There was a land at the edge of the fa­bled city of gold where basa basa chiefs would wave huge wands, ral­ly­ing tribes and en­tic­ing them with promis­es of pros­per­i­ty and great things to come. The wands, sprin­kled with gold dust, a kind of il­lu­so­ry cur­ren­cy, made the tribes hope­ful for a bright and pros­per­ous fu­ture. For gen­er­a­tions, they re­mained loy­al to their chiefs, nev­er giv­ing up hope that every new day would be more promis­ing in the beau­ti­ful land where every five years, the chiefs covenant­ed with the peo­ple to work with them and make the pre­cious land safe, healthy, and thriv­ing. The sow­ers among them were scep­ti­cal but con­tin­ued to sow.

The tribes fig­ured that life would be eas­i­er if the chiefs de­liv­ered on promis­es of reg­u­lar wa­ter sup­plies, less crime, and paths to tread with­out break­ing their an­kles on cracked-up pave­ments or ve­hi­cles’ axles in craters and on zug-up roads. They didn’t care too much about fan­cy sta­dia, big air­ports, or grand high­ways. All they want­ed was en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, well-man­aged schools, clean towns and vil­lages, safe chil­dren’s play­grounds and liv­ing spaces, and jobs.

Mind you, they were chal­leng­ing to gov­ern and giv­en to way­ward­ness from as far back as old­en times when they’d ar­rived from dif­fer­ent shores. Some say they were undis­ci­plined tribes, prone to ma­m­ag­ism.

To win their hearts and minds, the chief­tains would sprin­kle lots of gold dust and even dis­trib­ute gold nuggets—the fruits of the sow­ers’ labours. The peo­ple grew ac­cus­tomed to the free fool’s gold—an in­vest­ment that on­ly yield­ed en­ti­tle­ment, dis­cour­ag­ing in­di­vid­ual en­ter­prise and hon­est labour. Over time, it im­pov­er­ished the land. Nev­er­the­less, the en­ter­pris­ing sow­ers con­tin­ued to labour in the fields.

Not all peo­ple had ac­cess to liveli­hoods. They couldn’t ac­cess sus­tain­able sources of re­al gold, like ed­u­ca­tion. It didn’t take much to make the tribes feel hap­py, for they were a nat­u­ral­ly joy­ful, care­free peo­ple, rev­el­ling in their glo­ri­ous cul­tur­al tra­di­tions—the soul­ful tem­po of tas­sa drums and the scin­til­lat­ing rhythms of the steel­pan. There were sow­ers and har­vesters of fields that yield­ed abun­dant fruit. There were many har­vesters who sowed noth­ing, the fix­ers, con artistes, smug­glers, dread­ed trib­al bad johns who ruled fief­doms, the un­guard­ed guards, the cor­rupt ones caus­ing much bad­der­a­tion, the in­tel­li­gentsia and aca­d­e­mics, zealots, but most­ly good peo­ple. The sow­ers paid for all.

In the won­der­land, every­body loved the mag­ic wands the chiefs waved across the lush green moun­tains and hills that no mor­tal could have cre­at­ed. But many had long un­der­stood the dan­gers of the gold dust seep­ing through every crevice of the so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the gangs. Pre­dictably, it cov­ered the land when the mas­sive clock in the peo­ple’s square struck 5.

As time passed, the sources of gold dust be­gan to dis­ap­pear. The sow­ers be­came more dis­en­chant­ed, not be­liev­ing the war­ring chiefs could turn back the tide and stop it from hit­ting the land like a tsuna­mi. They saw the pauci­ty of sow­ing skills with­in the chief­doms’ hi­er­ar­chies and be­gan to lose con­fi­dence and hope. The trib­al mass­es awak­ened to the shal­low promis­es and the sti­fling ef­fects of gold dust. They, too, lost faith but de­cid­ed they would take as much as they could get, then diss the chief­tains in the full­ness of time.

Mean­time, the qual­i­ty of life de­te­ri­o­rat­ed in the lush land of law­less­ness, well nur­tured by chief­doms. As new chiefs emerged, the peo­ple made their play; af­ter all, they were mas­ters of ma­m­ag­ism. They were ready to try some­thing new—lest they end up scrap­ing bun bun from the sow­ers’ pots to sur­vive. The spell of the glis­ten­ing wands had long been bro­ken, but the chiefs hadn’t no­ticed, for they were blind­ed by the gold dust cork­ing up the land, and they car­ried on with the same old strate­gies to win hearts and minds. The sow­ers con­tin­ued to sow.

The town criers had been warn­ing chief af­ter chief about waste­ful pa­ter­nal­ism, ris­ing crime, and ten-day won­ders, pre­dict­ing that the younger gen­er­a­tions would want re­al gold and would carve new paths. So, the tribes no longer trust­ed promis­es in the land of many won­ders.

The sow­ers re­flect­ed on their stolen har­vests—a kind of state lar­ce­ny by way of tax­es on tax­es, ac­cord­ing to the leg­endary Pa­pa Bois. The sow­ers be­gan to ex­pand their en­ter­pris­es, spin­ning au­then­tic lo­cal gold in far­away lands, in­vest­ing in dwelling places, and po­si­tion­ing them­selves for flight. Mean­while, they con­tin­ue to sow.