Dear Comrade President,

Are you aware that your office has invited the hoi-polloi to send suggestions about what you should say during your State of the Nation Address next week? You can’t possibly have sanctioned such treachery. Who the hell came up with that idea? Hunt them down and put them to the lash. What is the point of having a chief whip if nobody ever gets whipped?

Asking people to help you with your speech is not a sign that participatory democracy is working. It’s a sign that you’re not working.

Apparently lots of people have suggested lots of things. Well, two things, mainly. They suggested you resign and they suggested you pay back the money. Typical bloody peasants. How do they expect you to do both?

If you resigned, you wouldn’t have to pay back the money because you’d be living inside your fortified compound and anyone brave enough to deliver an invoice or, god forbid, a summons, would have to do so by helicopter. You’re not stupid like Osama bin Laden. You wouldn’t get trapped that easily. For a start, word on the street is that MaNtuli has an Armscor-designed catapult with serious surface-to-air capabilities. She’d take them out, one shot.

And if you paid back the money, there’d be no need for you to resign. In fact, you’d gain so much moral high ground that you could probably pull a Mugabe and rule for another 50 years.

I know it’s unlikely, but if you do pay back the money, you might want to give it to animal welfare. Imagine the photo opportunities. If Stalin had got his picture taken with a homeless puppy, everyone would have forgiven him for killing all those people.

A word of advice. Don’t spend too long on what the government has achieved in the last year. We know. We were there. We saw it. Or, as the case may be, didn’t see it.

It must come as something of a relief to know that much of the proletariat will miss your speech. What you don’t want are voters huddled around a candle in leaking tin shacks watching a fat man with more wives than they have hot meals in a week telling them how much the government has done to improve their lives. That’s just asking for trouble.

Fortunately, it’s still only the middle and upper classes who can afford access to electronic media. On the other hand, Eskom may well prove to be your government’s downfall. No SABC means no propaganda. When television sets fall silent, the lower middle classes start to think for themselves. This is never a good thing.

The upper middle classes may even take to reading by candlelight. This is dangerous since the state cannot control what people read. Yet.

If I were you, I’d also avoid talking about the work that still needs to be done. Again, we know. Better than you do. And don’t talk about priorities for the new financial year, either, because you’ll just have to rephrase them as “work that still needs to be done” when you deliver your next State of the Nation speech.

Your biggest problem, of course, is not what you should or shouldn’t say. It’s how you’re going to deal with the fallout when riot police storm the chamber to extricate the Economic Freedom Fighters who, well and truly hoisted by their own petard, are now beholden to disrupt proceedings.

I bet you wish democracy in South Africa had run its course, as it has in so many other African countries, and that we could revert to natural justice without thin-lipped foreigners fiddling with our credit ratings and banning us from international travel. When I say us, I mean you.

I’m sick of democracy and all its mealy-mouthed two-faced pussy-footing around. I’ve had it. The investors aren’t fooled. The people aren’t fooled. So why do we bother with it? Instead of making us pay rates, let us use rather that money to stockpile weapons and defend our homes. Allow us to build our own cars, make our own water and generate our own power. Let us physically fight each other for jobs, women and other scarce resources.

I know it goes against the grain, but this time you’re going to need to be honest. Get up there, use your middle finger to push your glasses up, giggle, and say, “From now on, it’s every man for himself.”