Prelude#

South Africa has contributed numerous peculiar words to the common English dictionaries: "veldt", "trek",... but one word is very peculiarly our own: "kak" (pronounced to rhyme with "buck".) A rude and vulgar slang term, definitely not for use in polite company, and generally carrying much the same meaning and sense as the English word, "shit". "I got such kak service." "Life's full of kak." "The Boss kakked me out for being late again."

A friend of mine, Ron, began to wonder where this word came from. It doesn't seem to have any roots in Afrikaans nor its ancestor, Dutch. Nor are there any French or German words that might suggest an etymology. No indigenous African languages still extant suggest an origin, either, for this most South African of words. So where and how did it come into existence?

Ron's researches turned up an Ancient Greek word, κακιστος (kakistos, "worst"), the superlative of κακος (kakos, "bad"). Seems likely! We've plenty of citizens of Greek ancestry... Having no knowledge of the Greek language, ancient or modern, I am incompetent to judge the probability that this etymological guesswork has any basis in reality.

Parliamentary Rules#

We were discussing politics at the time, and the thing that we all seem to agree upon, is that politicians, as a class, are about the lowest form of life in the universe. My theory is that they slithered out from under a rock when they saw the rest of as tentatively descending from the trees to try out two-legged life on the veldt. Ron explained his fascination with the origins of the word "kak" and commented that we are ruled by a Kakistocracy. If an Aristocracy is rule by the Aristos, the elite, and a Democracy is rule by the common mob, the Demos, then a Kakistocracy is rule by the worst. Or as Wiktionary puts it, "Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens."[1]

Indeed, it does seem that governments everywhere, at every level from local municipalities to multinational bodies like the European Union, African Union or Untied Nations[2], are completely out of touch with the common citizens they claim to represent. Increasingly it looks like they are self-perpetuating parasite organisms solely engaged in perpetuating their members' positions of privilege and power at the expense of their citizenry.

Fugue#

Some weeks or months later, I had a spate of unhappy experiences such as we all seem to attract, wherein the pathetic services of several phone companies compounded with abuse at the hands of an airline and lightly spiced with legal threats from the revenuers due to their own incompetence to keep their records straight led me to exclaim, "It's a Kakistopoly!"

After all, if Monopoly is the service of a market by a single entity... If a Duopoly is the service of a market by two entities... Then the Kakistopoly to which we find ourselves enchained is service of us - the market - by the worst.

And it's pretty obvious why and how this comes about. Companies may start out aiming to deliver a decent product or service at a fair price, but the race to globalisation quickly becomes a race to the bottom; a race to cut costs, increase margins and market-share, always at the expense of their customers. For who else is there to bear the expense?

So it means that the Kakistopoly keeps us on hold for over an hour when we call in to sort out their bungling of our account balance, and then claim that they answered the phone within 30 seconds, simply because their computer answered the phone, put us through 10 minutes of pressing buttons to direct us to the appropriate department to best service our query, and then played us a loop of Kakistic "music" until our brains dribble out of our ears in the attempt to escape. And it has to be that Kakistic music so that they don't incur the expense of paying somebody a copyright royalty, because their partners in Kakistopoly - the so-called Music Industry - would be sure to cash in as quickly as they possibly can on music that old Johann Bach wrote 400 years ago and is in no position to receive royalties from.

And can there be any doubt that the Kakistopoly and the Kakistocracy work hand-in-hand. Is it even meaningful to draw a distinction between these two arms, these two departments, these two heads of The Beast?

Welcome, my son.
Welcome to The Machine.

Welcome, indeed, to this new word, this new world, Kakistopoly.

[#1] At least, that's how Wiktionary puts it today, 9 June 2009. Who knows about tomorrow? It's wiki, and that's what's so great about it!

[#2] No, that's not a spelling mistake.