Water and Sanitation

The SABC treated the gullible South African public to yet another series of excuses and promises in regard to the supply of water and sanitation on Tuesday, November 25, 2014.  The Minister responsible (if that concept can be applied to a Minister in the ANC Government) stated that the Department of Water Affairs needed to ‘up its publicity’, to improve the communication with the public about the activities of the Department.  She was proud to declare that it was the Department that had broken the news that the ‘bucket system’ of sanitation would not meet its targets for December, set in May.  She also announced that plans were afoot to nationalise all water supplies.  The final item of her talk was a plea to the voting public to vote for the ANC in 2016, so that the Party could, finally, implement the plans it has been preparing for the past twenty years.  Of course, she admitted that many of the problems in the supply of water and sanitation services stemmed from corruption and the employment of unqualified and incompetent staff.  She stated that active programs were under way to correct situations leading to the waste of water through leaks.

One would be excused for going to sleep during such an address.  The plans have been made and repeated, year after year, for as long as the ANC has been in power.  It would be a relief to the tens of thousands of people suffering acute water shortage to know that they will no longer have to buy water from the truckers, who fill their tanks with water stolen from public resources and transport it the three kilometres to the users, as they have been doing for twenty years.  That relief would come, regardless of the fact that the cost of provision of that water is three times what it should have been, because the corruption involved in granting the contract to lay the pipeline has bled off so much of the limited funds available.  The only people who would regret that development, something that would be taken for granted in any modern democracy, would be the public and political employees who are so much a part of the skimming.

The Minister, her predecessors, and their bosses, the State Presidents, have been making the same sort of statements and admissions for two decades now.  They might have been credible during the first three years of ANC rule.  After all, it does take time to correct the efficient systems that the Apartheid Government put in place!  Now, after twenty years, there have been no credible actions to improve the situation, no criminal convictions for corruption for theft of any Minister or Deputy Minister.  The State President remains free to refuse to account to Parliament for the funds expended on his private home, with the Deputy President making the excuse that the State President should not be subjected to robust questioning in regard to an action found by the Public Protector to be unjust.  It is notable that the State President has not been seen in Parliament since that questioning, preferring to spend his time at the G20 and the African Union, spending taxpayers’ money and grandstanding, without benefit to the South African economy or the people.  There have been no visible actions against those who misuse public funds, no criminal actions against those who lie about their qualifications to get lucrative public positions (indeed, the ANC announced that it would retain the services of “Dr.” Pallo Jordan, who unusually, resigned his position after it was disclosed that his doctorate was not recognised in South Africa).  The Minister evaded answering a question about the waste of water resulting from pipe leakages, probably the result of years of lack of maintenance of the infrastructure or, in the case of the infrastructure laid down by the New South Africa, from the inferior design, workmanship and materials resulting from contracts being handed at high prices to favoured contractors, whose sole purpose in the contract was to maximise their profit.  Her sole bit of information in that regard was that the Department now has a program employing children to correct the situation.  One wonders what a child could do, that cannot be done by the supposedly qualified and trained employees of the Department.  One’s thoughts go to a vision of twenty-three employees of the Department of Water Affairs, diligently removing alien trees from a length of riverside, less than a hundred metres from the sea at Hartenbos, presumably as part of a plan to preserve the water that would otherwise flow into the sea less than a minute later!  Attentive observers will recall the interview of the State President by a sycophantic SABC interviewer after the State of the Nation address a few years ago, in which Zuma noted a series of areas in which the Government had failed to meet the expectations of the electorate over the years, and promised to do better in the future.  He pointed out that many of the failures were the responsibility of the ‘previous Administration’, but failed to state that the ‘previous Administration’ was also an ANC Government.  Apparently, The ANC is totally renewed at each election, sloughing off the tarnished old skin of the past five years, to start making the same mistakes and repeating the same criminal actions, unblemished and not responsible for its failings in the past!

And all the time, the country struggles on, the burden of ANC mismanagement and demonstrably poor planning and policymaking growing ever greater.  The hopes of the new democracy have died, along with the cyclically good agricultural seasons, leaving behind a country that is poorer, weaker, slipping in its economic dominance in Africa, losing friends among the economically powerful nations while it strengthens its ties with those countries that support terrorism and exercise military dominance over other, more democratic nations.

It is clear to any thinking person that, if we really want to correct the problems of the recent past, we must get rid of those who caused the problems, and start anew, with a group of honest, competent and trustworthy politicians, preferably people who are willing to come clean with the voters and the taxpayers, and who are willing to turn their hopeful words into concrete action.

Political Parties – a Dictatorship?

 

To many, political parties are the epitome of Government in a democratic system.  The principle is that they roll up the views of the voters in a coherent way, enabling the Parliament to convert them to legislation that complies with the will of the majority.

But is that really so?

Far too often, the leader of a political party reaches that position by buying favours from colleagues, with promises of high position or of benefits in the form of hand-outs, of lucrative contracts or of personal honours once the leader has gained power.  Many times, the campaign to gain leadership is couched in a devout belief of the desire to improve the lot of one’s fellow man, to impose an economic order that will be more beneficial to the masses.  Most of these are no more than empty words.  In the African context, the ‘average voter’ does not have the mental equipment, the education or theoretical knowledge, to evaluate what the aspirant to the highest post is promising.  The choice becomes an evaluation, in personal terms, of the man and the promises.  A chant of ‘Yes we can’ has the ability to raise an unknown and untested Trade Unionist to the Presidency of the United States.  The donation of three cows to a village is enough to sway the chief of that village to ensure that the villagers vote for a man who has over seven hundred criminal charges against his name and a record of inability to manage his own finances.

How did this come about?

The Party system works by using groups of carefully selected Members to choose delegates to decide who will be the Party’s candidate.  Already at that stage, the elements of dictatorship become evident.  The most vociferous of the Members become members of the electoral body.  Once they are ensconced, they choose those who offer them the greatest benefit to go on to the next round of voting.  At that point, the real electorate is already being presented with a selected range of candidates to go to the next round.  The real wishes of the electorate are excluded, unless the person ultimately chosen is so wildly unpalatable to the electorate that they put their foot down at that point.  At this point, the election of the United States President, from a very small pool of potential, diverges from the South African system, in which the President is elected directly by the delegates, with no say at all by the wider electorate.  That is how it has been possible for the man who is probably amongst the least suitable to hold the highest office in South Africa to gain that position of power.  Once there, he has the power to dictate to the Party what will happen.  He has the power to ensure that anyone who does not toe the Party line (i.e. the line that he dictates) is disadvantaged, by being held back from rising through the ranks as a result of diligent and intelligent work, by losing government contracts, by being penalised by the South African Revenue Services, by being harassed by the Police.  He also has the ability and the power to dispense largesse from the public coffers, by appointment to lucrative positions in the ever-expanding Civil Service, by dispensing Government Grants, by directing development activity to the required position.

The office of State President is no longer a democratically-elected position, subject to the will of the people, and to the obligation to provide full explanations of expenditure and policies.  It is a dictatorship, in the worst traditions of African Independence.  It seems no longer to carry the prime obligation of complying with the Constitution, in law or in spirit.

Worrying signs of this progression are evident in the intention of the Minister of Defence to embark on another spending splurge on weapons and munitions that have no conceivable use in the context of South Africa, other than the generation of huge commissions to those in power and the entrenchment in the minds of the Generals that their best benefit will lie in the support of the Party against a transfer of power through the ballot box.  Another sign is the invasion of Parliament by the Police, a sign that the Party views its control of Parliament as a right.  Yet another sign is the slavish adoration of the Great Leader, Jacob Zuma, by the Party Members who, one after the other, stood in Parliament to proclaim that he had done no wrong in receiving a benefit in the hundreds of millions of Rands through the construction of his private residence at Nkandla, in the face of all the facts, the finding by a Constitutional watchdog, the Public Protector, and the cogent arguments by virtually every Member of the Opposition Parties.

The time has come for all South Africans to take stock of what their democracy, their grand achievement only twenty years ago, has become, and what it is well on the road to becoming.

Democracy and Taxes

http://today.moneyweb.co.za/article.php?id=793440&cid=2014-11-19#.VGwXy2PDvEJ

Democracy and Taxes

 

It has become standard in the modern world to separate the operations of Government from the people who pay the bills.  This situation is nowhere more evident than in the new South Africa.

It should be an essential understanding of Government that the people who make the laws and those who apply them are the servants of the people.  They are there at the will of the people, and they are paid by the taxpayers.  No matter how the machinations of Government are constructed, the taxpayers and the ordinary citizens are the ones who supply the money to keep them there.  South African Airways, although, supposedly run as a business (although there are no obvious signs of any real understanding of the principles of business in that organisation) is, in the final analysis, an organ of Government, and it will remain so until the Government chooses to divest itself of that millstone.  As long as there is any public investment in the corporation, it must be held to the rigid standards of good governance and transparency that should be applied to any organisation owned by the public.  Eskom is another example of an organisation established and funded by the people, by means of diversion of tax money to support it, by guarantees given by the State to enable it to borrow the funds that it says it needs, and by the payment by citizens and taxpayers for the services it provides.  The SABC and Sanral are yet other examples, and there are many more.  And there are as many examples of incompetence in the performance of their duties to provide the services they are supposed to perform, subterfuge, arrogance towards the public and dishonesty in their operations and their reporting to the public, who are their ultimate owners.

This situation has come about because the politicians have succeeded in their efforts to separate what they do from the decisions of those who pay for it.  The continual harping on the needs of the ‘poorest of the poor’ has succeeded in convincing the electorate, the taxpayers and the recipients of Government largess, that the prime objective of Government is to provide a security blanket for those who cannot provide for themselves or who will not take the steps that are necessary to provide for themselves.  Those good-hearted people, and those who see their best benefit lying in a system that provides for them, albeit poorly, without the necessity for them to do anything for it beyond casting a vote twice in every five years for the party that promises the most, fail to understand that the money must come from somewhere!  The vast bulk of employees do not understand that the money required to pay their salaries and wages does not magically appear in the bank account of the employer every payday.  They do not understand that their efforts on behalf of their employer are what ensures that the money is there to pay their wages.  Government, on the other hand, enjoys the situation that, if it needs money, it can simply take it from the taxpayers.  They do not understand the effort, the risk and the imagination it takes to earn the money that Government simply takes.  However, in the end, if Government fails to provide the conditions in which the taxpayers are able to earn that money, the flow of funds to the Government will simply dry up.  If the Airports Company simply increases the rents and levies payable by the companies operating at the airports, the cost of flying, an important element of the economic life of a country, will become too high to be justified by the benefit to the entrepreneur of those flights.  If the cost of electricity, an important indicator of the health of an economy, is simply pushed up because the State-owned monopoly supplier of electricity is incompetent to do the job, the industries and businesses that use electricity will simply close down.  If the cost of road transport escalates to almost double because the agency responsible to the construction and maintenance of the roads decides that it needs more money (a decision that is neither transparent nor honest, and very questionable in the light of the huge salaries and bonuses paid to senior executives who are manifestly incapable of doing their jobs), the tourist business will slow down, internal transport will ultimately die, and all of the businesses that rely on a good road transport system will fail, either spectacularly or miserably.  If the alternatives to all of these services are eliminated, either by Government edict or by incompetent and short-sighted management of the public-owned organisations that provide them (do not forget that Spoornet put a huge effort into destroying the long-distance rail service that was such an important factor in building the economy of the country in pre-ANC times), the alternative to road transport is severely restricted, and the collapse of the road transport system is facilitated.

Every thinking South African is aware of the rapidly increasing number and scope of the threats to the South African economy.  If they apply their minds, they can see that the country is sliding ever more quickly down the competitiveness slope, that even the basket-case economies in Africa and Asia are progressing more quickly and more sustainably than is South Africa.  Many economists and leaders of business and industry are expressing the view that South Africa is rushing towards the tipping point, beyond which it may not be able to recover without a lengthy period of traumatic economic surgery.  Several of the more realistic of these are already saying that the economy is beyond that point, that even an economically sane and competent new Government will have extreme difficulty in correcting the disasters that the Marxist-Leninist policies of the ANC are building.  Even worse, many of the top leaders in business are withholding comment in public, fearful of the punishment that will be meted out to them by the Party, a group of people who are increasingly adopting the North Korean imperative of unrelenting praise and glorification of the Great Leader, Jacob Zuma, from whom all largesse flows!  Those leaders of business are working quietly in the background to ensure that their businesses are insulated from the economic crash that they discuss in private.

Some economists who should know better, such as Ryk van Niekerk, feel compelled to state that the economy will not collapse, while they point out that the Government headed by Jacob Zuma is the worst Government South Africa has had to endure in over a hundred years.  One cannot help believing that the protestation that ‘things will get better’ stems more from a pious hope than from any understanding of the situation.  It is clear that things will not get better unless the people who pay the bills, the taxpayers, take urgent and effective action to recover control of how their money is spent. 

Thinking democrats, the people who believe that the Government they pay to do the work that they require and authorise must comply with their wishes, must take urgent steps to recover control of the Government from the politicians who see the country as their fiefdom.  They must take meaningful action to make the politicians understand that they are prepared to pay the taxes only if they are satisfied that those taxes are being applied, efficiently and effectively, and, above all, honestly, to achieving the objectives that are needed to ensure that the income that pays those taxes will continue, and will grow.

Nkandla - The End of Democracy in South Africa?

The Nkandla story has had thinking South Africans inflamed for many months, but never more so than during the debate in Parliament on the report of the committee investigating whether President Zuma should be held responsible for the cost of the upgrades to his private home, a bill that exceeds R246 000 000.  Predictably, the ANC Committee found that Zuma could not be held responsible.  Amidst all the rhetoric, several facts stand out clearly:

1.    In accordance with a Cabinet memorandum, itself a questionable method of controlling the excesses of Ministers and the President, Zuma was entitled to State funding for improvements to the security arrangements at his home.  Most of the expenditure did not relate to such security matters.

2.    Zuma appointed architect Minenhle Makhanya as his agent to oversee the construction.  Makhanya instructed that the upgrades were implemented.  In addition to this role being illegal in the process of expending public funds, an interesting point arises.  In South African law, an agent is a person appointed by the principal to act in his stead, and his actions are imputed to the principal as though the principal himself had so acted.  Zuma has claimed that he did not know what was happening at Nkandla.  Two conclusions may be drawn from this statement.  Either Zuma is clearly lying about his state of knowledge, because he was personally present on site on at least several occasions, and so could not have known at least the approximate extent of the expenditure, or he has acted in a way that is so negligent as to defy belief, a conclusion that is probably as damaging to him in his role as the Chief Executive of South Africa Inc. as the conclusion that he is a simple, and simple-minded, liar.  Or, probably, both.  However that is viewed, the simple fact is that the agent acted on behalf of Zuma, and Zuma must bear the consequences for those actions.

3.    Zuma has stated in Parliament that the total cost of the home was paid by the family from a mortgage loan, but he has consistently failed to provide any evidence of this.  Either he is lying about the mortgage loan, or the family has managed to scrape together R246 000 000 during his career as a politician.  Zuma is known to have had limited financial skills, so he must be a brilliant investor, or, more likely, the numerous allegations of his involvement in corruption are correct.  An investigation into his tax returns is likely to yield fascinating results, both in terms of how he earned the money, and whether he has paid the taxes on those earnings that he is so loudly demanding at the G20 should be paid by productive corporations.

4.    The funds that were used to pay for the upgrades were diverted from community projects, projects that were funded by vote of Parliament to uplift the ‘poorest of the poor’.  This diversion was handled in an underhanded way, which is, to say the least, illegal.  Zuma would have us believe that he had no knowledge of the source of such funding.  This alone is sufficient to demand his removal from office.

5.    Zuma has consistently refused to answer the questions of the Public Protector, an office established under the Constitution for the explicit purpose of protecting the public from the sort of excess and illegality represented by the actions of Zuma in this matter.  His refusal to answer questions, his lengthy delays in responding to the Public Protector, and his ignoring of the findings of the Public Protector are all in flagrant contempt of the Constitution, and are certainly grounds for his impeachment.

6.    Zuma has been protected by the ANC from having to appear to answer questions in Parliament about this matter.  His role as President does not put him above Parliament or the law, but enhances the need for him to provide the fullest information to the Representatives of the People.  His failure to fulfill that obligation shows the contempt in which he holds the Constitution and the organs that uphold it.

7.    The ANC is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to shield this man from his legal and moral obligations, and so must be construed to be complicit in his breaches of those obligations.

What should be concluded from this event?  Certain conclusions are inescapable.

1.    President Zuma will go down in history as the worst President ever to lead South Africa, Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd included.  He has brought the country to a new low of honesty, integrity and competence.

 

2.    The ANC has proven that even an advanced nation such as South Africa has the capability to become an African banana republic.  There is an increasing belief in South Africa, even amongst the Black population, that ‘things were better under Apartheid’!

3.    The outrage felt by the public, particularly the tax-paying public, in South Africa is such that the country has edged significantly closer to an outright revolution.  It is fair to say that the economic stability of the nation will be severely impacted by the fallout of the Nkandla Scandal, coming on top of the Arms Deal Cover-up and the Marikana affair.

4.    Thinking and moral investors will cross South Africa off the list of possible investment destinations, to the extent that that has not already been done.  They will see that it is a country in which no organ of State feels itself obliged to comply with the terms or the spirit of the Constitution, and therefore a place where the laws of the land no longer have any meaning other than what the ruling Party decides they have.  This has been a long time coming, twenty years in fact, but it has now reached the status of a new Apartheid, ignorance of property rights, extreme corruption, in which a loss to corruption of R30 billion is considered to be an improvement and a situation of more than two-thirds of municipalities fail to obtain a clean audit, a country in which the education system, if it can be said to exist at all, is ‘improved’ by adjustment of the pass mark to 30%.

5.    All of those South Africans who wish to live honest and productive lives will be looking for places to which they can emigrate.  It has been a disturbing trend in South Africa that people believe that the only way to succeed is to join the corrupt system, and feed off the incompetence that has been fostered by Zuma and his cronies.

6. The ANC has proven that democracy as a concept has no meaning in South Africa.  The Party is prepared to ignore all the safeguards that the Constitution has put in place to protect the people against the excesses of the political leaders and the dishonesty of the cadres they have appointed in positions of power.

If there is to be any hope for South Africa, President Zuma and his Cabinet, together with his Party, must be removed from office soon.  A five year wait until the next election is too long for the country to survive as a democracy.  In the meanwhile citizens should be alert to moves being made by the ANC to bring the military into the fold.  Remember, when the citizens revolt in Africa, the first step of the sitting dictator is to impose military rule. 

Certainly, that is unconstitutional, but who in the present Government has shown any regard for the Constitution?

State Criminality

One of the essential elements of a developing State is an insistence by the Government on the maintenance and observance of private property rights.  If a citizen is to exercise his or her ingenuity and invest funds and time in the development of new businesses and new ideas, that citizen has to have the assurance that the results will be available to him or her.  Would you take the trouble to grow a vegetable garden if you knew that the products would be taken by a passer-bye without even a ‘thank you’ for the trouble you have taken, the money and effort you have invested?  Of course you would not!  It is more likely that you would join the ranks of the thugs that prey on the far-sighted and hard-working citizens who become the victims.  Investing the money, the time, the effort and the risk required to create something that did not exist before, and would not exist apart from your effort, would make no sense.  If you had the drive to do it, the chances are that you would move to a different neighbourhood where you could retain the fruits of your effort, a neighbourhood where the prevailing view was that you should be rewarded for those efforts, where the people in control could recognise that what you take out of the work is a fitting reward for the contribution you make to the good of the community.  Soon, those neighbourhoods that supported the ‘rights’ of the thugs to take from the productive members of the community would be denuded of those creative and hardworking members who drive the economy of the community, leaving behind the parasites, the criminals and the leaders who permitted and encouraged the institutionalised criminality.  The neighbourhood that offers protection from deprivation of your rights will benefit by the addition of the efforts, skills and intelligence of those driven from the places where theft, in any form, is not only tolerated, but also undertaken by the authorities.

South Africa under the ‘leadership’ of the ANC, unfortunately, has come to view private ownership as evil, except, of course, when that ownership is in the hands of the Party favourites.  The change has taken place slowly, each step being promoted with plenty of rhetoric about the need to protect the ‘poorest of the poor’.  The private ownership of mineral rights has been taken away.  The right if a businessman to choose his employees has been compromised.  The contract between employer and employee has been skewed to the extent that an employee has all the rights and the employer none.  There is a plan to take 50% of the ownership of productive farms from the farmers who have invested the funds, the time and the ingenuity to build them to provide the food supplies to the nation, and to hand that share to the workers, without compensation to the farmers who have built them up to provide the nation with food.  The argument that the workers also built the farm is specious.  They were paid for their work, while the farmer took the risk, and, if the pay was not sufficient, they had the right to withdraw their labour and apply it elsewhwere.  The ownership of mines, banks, insurance companies and all other businesses of any size is required to be ‘shared’ with members of the ‘previously disadvantaged’ groups.  The fact that such transfer of ownership is paid for from the dividends received from the shares transferred is designed to confuse the gullible – it is a simple donation by the remaining shareholders of a part of the business and the income from it that would have flowed to them, in the absence of this State-sponsored criminality.  It is State-mandated theft.

Now the Department of Trade and Industry is embarking on the next phase of the theft.  It is planning to deprive the owners of the patents that are sorely needed in this country of their rights, by enforcing the granting of licences to use those patents at a low or zero licence fee.  Of course, this is done to benefit the ‘poorest of the poor’, so no-one can argue the morality of it.  We all know that the ‘poorest of the poor’ is a form of Holy territory, not to be exploited (except by the governing Party).  We all know that the benefits of those patents should be made available to the country, that we can’t afford to pay for their use, so the jackbooted Capitalists who invested their ingenuity, their time, their money to create those patents, must simply hand over the rights to use those patents at a price to be determined by the noble political leaders in the interests of the ‘poorest of the poor’.

To put the story in a context that even the most obtuse can understand, let us imagine that you, a hardworking man or woman, have sold a possession that has taken you half a lifetime to acquire.  You are walking down the street in South Africaville, the money in your pocket, when a thug steps out and sticks a gun in your face.  “Give me half of what you have in your pocket,” he says.  Surprised (or perhaps not – this is, after all, South Africaville) you respond.  “Why half?”  The thug looks at you earnestly.  “I’m being fair to you, to leave you with half of what you have worked for!”  He is surprised that you do not understand the fairness of his act.  After all, half is better than none!  “What right do you have to take half of what is mine?” you ask, flabbergasted.  “My friends all agree with me that I am entitled to take half of the fruits of your labour!  That is the democratic system!”

That is emphatically not the democratic system.  It is the socialistic system!  It is theft, pure and simple.  The fact that the majority of voters agree that the Government may act in a criminal way does not make it less criminal.  We need to evaluate our actions, and those of our Government, on an objective basis of right and wrong.  That objective basis must comply with the standards of the civilised world. 

As citizens of a country, we have an obligation to support the provision of certain services, such as (effective and honest) policing, the construction of roads (preferably roads that will not develop potholes in the first rainstorm), education (of a standard to make our children able to earn their own way in the world).  We do not have an obligation to pay a bloated, ineffective and corrupt Civil Service.  We do not have an obligation to pay for thirty-two Cabinet Ministers, none of whom seem to have any understanding that they are the servants of the people and, as such, they have an obligation to inform the people of what they are planning, what they have done in our behalf, and the real truth of the areas for which they are responsible.  As citizens, we are entitled to expect value for our money, and a true accounting of the use of it.  As citizens, we are entitled to retain all of the assets and income that we and our ancestors have worked for.

We are not the fiefdom of the ‘new royalty’, the band of thugs who believe that everything we own is ultimately the property of the State (a different way of describing the Association for Nepotism and Corruption), to be exploited for the benefit of the people who can’t or won’t work to produce their own income.  We are not a resource to be exploited by the Government for its own ends.

To revert to the proposed change in the laws relating to the rights of the owners of patents, it is clear that the ANC-led Government is determined to undermine the rights of ownership which are an essential of a law-abiding economy.  The proposed changes will continue to reduce the incentive for people to invest in the future, or, possibly worse, to move away to a new country which understands that an entrepreneur will invest only if he can reasonably expect to receive a return.  There will be an increase in the stagnation of the economy that is already evident, and the only likely promoters of a recovery from that stagnation will choose to escape to a more enlightened, more honest country.

Some of the readers have asked what can be done, in the face of a Government that is increasingly irrational in its actions to preserve the power of the ANC.  Short of an uprising by the enlightened citizenry, the obvious solution is to employ the tactics of Ghandi.  Apply passive resistance.  Make every action by Government as difficult as possible.  Raise objections to every tax, delay payments to Government, and compliance with its demands, as long as is possible under the law.  Talk to foreign investors and inform them of the true situation in the country.  Write to foreign newspapers to tell them of Nkandla, the Arms Deal, the deprivation of private rights of ownership, the new Apartheid, Marikana.  The greatest strength of the Marxists who are running the Government is the apathy of those who are being exploited by it.  The situation in South Africa will not improve unless the people who are supporting the policies of the Government by paying their taxes, tolls, levies, licence fees, airport taxes, electricity bills and the numerous other demands of Government and Government-owned organisations show their dislike of them.  In the end, the person who pays is entitled to call the shots.

The inevitable collapse

As the pending economic catastrophe continues to build, the Deputy President has joined the bandwagon, admitting that numerous mistakes have been made by ‘previous administrations’, and promising that the current bunch will do better.  Thinking South Africans will be excused for saying that they have heard it all before.  They did not believe it then, and they believe it even less now.  Perhaps the Honourable Deputy President should learn that the ANC of five, ten, fifteen or twenty years ago is the same ANC that continues to mismanage the once-strong South African economy.  The truth is that the ANC has demonstrated clearly that it has no ability to ensure the provision of the fundamentals necessary to build the country, but has chosen to use the country as a resource to build their personal wealth, in a fashion typical of numerous other African banana republics.

 

What are the fundamentals of a strong economy?

The first fundamental is an education system that produces children who are capable of working productively in the economy.  No-one, apart from the ANC, can claim that South Africa has that system.  The ‘improvements’ in the Matric pass rate have been achieved by reducing the pass rate to 30%!  Can you imagine driving over a bridge designed by an engineer who achieved 30% in Maths?  Can you imagine a coal storage bunker to hold 10 000 tons of material being designed by such a man, or a shopping mall?  Oops!  We have those examples!

The second fundamental is a civil service that is both competent and honest.  No-one, apart from the ANC, can claim that South Africa has that civil service.  The Deputy President has claimed proudly that nearly 30% of the municipalities have achieved a clean audit report!  Isn’t it remarkable that the pass rate on audit reports is the same as that required for a Matric?  In any civilized society, a government that achieves less than 100% clean audits for its activities would be thrown out at the next election, or, more likely, would take the honourable route of resigning and handing over the reins of government to a competent group of people.  Unfortunately, honour is a concept that is foreign to the ANC, as has been shown so clearly by the shenanigans of the State President.

The third fundamental is a government that the people trust, headed by a man of impeccable credentials.  The laws governing banks and insurance companies require that every senior officer and Director of such institutions should be a ‘fit and proper person’.  The standards used to determine this quality include history of conduct, relevant education, current competence and other similar factors.  On that basis, very few of our numerous Ministers and Deputy Ministers, not to mention the senior civil servants, would qualify.  Does that mean that the management of the country requires a lower standard of competence and integrity than the management of a bank or insurance company?

The fourth fundamental is that the government recognizes the needs for infrastructure investment and ensures that the requirements of the developing economy are met before they become bottlenecks.  Things like roads, rail systems, electricity supply, telephone and internet systems, postal service, are all essential elements of a modern economy.  Not one of those elements is met to anywhere near the level required by South Africa.  However, this cannot surprise anyone who understands that the State President was not aware of the R246 000 000 being spent on his personal estate!

The fifth fundamental is that the people of the country have a Government that they can, and do, trust.  South Africans have, unfortunately, become accustomed to the lies and dissimulations of the senior members of Government, their avoidance of pointed questions even in Parliament, their consistent unwillingness to comply with the law in relation to disclosure of information.  They have learned to question the motivations of the top people in everything they do, to the extent that a popular talk show host asked what the State President was doing in Russia recently.  The answer came a couple of days later, when Russia announced that it had signed a contract to supply R111 billions of nuclear power stations to South Africa!  In the climate of distrust that now prevails, the frenzied attempts by the Departments of Energy and Public Works to explain that these were really only pre-tender feelings out of the capabilities of possible suppliers all fell on deaf ears.  The question, however, remains unanswered.  What was the President doing in Russia? The events related to the Arms Deal are still creating ripples, regardless of the attempts by the Commission to paper over the cracks.

The sixth fundamental is that the government does what is required to ensure that as many people as possible are enabled to look after themselves.  With 17 000 000 grant recipients, living on the backs of 4 200 000 taxpayers, that can certainly not be said to be the case in South Africa!  Add to that the fact that 27% of all employees in South Africa are employed by the Government.  Experience of the competence of all forms of government must lead to the conclusion that at least half of those Government employees are in reality recipients of a different form of social grant.  It requires little intelligence to understand that this is a situation that cannot continue.  But then, intelligence is not one of the noteworthy attributes of the present Government.

 

It is clear that South Africa is on an accelerating decline.  The only question is how long it will take to collapse. 

The process of collapse will be painful to all in the country, and the longer it takes for that collapse to reach the nadir, the more pain will be suffered, and the longer and harder the recovery will be.  The Germans have a saying:  rather an end with suffering than suffering without end.  We collectively have the choice, to allow it all to continue, or to put an end to it, the right way or the hard way.  Perhaps it is time for those with their hands on economic power to stand up and say ‘No more!’  Perhaps it is time to recognise that this country belongs to the people who work to support it, not to the parasites who steal from the public.