South Africa at Davos

South Africa has sent a team of about eighty to the World Economic Forum at Davos, a sure indication of:

1. The desperate need of the country to pull the wool over the eyes of the investment community.  Jacob Zuma will, doubtless, take the lead in this, attempting to do to the world what he and his Party have done to the gullible voters in his home fiefdom.
2. An urgent need to bleed whatever is left to be taken from the South African taxpayers, a desire to enjoy whatever is left before the axe falls.

It is ironic that Jacob Zuma will lead the group.  He has shown convincingly that neither he nor his Party have any ability to manage a modern (or any other) economy.  He has also proven to the world that his primary interest, apart from remaining in power for as long as possible, to take what little is left, while he works to ensure that his successor will not instigate investigations into what he and his cohorts have taken from the country (like the quarter billion Rands for the construction of his private homestead at Nkandla, as one small example) and to prevent the criminal charges still outstanding – 749 at the last count, but, no doubt to be supplemented by further charges when the injured persons consider themselves to be safe from State retribution for speaking the truth – from finally being brought against him.  His credentials would be sufficient to deter even the boldest investor putting money into the country he has managed to a new low, quite apart from the fact that, by making an investment in the country, they are implicitly support the criminal conduct of the South Africa Government in ignoring an unequivocal High Court judgment requiring it to place under arrest a man, Omar al Bashir, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court Warrant of Arrest on charges of genocide.  It is to be noted that Zuma is known to be a frequent visitor to this wanted criminal!  The purely financial reason for not wanting to invest in South Africa is clear in the fact that the value of the Rand has crashed by 30% in the past year, and is now about one-quarter of its value when the ANC came to power!  If you desire to lose a substantial part of your investment, put it in South Africa!

Zuma will be supported by a group of sycophants and yes-men, and even the new new Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, cannot claim to be free of responsibility for the state of the country.  He took over the portfolio, for the first time, coming fresh from a spell as Commissioner of Inland Revenue – the tax collection agency – during which the SARS systematically applied blackmail and undue means to force companies that the ANC wanted for its own to enter into deals that were not in the interests of the country or of the economy, and were not supported by any law.  SARS was assisted in this by the South African Reserve Bank, which instructed the commercial banks to freeze the accounts of a wide range of companies associated with their target company.  This action, accompanied by an appointment of the target company’s legal representative, was designed to prevent that company from defending itself at law, an action that was completely in contravention of the Constitution and one of the prime tenets of any civilized legal system, the right to representation in a Court Hearing.  The fact that SARS got away with this form of conduct is a good indicator that they will be comfortable using it again.  After his appointment as Minister the first time round, Gordhan managed the financial side of the economy with such success that he managed to allow his boss, Jacob Zuma, to bleed a quarter billion Rand from the taxpayers for his private purposes, and any claim for innocence that he might have made would have to be silenced by his deafening silence when Zuma spent over a year ducking and diving the findings of the Public Protector that he had unduly benefitted from the State funds, as well as failing to raise even the slightest protest when Zuma prevailed on the Minister of Police to dish out the flimsiest possible excuse for his actions to Parliament, even though Gordhan was a Cabinet Minister at all relevant times.  In the view of most taxpayers, all of the multitudinous Ministers are culpable in their tolerance of the misdeeds of the State President.  When the truth ultimately comes out, it is certain that most of them will be shown to have benefitted hugely from their positions while contributing practically nothing to the struggling economy.

So, if you plan to go to Davos, treat anything you may hear from Zuma and his lackeys with the highest possible degree of suspicion and skepticism.  Better yet, don’t waste your time listening to him spouting the untruths that the long-suffering South African public have come to expect from him.