In about 1984, I visited my brother in Cape Town (I was living in East London). He shared a house with two people, one of whom was a very beautiful woman called Sue.

When I arrived, he was not there, but Sue was. So we chatted a bit and she said she was doing computer science at university. I asked her (since I really did not know): “What is a database?” And she told me.

Databases are all around us. It is frightening if one applies for an overdraft or a bond to find out that the bank knows about every bank account you have with it and other banks, how much you owe on your credit cards, what other loans you have, and so on.

There are many databases out there and our names appear on many of them. However, this is not because anyone wants to be friendly. No, they want to track you and your purchasing habits and your income and everything about you so they can sell you more things and squeeze things out of you for financial gain.

Government also has databases in which you appear. Government is inefficient and the government databases are often wrong. And every time you sign up for something – a loan, a credit card, membership of a dating site, and so on – that information, invariably, gets into the hands of somebody who uses it to try to make money out of you.

It so happens that I have a Vodacom cellphone. In 1994, I bought it off a woman called Cindy. I do not have that phone any more, but I do have that phone number. And the other day somebody phoned me up and said: “Hi, Cindy . . .” I knew that the Vodacom database was in the hands of some marketing people, despite assurances from Vodacom that this would never happen (it so happens that, as far as Vodacom is concerned, I am still, in fact, Cindy, with a different identity document (ID). I can produce invoices from Vodacom made out to me going back ten years. Does not help. (Talking to the company’s helpline, its über helpline, moaning to Hellopeter . . . nothing helps. I am Cindy.)

Government realises that its databases are stuffed up. It does not want the databases to be stuffed up, because, if they get it right, they can do a Big Brother and link the banks to the tax to the value-added tax to the expenditure and, finally, squeeze more blood out of the stone.

So, government is going to work with the banks to create a new ID. They think. (If my bank thinks I am going to go to the bank, stand in the queue for the nth time and fix the government database once and for all . . . dream on.)

But there is a way to fight back. Whenever you go on any of those Internet sites when you have to create an account or give your cellphone number or anything like that, just make a mistake. Fill in McKenzie Hoy. Or Mackenziehoy, and so on. Then this will make their database corrupt – because, when they try to link your cell number to you, they will find there are two versions of you. Or do not use a similar name. Put in a correct ID number but give an incorrect name , such as Strandlooper Boytjies or Stoffelina Amperdood. Then great joy when you receive mail or spam addressed to your incorrect name.

If enough people do this, then, sooner or later, all databases become corrupt. They do not have to be very corrupt; they just have to be unreliable. If this happens, then ‘government looking over your shoulder’ will not happen.

There are those of you out there who will argue that it is good and proper to be properly registered and recorded. I certainly think that, in a country where government looks after the people and the people look after government, this should be the case. But, as things are now, with schoolteachers running energy affairs and government enterprises, one would have to be a fool to think that this is good for the people. Destroy the databases. Viva!