Mysterious Mr Mofokeng

This post is clearly not much about self-sufficiency, homesteading, gardening or anything related, but I have to get it off my chest. Regular readers (yes, both of you) might want to give this one a miss...

It must be the first of the month. My cellphone hasn't stopped ringing. Just like every first of the month.

None of the calls are for me, though, and most of them show up on the screen as "Number Withheld". The calls are all for a Mr. Mofokeng. I don't know his first name, though. Or, rather, at last count I've been asked for around fifteen different first names. Albert Mofokeng, Charles Mofokeng, Sidney Mofokeng, Mbazima Mofokeng, Jonathan Mofokeng, September Mofokeng, November Mofokeng... I think he started running out of names... The best I can establish is that Mr. Mofokeng is a small-time conman who opens accounts with various stores, banks, phone companies, buys some stuff on tick, and then skips on payments, leaving the creditors with myphone number.

Some of the people who call are quite polite and see the humour in the situation when they understand that Mofokeng has dished out a fake phone number. Others are quite a lot less polite. Yes, Virgin Mobile; I'm looking at you! Isn't it peculiar that a phone service provider can be fooled with the wrong phone number? Don't they consult their own database?

Even odder is that this thing has been going on for years. Surely this guy has long since been listed with the various credit agencies and blacklists? Don't credit-grantors actually check any of the information an applicant gives them? I mean, really, if I were sitting with some person in front of me asking for a line of credit, clutching their freshly lettered application form, and the form gives their cellphone number, why not just pick up the phone on your desk and call the damn number! If it rings in the applicant's pocket, all's well and good. If not... well, would you grant them credit? So I have little to no sympathy for the idiot companies that get taken in by this guy. If their vetting process is so badly broken, they deserve all the woe they bring upon themselves and should stop wingeing.

But I do wish that Mr Mofokeng would give out somebody else's number for a change. Or perhaps he does!

Murder in Hobbiton

This place, this Braamekraal, often feels to me like Tolkien's Hobbiton.  Yesterday we had the illusion well and truly shattered.  A neighbour, John, living in a cottage some 2km up the road from us was murdered in his own home, sometime between 10 and 11 in the morning.

We bumped into one of the investigating policemen around 4:30 in the afternoon just as we set out for a walk with the dogs; he was just waiting for the forensics team to get finished before he could go in with his tracker dog.  They suspect that the killer came from Keurhoek village, about 5km away.

Update 8 Aug 17:50:  We had a visit from the police Inspector this afternoon to let us know that the murderer has been caught.  He returned to the scene of his gruesome crime in the middle of last night and burned the house down, presumably to destroy evidence, and the police tracked him to his own house and arrested him at 2:30 this morning.  Much relief all round, here, I can tell you!