.

I no longer receive any email, letters or statements from Vodacom: but I do receive about five
telephone calls a day, mostly from a crowd called "VVM" (Van De Venter Mojapelo Inc)
(https://www.vvm.co.za/)" debt collectors. (If you want to know more about VVM just input
their name in Google or go straight to Hellopeter). They call from different numbers in Gauteng:
and every time they call, I block the number - but I know that this is a futile exercise because
they seem to have an unlimited number of calling numbers. Cleverly, they don't call themselves
attorneys, but they do their best to bring you under the impression that they are a law firm.
Page 1 of their website brags like this:

85Mil

OUTBOUND CALLS IN
IN THE LAST YEAR

38Mil

SMS INTERACTIONS IN
THE LAST YEAR

(See also on Hellopeter.com) 

None of the personnel of the company are named or shown on their website. Dodgy ...

I think their reasoning in not registering as a law firm is that it leaves them free to engage in
"dirty tricks" which would get a lawyer struck off the roll.

I have read somewhere that they have a machine that can spit out in excess of 200 calls per
second, which is quite breathtaking (Incidentally, I have had three calls so far while typing this
email). Their company is basically a call centre, with hundreds of employees who spend their
days calling people, giving and receiving abuse. What a way to earn a living! I wonder what that
does to their minds and what their home lives are like ....

As a lawyer, I know that the amount that they would have to sue for in my case, would not
justify the cost of issuing a summons - and if they did issue a summons, it would definitely not
justify the cost of litigation beyond that point. On the one or two occasions when I actually
wasn't thinking and took their calls, I begged them to sue me but I know that they will never do
that.

Clearly, their strategy is more simple and more brutal. They just phone their victims (not
"debtors", but victims) to death. They wage a war of attrition against them. It is absolutely
unnerving. Your phone rings constantly. You get three different kinds of calls:

(1) Ordinary voice calls, Identifiable by TrueCaller, where some ignorant person tells you that
your account is in arrears and supplies you with a balance which is allegedly payable. I have
said some terrible things to these poor people;
(2) "Silent" calls where an unidentified number calls, but hangs up as soon as you answer; and
(3) "Wrong number" calls. I can't be certain that these are the result of something that
Vodacom does, but it started happening to me at the exact the same time as I began to be
inundated with (1) and (2) above. Ordinary people call, looking for government departments
etc - I've also had three of those today.

Of course, you can change your number (that's not easy for someone whose business depends
on his phone, but it's possible), or you can go off the grid (not a proposition for me), or you can
emigrate (if you emigrate, it simply stops the clock on prescription - which cannot run while
you are out of the country - but it restarts the clock when you re-enter the country).

The one thing that I have thought of is to assemble a critical mass in the number of their
debtors and to bring a class action in the High Court in an application for a very old remedy
known as an "Edict of Perpetual Silence". It is still very much part of our law, but it's a High
Court action and they will fight it tooth and nail because if successful it will shut their
business down. But its prohibitively expensive for a private person to litigate in an opposed
action in the High Court. Hence the idea of a class action, which would enable a large group
of people to fundraise for the action at relatively little individual expense.

I'd love to talk to you about it some time.

Harry Friedland

MY VODACOM WAR - PART IV

20 November 2022

This is it. The war is over. This is my last post on the subject of my harassment at the hands of Vodacom. Their claim against me prescribed today. The three years have run out.

If I think of the nonsense that they put me through: the threats, the demands, the deluge of bogus calls, twenty "wrong number" calls a day, the fake summonses ... I could have easily avoided them by just changing my number, but I asked myself, why should I run away? Why should I back down? Here I am, come and get me!

On several occasions I said to them, "sue me - sue me! I want you to take me to court! I want to make asses of you in a courtroom!" - But no, they wanted to wear me down with their "extra-judicial" tactics.

It didn't work, guys - and now the game's over. Thanks for playing.

Three years! I put this date in my diary a long time ago and just did the countdown. For the last three years and right up to this afternoon, I kept a wary eye out for a proper summons, but it never came.

I've noticed, in this last month, how the rate of fake calls and "wrong-number" diverts to my phone had fallen. I actually got the impression that they might be giving up but who knows what goes on in the mind of a corporate monster?

And now .... I'm free!

Yahoo!

BARUCH'S COFFEE SHOP

 PS: One day, in the little coastal fishing town of Mossel Bay, I came across "Baruch's Coffe Shop". No doubt about it, "Baruch's Coffe Shop" was established by a Jew. Probably an Israeli Jew, Thought I.

Curiosity got the better of me. On an impulse, I went in.
"I want to speak to Baruch" I demanded.
Out comes a youngish guy with a pony tail.
"Are you Baruch?" I asked
"Yeah, " says he, with "that accent"
"What the hell is a guy like you doing in a place like this?"

I think he thought I was about to complain about something, because he had tensed up in that characteristic way that Israelis do when they are getting ready for a fight (no sane Israeli takes an insult without fighting back) - but he instantly relaxed when he heard my question, and he went into story-telling mode instead (another favourite Israeli passtime).

"Well," he began, "I used to work on a Kibbutz in Afula, where they hired a lot of young travellers. One day a beautiful girl came to work on the Kibbutz. She couldn't speak Hebrew and she spoke terrible English. I thought she was Dutch, because we are used to Dutch tourists, but then she explained that she came from South Africa and the language was Afrikaans, which comes from Dutch. I said I would teach her Hebrew, and I did. She learned very fast and very well. In fact she learned so fast and so well that she fell pregnant.

So we came here to get married. The Afrikaners are very friendly and they treated me like a hero and kept talking about the 6-day war, which was actually before my time. Apparently it was a big deal for them, even if it was before my time.

We have two boys, who go to school here and talk Afrikaans, but they've met their Israeli family, and more of them came here. Do you know that its a scientific fact that this place has the most perfect climate in the world?"

"I know" I said, "My wife comes from here"

When I left, I think I left my solid gold Parker pen on the counter but when I went back 5 minutes later to ask about it, he denied it.

Damn Israelis.

But every time I go to Mossel Bay, I have coffee at Baruch's Coffee Shop. We are the best of frienemies.

MOSTLY ABOUT MORRIS

 Morris Shiffman and Shirley Futeran

Morris apparently matriculated in 1972.

Shirley would have matricated in 1971, if she had lived. 

Both of them, had life been different, would have been great writers. However they may have done in other subjects, when it came to English essays, they were top- markers. 

But Shirley died in her Standard eight year. There was a lot of speculation about her death. She died on Table Mountain. Did she jump, was she pushed, or did she fall? She was an avid hiker. She had written a beautiful essay about it. Our class teacher, who was obviously touched by it, read it out to us. Like me, Shirley had lived in Oranjezicht, on the slope of the mountain (in fact, a block away from me). Of course this is one of those sensational events which a school child never forgets. 

There was an alternative story, that she had been up there with a boyfriend, and that something sinister happened - but I was sceptical about that story because she had been quite a shy girl and it came as a surprise to me that she had a boyfriend at all - although now that I think about it I do know that she had fallen in with quite a radical crowd, HaShomer Hatza'ir, shortly before her death. I know this because she had come round to my house one night with some considerably older guy to try to recruit me into their movement. But I was a dyed-in-the-wool member of Habonim, and I was unmoveable. 

That older guy: could he have been the boyfriend? 

And then there was the third story - that Shirley had been pregnant and that she had leaped to her death. I hope very sincerely that that wasn't the reason for it. The story didn't sound right but you never know. 

And then there was Morris Shiffman. He was a very awkward boy and he lived in a small flat right across the road from the school. I don't remember ever seeing a father. He lived with his mother and I got the impression that life was a struggle for her. I lost track of him, as I did with so many of the class, immediately after we finished school. He had never been a friend except in the most peripheral sort of way. 

And then one day in the year 2000 while I was doing my parental duty as a guard on the school perimeter, I found Morris - or rather, he found me - 29 years after last seeing him. 

Parents volunteered to do security duty outside the school grounds on a roster basis and on that particular morning, after the kids were safely in the grounds, our security team prepared to wrap up our shift. In contrast to the cacophony ten minutes before, silence descended. One by one we called in our positions on our walkie-talkies and began to move towards the security office. 

The road outside the school was empty now, still and quiet. Suddenly I heard someone call my name. I looked around. I saw no-one. After a brief pause whoever called my name again, loud and clear. I scanned the surrounding street but still, I saw no-one. But I was sure I knew which direction the call came from. 

There was a small cafe directly across the road from the school gates. It had been there since my own school days. This voice had come from that cafe - but still, I could see no-one. Whoever it is, must be inside that doorway, I thought, and I started to cross the road to check it out. 

Then I noticed a pile of grey blankets against the cafe wall next to the entrance. The kind of cheap, rough blankets that vagrants carry with them to use as a bed, or for warmth or shelter. As I got closer I realised that part of what I had thought was a blanket, was actually a dishevelled, grubby-looking adult. One bare foot protruded from the blanket. But that face, I thought - I know that face! 

He was looking at me with a keen and steady gaze and a big smile, as if all this were the most natural thing in the world. I was battling through the mists of memory, the abyss of all those years, that face - and he knew my name. Who was he? And then the penny dropped. This is Morris. Morris, what's-his-name, you know, Morris! Jesus Christ! What the hell…? 

He didn’t get up, but he extended a grubby hand out of the blankets with the clear intention of shaking my hand. For the tiniest fraction of a second I hesitated. I was ashamed of that hesitation, but then I reciprocated, and we shook hands and then there we were, a couple of idiots grinning at each other with nothing to say. What do I do now? Ask him how he is? I can see how he is. How’s the family? - Probably not appropriate. What’s happening, what are you doing with yourself these days? - no, not appropriate either, I guess.

I wasn’t exactly ready for my own words when they came out - “What happened to you?” I got the impression that he actually got a kick out of the shock in my face. Perhaps this was his party trick, this was how he greeted every ex-Herzlian who he recognised. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said slowly, “I guess I just never got going, you know …” he was gazing down the road, probably to avoid my eyes. He made a vague gesture, part faux drama, part the words that he didn’t have.

I didn’t want to sit down on the sidewalk and he wasn’t going to stand up so this wasn’t going to be a long conversation. As it was there were too many questions that I couldn’t ask. I was disgusted at myself for being self-conscious about being seen with him. What a prick I am, I thought. Suddenly it occurred to me that there actually was something that I could do to show a tiny little bit of goodwill. He hadn’t asked for money and he obviously wasn’t going to, but clearly he needed it. My wallet. I have a wallet in my jacket pocket. I hauled it out. “Oh, no, no, no,” he said.

“Morris, it's nothing,” I assured him. I have no idea what I gave him. I just emptied all the cash notes out into my hand and without looking at them I stuffed them into his blanket. “Its OK”, I said, “just take it”.

“Well - well, thank you” he mumbled. He was embarrassed. Maybe I should have thought of a better way to do that, I thought.

I turned to go, “Keep well Morris” I said, and fled up the road to my parked car. When I drove away, I turned down the first side street I came across in order to avoid having to drive past him. I was in shock, I was hurt, I was smitten with guilt - for what, I have no idea.

You see, I explained to myself as I drove down to my office, the problem is that Herzlia is all about success: Herzlia wants to hear the success stories of the big achievers who it can brag about: the politicians, rocket scientists, famous doctors, lawyers and judges, philosophers, captains of industry, great benefactors of worthy charities, inventors of the New World, authors, Nobel Prize-winners - the honour, the power and the glory of this noble school goes on and on … except that that isn’t the whole story, is it?

So here’s this poor bastard who once had a fine, sensitive, brilliant mind, an only child who lived with his poor mother until she died, and then he just - got lost. Totally lost. Nobody gives a shit about his fine mind. He has no guidance, he has no support, he’s too clumsy and impractical to figure out a way to survive, so he ends up on the street. Herzlia doesn’t want to know him because he’s such an embarrassment. He is not one of the school’s favourite sons. He has so little initiative that he can’t even move away from the school that he once went to - he still sleeps in its shadow, thirty years after matric.

By the time I got into my office I had worked myself up into a righteous froth. I called the Jewish social workers’ office. “Rene, do you know that there’s this beggar sitting on the pavement outside the gates of Herzlia School, who actually matriculated there?”. I fired off at the poor woman.

“Calm down” she said. “Morris Shiffman. Yes, we know all about Morris. Honestly, we’ve tried. We still try. But he won’t come in. We wanted him to move into the Home, but he won’t come. We still keep an eye on him, though.

If you think you can do anything with him you’re welcome to try. But I don’t think you’ll be able to budge him.”

So he’s known, I thought - I’m probably not the first to blast poor old Rene like that on Morris’ behalf.

So here’s my question then:

We have this fine old establishment, this school with so many success stories in the form of rich and famous Alumni - but there’s this inexplicable collateral damage, casualties falling by the wayside, students who deserved better - they became nobodies, tramps, suicides, shadows within shadows, and the school and its alumni know about them, but we (myself included) - we ride on by and pretend it doesn’t happen!

How do you explain that?

Morris died in January 2019 and he's buried at Pinelands No. 2 Jewish cemetery.