More South African humour

The Minister of Public Works wanted to remodel her office, so she invited different contractors for tenders.

One was from Johannesburg, one from Durban and the last one from Soweto.

"OK gentlemen, I want a nice job ," She said, "Let's hear from Jhb?"

The guy took out his ultrasonic measuring device and laptop and began measuring, scrawling on the computer, calculating.

Eventually he said "R90 000, Madam Minister,"

"That seems like quite a lot of money! Why R90,000?"

"You see," he replied, "that's R40 000 for material, R40 000 for labour and R10 000 for my profit".

She seemed OK with that and turned to the Durban contractor. "So how much do you want to do the job?" she asked.

The Durban fella took out a rusted tape measure, broken clipboard and a blunt pencil. He took some measurements, scratched some calculations on the back of his Rothmans box and came up with a figure of R70,000.

"That's interesting!" said Stella. "Explain the R70 000?"

"Simple, Madam Minister, I got a brother-in-law in the hardware trade, so that's R35 000 for materials, R30,000 for my guys, and R5,000 for my profit and all."

She was amused but happy to accept the explanation.

Then she asked the Soweto contractor for his quotation. He just smiled, looked the minister in the eyes and said, "R270 000!"

"Yoh Yoh Yoh!.... How did you come to that amount without even taking your measurements? What is that amount for?"

"That's R100 000 for me and R100 000 for you!"

"So what about the remaining R70 000?"

"We hire that guy from Durban to do the job!!!"