Modern Myths III

The rule of law.

A basic principle of law is that every citizen is bound by the law and is presumed to know and understand every law.  Lack of knowledge is no excuse.  That this principle is absurd is trite.  The number of laws being passed each year, and the multiplicity of regulations being promulgated by unelected and unrepresentative civil servants under those laws is simply too great for even the best-informed expert in a single sub-branch of law to have more than a general knowledge of the applicable laws.  A request for elucidation of the rights and obligations of a citizen to a Senior Counsel will have the immediate result that he turns to research that subject.  An expert in VAT will reread the Act and consult the textbooks before he feels able to give a firm opinion on those rights and obligations.  What possibility does the average citizen have to comply with the principle that he knows and understands every law applicable to him?  That question is valid in most situations in which the citizen may find himself, and, in most cases, the understanding that the citizen has will be vague and incomplete, and certainly insufficient to enable him to comport himself in the manner expected by those laws.  Recourse to the legal profession will certainly be expensive, and will often result in incomplete or incorrect information.

This proposition was made abundantly clear in the recent case in the Constitutional Court which dealt with the breach of the Constitution and of his Oath of Office by the State President, when his Counsel submitted that the State President erred in not understanding that the Office of the Public Protector had a right under the Constitution to issue binding findings that could only be reviewed by a competent Court of Law.  The State President had unrestricted access to the broadest possible range of advice, ranging from Constitutional Court Judges, through State Attorneys and legal officers, down to his own legal advisors.  His claim that he did not know the simple proposition of law was either a damning indictment of the presumption of complete knowledge by the average citizen, or a damning lie by the most senior representative of the people.

The case of the trial of Shrien Diwani for the murder of his wife by a gang of hit-men illustrates very well the failure of the rule of law.  The accused, initially let free after questioning which elicited numerous doubts about his innocence, was subjected to numerous Hearings, culminating in his extradition for the UK in a chartered aircraft (reasons unclear – Diwani could not be considered a security risk under guard in a normal flight) and followed by a lengthy period of observation in a mental institution at State expense, was brought to a head in a trial which, from the outset, showed an almost comical lack of preparedness by the prosecution.  This, in one of the most internationally high-profile murder trials of the decade!  The Judge soon found that the witnesses were unreliable and that there was no case to answer!  If ever there was a criminal trial in which one could ask who had been bribed to ensure a verdict of not guilty, this was it.  The Diwani trial went a long way to affirming in the mind of Joe the Plumber that there is no such thing as justice in law. 

The shenanigans at the office of the National Prosecuting Authority have confirmed the view that South Africa is not a State ruled by law.  Highly-placed or well-connected people seem to be able to manipulate the justice system at will, and instances of seemingly incorrect guilty verdicts of innocent, ordinary, people, who cannot afford high-priced lawyers, abound.  The Minister of Justice paid more than R100 000 000 in damages for wrongful arrest in one year, and, in one such case in which the wrongful arrest took place in 2011, the Minister of Justice managed to delay the case for damages until 2015, and then took another four months to pay the amount ordered.  It is usual for the attorneys of the winning claimant to attach assets of the Police and threaten to have them sold at a Sheriff’s auction in order to force payment of the Court-ordered judgement.  In the case mentioned, the claimant had been arrested at a border crossing in order to give effect to a Warrant of Arrest in an alleged case of breach of the Environmental Control Act.  The alleged offence allegedly occurred after he had been absent from the country for more than a year, and the Warrant was issued because, it stated, he had failed to attend a Hearing, which he had not been instructed to attend, of which he had no knowledge, and which had never taken place, all facts known to the Police at the time the Warrant was issued.  The warrant was issued under a clause of the Act which had not come into effect until nearly two years after the alleged offence was supposedly committed.  The accused was not given a copy of the Warrant of Arrest or of the details of the charge against him, and had no possibility of proving his innocence until five months and five separate postponements of the Court Hearing after the arrest, involving extensive travel and lengthy waits in filthy Magistrates Courts, only to have the case postponed again, and then, at the final Hearing, the Police withdrew the Charge.  During this long and bad experience, it was found that the Magistrates, who authorise the Warrants of Arrest on a sworn statement by the Police investigating officer, routinely fail to apply their minds to the matter, or often even to read the underlying document!  Not even the most ardent supporter of law and order could claim that the Rule of Law prevails in South Africa!

Criminals are entitled to the same rights as all other citizens.

There is a prevailing belief that everyone without exception deserves the full protection of all civil rights.  This ignores the fact that criminals, by the very nature of their acts, do not believe that others enjoy the same rights as they.  The result of the view that criminals enjoy the same rights as all other citizens often results in them enjoying superior rights.  This is well illustrated by the fact that a number of people, who are unable to succeed in society, commit a crime so that they may enjoy the food, comfort, medical care and benevolent protection of a prison life.  A man or woman living in a self-built shack has less availability of good food and warm bedding than a convicted criminal. 

The argument goes that a prison sentence is not so much a punishment as a rehabilitation of the offender.  That may be so in a limited number of cases, but a man who has murdered or raped repeatedly should not enjoy the comforts of a modern prison life.  He has no possibility of being rehabilitated, and the view that he should not be punished makes a mockery of the meaning of justice.  There must be a return to the view that a prison sentence is a severe punishment, even that the perpetrator of crimes that, in a more just past, would have merited the imposition of a death sentence, should result in the civil rights of the prisoner being revoked, so that the sentence does become a true deterrent to behaviour of this nature. 

The case of Oscar Pistorius is pertinent.  Most South Africans felt outrage that a man, found guilty of shooting another person (regardless of whether he knew who that person was) should have been given a sentence that resulted in him serving only ten months in prison, followed by a period of house arrest.  Pistorius knew that, when he shot through the door, he had a very high probability of killing the person behind it.  That complies with the legal definition of murder.  He nevertheless shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp.  That, in the opinion of most South Africans, would justify the revocation of his rights to protection under most laws during a period of internment that would bring home to him the gravity of the act of killing another human.  He should have been subjected to difficult and unpleasant circumstances for a long time.  Instead, he was housed in a pleasant cell, given the opportunity to improve himself while living a life that was certainly better than eighty per cent of the dwellers in squatter shacks.  At the end of that, after ten months, he could go home and reflect on his sins, with his conscience prodding him to repent.  Photographs of the released Pistorius show scant sign of repentance.  The cost of that ‘punishment’ detracted from the funds available, probably to the tune of at least half a million Rands, to improve the lives of dozens of more deserving and less morally-reprehensible people.  Of the two sides, which has a better claim on the funds of the State?  And Oscar Pistorius was a very mild case of criminal conduct.  Anyone could think of dozens of more serious cases, all of which are less deserving of the rights we accord them under the moral code we have espoused.  One case in point is Jacob Zuma, a man in the highest office of trust, who wilfully and on at least two occasions breached his Oath of Office, an oath which he declared to be sacred, lied about his actions repeatedly and arrogantly to Parliament and the public, and then claimed not to know that he had done so.  One may be forgiven for wondering which of the two, Pistorius or Zuma, was more morally reprehensible in his acts, and which of the two deserved to have his civil rights revoked, the impulsive murderer or the coldblooded thief of the nation’s assets.

Modern Myths

It seems that some political slogans and catch phrases, originally developed to garner votes from the classes affected, have become axioms, statements that are never questioned for truth or validity, and so acted upon without any real understanding of their effect or evaluation of their validity.  Many of them result in substantial structures affecting all citizens and shaping an economy being built upon a base of shifting sand.  The potential for a collapse of disastrous proportions increases as more storeys are added to the structure without any attempt being made to strengthen its foundations.  Some of these are discussed below.

The poorest of the poor.

A large proportion of the funds available to governments are allocated to projects, activities and policies to alleviate the suffering of the poor.  The argument is that the poor are not in that state because of their own fault, and so deserve to be given assistance by the wealthier in an attempt to give them an opportunity to enjoy what the rest of us do.  Funds are allocated to provide medical services, to support their children, to prevent starvation, to provide free housing, free water, free electricity, free or subsidised transport. 

These supports have, almost everywhere, achieved a proliferation of the poor, with exploding numbers of welfare recipients, huge amounts being spent on services, and a rapid growth of the poor population.  Morally, these expenditures appear to be justified, but are they really? 

It is a fact that the numbers of poor increase considerably more quickly than the numbers of well-off.  While Africa has a birth rate in excess of 3,7%, Germany, a generally wealthy country, has a declining population, and the same phenomenon is seen within a country.  The problem that arises here is that the poor are the least economically productive, yet they consume a disproportionate (in economic productivity terms) share of the wealth produced by the society.  The allocation of a portion of the wealth of the society to the poor produces a lower economic return that the same allocation to the more wealthy, and so represents a drag on the economic growth of the society.  While the diversion of a part of the wealth of the country to the poor may be justifiable in different ways, from an economic point of view, the greater the proportion allocated to the poor, the more slowly will the economy of that country grow.  That allocation, in recent times, has increased because the numbers of poor voters have made them an irresistible pool for the governing Party, so that the hand-outs to them per capita have tended to grow, and the numbers have grown at the same time.  In South Africa, the number of recipients of social assistance far exceeds the number of taxpayers, and the ratio of recipients to taxpayers is growing.

If the total of the funds distributed by Government to the poor were to be diverted to investment to grow the economy, the effect would almost certainly be that the economy would grow sufficiently quickly to shrink the numbers of the poor.  Obviously, this could not be done, but the lesson is clear.  The growth of an economy is directly related to the funds invested in it, and the reduction of that investment has a profound effect on the rate of growth, and so on the creation of economic activity that will provide earned income to the participants in the economy.

The other aspect is that social assistance in the form of social grants, such as pensions, support to the indigent, support for children, free housing and services, and similar, provide a magnet to attract those who might have earned a living by subsistence farming, by selling their labour as farm workers, and in similar ways, to the cities, where they do not have the infrastructure or the job opportunities to live a ‘decent life’, requiring that the Government provide free or subsidised housing and services.  Living in this way tends to break down the fabric of the society, resulting in an increase in the number of children born to teenage mothers and to single-parent families, with the result that those children have fewer opportunities to work their own way out of the poverty trap.  An indiscriminate increase of support to the poor, usually undertaken by a Government as a means of attracting their vote, will almost always result in an increase in the number of the poor and so in an increase in the amount of funds, which otherwise would be applied to the development of the economy, being diverted to this economically unproductive use. 

The existence of a number of poor tends to attract an increase in that number and, if not harnessed at an affordable level, it will result in a slowing of economic growth until that growth starts to decline.

The concentration of the Government on the poor is misdirected.  In a team sport, there will be some effort expended on developing a selected group of players with potential, but the greatest pay-off for effort expended will be achieved by improving the quality of the performance by those players who have proven their capability.  So it is in industry and in business.  An undue concentration of effort and expenditure to develop people who have not proven their potential will distract from the development of those activities that are already producing results.  It is much easier to grow a proven business than to develop a start-up business, and the bang for the buck will be much greater in assisting proven businesses and people than in attempting to bring those who do not have any of the skills, experience, capital or developed abilities to the level of those who are already there.  Those with potential will tend to find a way to realise that potential, at least to the extent where the society will find it economically justifiable to expend scarce resources to develop that potential further.  An attempt to force the creation of a potential that does not inherently exist is doomed to failure.  This is even more so in an economy in which there the availability of investable funds is severely limited. 

 

Income redistribution is a moral imperative.

There is no natural law that entitles a person who produces less to take from the high producer.  In Nature, a lion that is an inept hunter starves: he is not subsidised by his more successful colleagues.  An antelope that cannot outrun the predator becomes a meal for the predator:  his colleagues do not attempt to block the efforts of the predator if the result will be that they are eaten.  So it is in less developed societies.  Only when the democratic system comes into play does the need to protect the weaker arise, largely because the people who hold the purse strings realise that, by encouraging the potential voters by transferring some of the wealth of the more successful (and generally fewer in number and so less vote-strong) members of the society to the economically lower performers, those lower performers will vote them into power to continue the redistribution of wealth that they would not otherwise enjoy.  The wealthy generally go along with the redistribution, happy to share their good fortune to a reasonable extent, encouraged by the religious and moral attitudes they absorb as part of their culture.  However, a limit to this largesse is reached when the demands grow to the point that the economic success of the wealthy is threatened by the diversion of too much to the poor, and, often, by the development of a belief by the poor that they are entitled to more as a right based on nothing more than the fact that they are poor.  At that point, the means of transferring the wealth, taxes, becomes oppressive and something to be avoided by any means possible.  At that point, generally, the numbers of the poor are such that the wealthy have effectively lost control of the ability to limit the politicians who use the redistribution to shore up their pool of voters, and so the wealthy are forced to find other means to hold onto what they earn.  This may take the form of tax evasion, of setting up businesses in other jurisdictions in which the rules are more friendly to those earning their wealth, rather than being the recipients of redistribution of the earnings and wealth of others, and, ultimately an emigration of the business to such a jurisdiction, to the loss of the country which believed that the wealthy represent a tied pool of largesse.  This process started in South Africa with the departure of some of the mainstays of the economy, such as Anglo American, SA Breweries and Gencor, as well as the emigration of many skilled professionals, businessmen and industrialists (e.g. Egon Musk of Tesla fame), all of whom could see the writing on the wall.  In many cases, the real reasons for the emigration were not stated, in order to protect what remained behind from the wrath of the politicians, but the result becomes clear over time.  Anglo American is a prime example.  In the past, this company was a driver of industrial development, with a strong interest in more than half of the industrial companies listed to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.  Now it is in the process of downsizing its South African operations to a tiny fraction of what it used to be.  The loss of those companies and people should be a matter of serious concern to the Government, and urgent action should have been taken to stem the outflow, but the imperative to secure re-election by number of votes, rather than by quality of economic performance was too great, and the result is now clear to see – a declining economy, a skills-base wasteland and an economy in crisis.

 

Budget South Africa 2016

Budget 2016

Minister Pravin Gordhan demonstrated clearly today that he is not the saviour of the South African economy that the citizens had been hoping for.  Although his Budget speech made mention of the possibility of a merger of the disastrous South African Airways with its more profitable subsidiary and of a possible part disposal of the merged company, it went a long way to reassure the top members of the ANC, including the Communists and the Trade Unions, that there would be no substantial deviation from the policies of the Government that have contributed so much to the crisis now facing the economy, and that socialism reigns supreme, even at the cost of a downgrading of South African securities from their precarious position verging on junk status.  It achieved nothing in persuading a critical observer that a genuine effort was being made to correct the economic malaise that threatens to bring the country to the same level of the examples of its close friends, Russia, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  It was a speech full of platitudes and the same empty promises to ensure good governance and fight corruption that have been made over the past twenty years of economic mismanagement and exploitation of the economy for the benefit of the favoured few.

There was a promise to exercise fiscal restraint, made so often in the past without any follow-through by Government.  There was a promise to cut corruption and exercise control of the mismanagement of public funds, as President Jacob Zuma has promised in the past, while he and his cronies went about their business of misappropriating Government funds in breach of the Constitution and their Oaths of Office, without any mention of the recovery of a quarter billion Rands from the President.  There were no positive measures to ensure that these worthy objectives would be achieved, other than a pious hope that the crooks and incompetents who manage the municipalities would ‘scrutinise’ procurement contracts, even though 80% of the municipalities have suffered ‘impaired audits’, the loss of public funds to inefficiencies and outright corruption being estimated at R26 billion per year.  This would have been an ideal opportunity to announce the establishment of a specialised unit within the Auditor General’s department to investigate the cases of the loss of funds and bring criminal charges – not the gentle slap on the wrist handed out to those few whose actions have been too blatant for even the ANC to cover up – of all involved or permitting the criminal abuse of trust.  Although numerous examples of horrendous fraud have been reported, many involving the ANC, not one case has been brought to a criminal Court, except where the person involved has fallen out of favour or has taken the fall to protect those higher up the chain of command, being rewarded with a short sentence, early parole and, in many cases, the giving of a senior well-paid sinecure at public expense.  Indeed, a large number of autonomous municipalities will be incorporated into the large metros that the ANC so favours, in accordance with their Russian economic brainwashing, and carefully removing oversight of their activities from the citizens.  The pious hope that the public activities would become more honest and efficient has no hope of realisation in the absence of a new ethic permeating them, disseminated by professional and competent managers, most of whom have already left the country in despair.

There was no mention of any plan to reduce the bloated Cabinet (numbering 39 Minister, with Deputy Minister taking that number to 78), a reduction of which to 15 Ministers, more than the United State and Germany combined(!) has been calculated to reduce the cost of this underperforming Government by R4,9 billion p.a.

There was no attempt to increase tax revenue, as to do this would possibly lose votes for the ANC in the upcoming elections.  Apparently, holding on in office (and continuing to enjoy the chances to plunder the public purse) is more important to the ANC than ensuring the recovery of the economy and the generation of the jobs that the eighteen million recipients of social grants would much rather have than the miserable R1500 per month hand-out they will get.

The tiny concessions to infrastructural improvement, in the form of ensuring water supply (a measure that is too tiny to have any meaning and two years too late to close the stable door before the horse has bolted) and R1,6 billion to the development of a broadband network (somewhat less than Google has spent in just one US city), are meaningless in the context of the crisis of infrastructure the ANC has brought.  The Minister proudly referred to the improved passenger rail facilities, supposedly brought by the purchase of Belgian locomotives, bought at a high cost that provided for the necessary bribe amounts, but which are too big for the rail system, and the Chinese rail trucks, of lower quality than the 3000 rail trucks sold as scrap metal to the Chinese in order to gain a commission on the sale.

There were no detailed or positive measures announced to generate industrial development or to attract foreign direct investment, presently collapsing to the tune of R70 billion per year under the influence of the emulation of Zimbabwe’s indigenisation policies and the promise to prevent any foreigner owning land.  There was a promise to develop small-scale farms, an area that has proved to be valueless in creating jobs or producing food for the country, while it has been disastrous in depriving efficient commercial farmers of the land they needed, and has soaked up billions in funding that could have been applied much more fruitfully in supporting local industry and industrial development.

There was a promise to the trade unions to invite them to invest in any public-private ventures, an invitation that is a dire threat to the viability of those ventures in the light of the demonstrated belief of both the ANC and the trade unions that profit does not play any role in a business – only high wages and control to the workers has any meaning.  A wonderful way to buy votes at the expense of service to the public!  There was an explicit undertaking that there will be no privatisation of State Owned Entities, such as SAA (another R5 billion guarantee and about R500 million p.a. required), SA Post Office (about R1,2 billion subsidy required to make it solvent, never mind bringing it to the capability to serve the public before the ANC vultures sank their claws into it), Eskom (probably requiring funding or guarantees of at least R60 billion before it gets back on its feet, in time to expend the $1,11 trillion to establish a Russian-controlled nuclear power industry) and the numerous other entities that serve the funding needs of the ANC.  The undertaking to dispose of these loss-making entities to private enterprise which has the capability to manage them efficiently and at the lowest cost would have been one of the signs needed by the ratings agencies that South Africa really wants to avoid junk status.  There was no hint of that.  An undertaking to steer the ship of State out of the stormy waters of trade union activism and socialist policies which are not and cannot be funded by the country was noticeably absent.  A plan to conduct lifestyle audits and intensive, in-depth evaluation of the sources of the wealth of the top ANC (and other) politicians was totally lacking.  An undertaking to roll back the huge increases in employment of people by the Government (49% of the annual budget goes in payroll, without the addition of the tens of thousands employed in parasitic companies like Eskom, Sanral and others of their ilk) would have been a welcome sign that the Minister of Finance enjoys both the support of the Governmental leadership and the mental equipment to understand how a modern, non-communist, economy works, but that was totally absent.  Even a simple undertaking within a half-year to implement a ‘no free car for civil servants policy’ would have been a welcome sign, but that also, alas, was lacking.

The Budget speech, coming so close on the heels of the proud announcement by Jacob Zuma that the Parliamentarians had accepted a 4,8% salary increase (when realism regarding the state of the economy and humility for his role in bringing that state about would have dictated at least a 10% cut, and evaluation of their worth to the country would have demanded a reduction of 90%) was a clear indication that the ANC has decided to carry on, on the same course, even though the rocks are clearly visible to all the unhappy passengers.

The possibility of a ratings downgrade for the country, which many hoped would not become a probability, has now become a certainty.  The drop of the Rand:Dollar rate from R15.30 to R15.60 during Gordhan’s speech says it all.  The only question is how long the diehard taxpayers and businesspeople will permit this situation to continue before they take matters into their own hands.

Symptoms of Collapse

The big moves in a country such as South Africa capture the headlines.  Moves such as the firing of the Minister of Finance in order to ensure the willing compliance of the incumbent of that post with the corrupt desires of the people steering the country.  Such a move creates a situation in which the replacement of the replacement is lauded as the savior of the country, regardless of how compliant he may have been in the same conditions in the past, when the wash from the world boom was still having an effect in allowing the country to continue to operate, though even at a more gentle rate of decline.

The real incompetence of the Government is brought to light for its citizens when the things that impact them directly and noticeably occur.  The problem with the macroeconomic decline is that a downgrading of Government securities does not hit the voter on the head.  The interest rates increase.  So what?  The Government explains that the world is going through a tough time, and we must share it, but don’t worry, things will improve.  After all, we have our democracy!  However, when the Bryanston Post Office is closed, without warning or notification, all of those voters who rely on it to receive some of their mail – the part that is not stolen by Post Office employees on the search for a quick bonus – are given a direct and pertinent example of what is taking place throughout the country.  The example, after enduring no mail delivery for three months, and then being promised that it will be sorted out ‘soon’, a promise that has been made weekly since the beginning of January, only to find that there is no change, and that the employees who made that promise are becoming discouraged, brings home to those voters, and taxpayers, that the slide of the country to the level of yet another African banana republic is a reality.

While all of this is happening, Jacob Zuma does a walkabout in Pretoria, and boasts afterwards that ‘the country loves the ANC, the people love Jacob Zuma!’  The Deputy State President makes statements that the country is doing well, the Government is fighting corruption, only a day after an admission is made in the Constitutional Court by Zuma’s representatives that he breached his Oath of Office in stealing R246 000 000 from State coffers and then covering it up by subverting the Minister of Police to produce a report absolving him of any liability to repay.  Gwede Mantashe then declares in a TV interview that the ANC has always wanted a formal investigation of the affair, but was prevented from achieving that by the Opposition!  Jacob Zuma declares that the replacement Minister of Finance is better qualified for the job than any other Minister of Finance has been, totally disregarding the fact that the citizens of the town in which the ANC nominated him as Mayor were so enamoured with his performance that they expressed their pleasure by burning down his house!

Against this background, the Marxist-Stalinist new new Minister of Finance is seen as a saviour!  The Press expects that he will suddenly see the light, and make the changes that will set the country back on the road to improvement.  They are already explaining that times will be hard during the recovery period, while Zuma declares in SONA that the ANC will introduce legislation to deprive foreigners of the right to own property, so ensuring the continued reduction of Foreign Direct Investment (down 74% last year!), and further legislation to ensure that White farmers donate (under compulsion) half of their farms to the Black workers, because ‘ownership of land is an important element in making a man free!”, to ensure that agricultural production continues its slide (farmer numbers down from 66 000 in 1994 to 24 000 today, with over 90% of redistributed farms failing).  The anti-White, anti-west rhetoric is being wound up to ensure that racism plays its role in the forthcoming local government elections, and then things will go back to normal, with 80% of the local authorities failing the audit tests for clean governance, SAA being handed another R5 billion in Government guarantees before further cash injections become necessary in order to keep it afloat, so that Zuma and his cronies can plunder it further, more cash being pumped into Eskom to fill the coffers so that the large buddy contracts can be funded, with ‘finders fees’ being paid to the ANC, and more instant billionaires being created amongst the politically elite.  Zuma will be replaced by another friendly face, probably Nkosazan Dlamini Zuma, who produced such a sterling performance at the Department of Homeland Affairs that South Africans now must have visas to visit virtually every other country, and who will screen the Prez that everyone so loves from investigations into his crooked dealings.

And things will go back to normal, with the country sinking into the abyss that ensured that most thinking Whites voted for the National Party, even though they hated the policies of that Party. 

And so we go on.

Apply the Land Redistribution Policy to the US and EU

Imagine a situation in which the Government of the United States, or of the European Union, passed a binding law requiring that the land owned by the farmers be ‘redistributed’ to the poor, a term which they defined by implication as the voters for the ruling Party.  The logic behind the law was that a human was not complete without ownership of the land.  Huge amounts of money would be applied to the purchase of the land in the first few years, then, when the farmers who remained on the land indicated that they were reluctant to sell their farms, the next law was passed, giving the Government the right to expropriate the land, paying an amount of compensation decided by a Committee consisting of Government supporters.  The farmers then fought the law in Court, claiming that it was contrary to the Constitution and damaging to the food security of the country, as 90% of the farms that had been ‘redistributed’ until then had failed.  The Government then retaliated by passing another law requiring the farmers to transfer 50% of their farms to the workers on the farms, an amount of compensation being paid into a fund ‘for the betterment of the farm workers’. 

Impossible?  An insane thesis?  Economic catastrophe in the making?  A Government losing grasp of reality?

Of course.  No sane person in the Western world would support such moves.  Every sane voter would vote that Government out of power at the next election, if they survived that long.  Except that exactly this process is under way in South Africa today.  The State President has been seen in fawning admiration of Robert Mugabe, last year the President of the African Union, and is following the examples this man has set, including the land redistribution policy.

The land redistribution policy of Robert Mugabe took place, and the collapse of that economy followed, as surely as night follows day.  The world saw it happen, saw the White farmers being removed by teenage thugs who claimed to be ‘military veterans’ of the ‘struggle for freedom’, even though most of them had not been born at the time, and even though it was clear that the land grab was done to benefit the cronies of the insane dictator of that land.  The competent farmers, who had produced the food that kept so many of the newly independent African countries fed, were thrown off the land that they and their forefathers had developed from bare veld over many years and with huge effort, often being beaten or killed in the process, along with their faithful workers, who knew that the new owners would not employ them to farm.  Agriculture, a mainstay of the Zimbabwe economy, crashed, and the West had to provide food aid to the starving citizens of this ‘new democratic economy’.  Mugabe refused to allow the grain to be imported in bags emblazoned with the notice “A Gift of the American People – Not for Resale”, and supplied his own bags to the company receiving the bulk grain in Durban.  The anonymous bags were then transported to depots nominated by Mugabe, and sold to his Party supporters, care being taken to prevent any of this vital food aid reaching Opposition supporting areas.  Thousands of Zimbabweans starved or fled as penniless refugees, and Mugabe grew wealthy on the back of the largesse of the American people, while his people descended into penury.

The example is clear, and no European or American would tolerate the introduction of such a policy in their own countries.  They all know that the worth of a person cannot be related to his ownership of land.  Why do they permit it in other countries?

South Africa is presently engaged in the redistribution of land in exactly the way described.  The Government has supported the process of killing White farmers since 1994, with an average of 1 500 farmers being killed each year, five per day!  The Government has disbanded the Rural Policing Units, designed to protect farmers against crime, and the Police have changed the reporting of crimes against farmers to hide the fact that they are being slaughtered wholesale.  A report was prepared on the farm killings and handed to the State President, who responded by saying, “I can do nothing with this.  Rewrite the report to state that the killings are not politically motivated, but simply random crime.”  The result has been that the number of farmers has declined from 64 000 in 1994, when the ANC Government came to power, to 24 000 today.  Huge tracts of fertile land lie fallow.  Hundreds of previously active farms, redistributed to inexperienced and unmotivated Black farmers (who have no skin in the game to drive them to better efforts) and are no longer producing.  The Government is in the process of passing a law to prevent ownership of land by foreigners, giving them instead the possibility of leasing the land, claiming that the land must belong to the people of South Africa.  They are not able to answer the question “how will that benefit South Africa or its citizens?”, deflecting the question by claiming that it cannot allow the decision of whether or not to produce crops to be in the hands of foreigners!  Of course, they have no knowledge of the process called ‘law’, as used almost everywhere else.

The policy of land redistribution is an act of unreasoned and unreasoning populist insanity, with the sure outcome that South Africa will become the begging recipient of food aid from the West.  Is this what the people of Europe and the United States want?  Is this what they would want in their own countries?

In the interests of sanity, it is the duty of every thinking person everywhere to warn the Government of South Africa that the path they are on now will surely lead to the collapse of the South African economy, and to the death by starvation of millions of its people.  Unless, of course, the ANC and its favorites are able to pull off the diversion of the food aid to be provided by the West, distributing it, at a large profit, through its own trading entities to the faithful voters, to be paid for out of the Social Grants it will make available from Government coffers for the purpose, and claiming the glory of providing food to the citizens.

If you are reading this and have any interest in keeping the people of South Africa from falling into the pit of starvation occupied by so many other independent African countries, spread the word now.

Zuma doesn’t want to be confused by the facts

In his response to the debate on his State of the Nation Address, Jacob Zuma demonstrated convincingly that he does not know, and doesn’t want to know.  He wants to carry on living in the state of ignorance he is imposing the country.

Not one of the suggestions or proposals raised by Opposition MPs has any merit in his opinion.  On the other hand, the praise heaped on him and his Government by ANC MPs draws his admiration and gratitude.  The most glaring of that is his affirmation that South Africa has an excellent social support program, supporting 16 million indigent people!  That is quite a statement.  This formerly vibrant economy has reached the point at which sixteen million people are so poor that they need State assistance!  That compares with the three and a half million taxpayers!  The only good thing that can be said about this state is that it is better now than it will be in one year!

Zuma made an impassioned plea that all South Africans fight against the scourge of racism.  The weak applause from perhaps half a dozen sycophants made a clear statement of the belief of the ANC MPs in the value of this plea, or, perhaps in the truthfulness of the man making it, a man who is viewed by many as being the main driver behind the development of racism during his Presidency.  Remember, this is the ex-terrorist whose theme song still is is ‘Bring me my machine gun’!

Listening closely to the words this man spouts, it is very difficult to overlook the fact that he has taken millions, if not billions, from State coffers for his personal benefit, who manipulated the workings of the National Prosecuting Authority to gain his freedom from prosecution on 783 criminal charges, who breached his Oath of Office on at least one matter and accompanied that with the breach of the Constitution.  Yet he can stand in Parliament, facing the MPs and citizens, urging the MPs to remember that they are there to represent the citizens!  If insincerity and failure to respect the intelligence of the voters were a crime, Zuma would be in prison for the next hundred years.  Perhaps he will, when the next (honest) Government comes to power and institutes investigations into his conduct over the years.

 

Trade Unions and the Anglo American Downgrade

Anglo American securities have been downgraded to junk status, a foretaste of what is about to happen to South Africa.  Why did this happen?

The obvious reason is that the world demand for the commodities that the company produces has fallen, making its production uneconomic.  But there is much more to this scenario.

The prime reason is that ANC-promoted demands for increased wages and benefits for the workers pushed up the costs of mining, ably assisted by the plethora of regulations, fees and costs loaded onto the mining industry by the Government in its striving to fund the tens of thousands of non-productive civil service employees who have been added to Governments payroll to replace the load on the unemployment roll in an effort to buy the votes of those people.  This situation has been developing for years, making it impossible for the mines to enjoy the minerals boom while it was running, and rendering the mines, on which the country depends for a large part of its foreign exchange earnings and tax revenue, unable to build the reserves and to fund the developments that would have carried it over the present recession. 

The lack of economic understanding of the ANC has resulted in it implementing the belief that the trade unions and the bulk of ANC voters have, that government revenue is a bottomless pit to provide money ad infinitum, with no need to care for the sources of that munificence.  This belief matches the view that companies have an equally unlimited source of funds to distribute to the workers, to fund the insane BBEEE policies, to provide the infrastructure that the Government is unwilling to offer in support of the employing and revenue-producing activities of the country.  The trade unions have been adamant in their demands for higher wages, better benefits, regardless of the warnings that have been given that higher wage costs must inevitably lead to reduced employment, and not caring about the huge effects of the violent confrontations they produce. 

The chickens have now come home to roost, with Anglo American reducing employment by 85 000 in an attempt to stay in business.  The disaster that the Government, working diligently with COSATU, has been working to create, is happening, and that disaster is building.  On average, each employee who will lose his job supports at least ten others directly, in his extended family, and in at least another ten to fifteen jobs, a total of at least one million jobs, via the Multiplier Effect.  This effect states that each job created results in between ten and fifteen other jobs being created, in upstream and downstream industries, in the businesses in which the new employee spends his wages, in the farms that grow the food they need to survive.  The Multiplier Effect works at least as effectively in reverse, and usually much more quickly, as huge numbers of jobs are lost and the economy spirals down into recession or stagflation.  It has a domino effect par excellence.  It is hard to overstate the effect on South Africa and its economy that the situation in Anglo American will have, and the worst of it is that the recovery, if, indeed, it happens, will take much longer to bring about.

The downgrading is not solely an Anglo American problem.  The effect of it will remove Anglo American securities from the possible investment lists of international investors and lenders, ensuring that a large proportion of the pool of funds on which the company could draw is effectively blanked off for it, and for the country.  It is not only a question of a higher rate of interest.  It implies that the funds pool is not accessible.  The company has been on that list for many decades, and it has been regarded as an icon of the mining world, and of the South African economy.  Its fall from that status will be viewed by many investors as a warning sign of what is happening in South Africa, and will result in a warning note being posted against the names of other, similar, South African icons.

The ANC and its communist partners, the SACP and COSATU, have achieved something that not even the Apartheid government was able to do.  One wonders whether they are proud of it.  The able assistance of the ANC in the partial withdrawal from South Africa of another large mining company, Glencore, and the Government-promoted inducement to it to hand over a viable coal mine to the ANC associates, the Guptas, certainly indicates that at least some in power are rubbing their hands in glee, while the voters who blindly support them are turning to God for help in their poverty-stricken future, knowing that they cannot expect any from the ANC.  The historians of the future will probably mark this event as the beginning of the final collapse of an economy that was, before the ANC took over, an example to the rest of the world.

Zuma has created a new Disbelief

Watching the spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority state so positively that the charges against former employee Glynnis Breytenbach were not politically motivated has brought to the notice of many South Africans that President Jacob Zuma has injected a new element into the relationship between the public and the Government.  The spokesman stated that “We have taken an Oath of Office and we don’t engage in political actions”.  There can be no doubt that the statement, while it may be correct and true in relation to the present case, would be an outright lie when applied to the actions of the NPA in the past. 

Witness the unexplained withdrawal of 783 criminal charges against Jacob Zuma, clearing the way for him to become President, creating suspicions that were enhanced when the NPA failed to comply with a High Court Order to hand over the tapes recording conversations in that regard.  The fact is that Zuma’s conduct, admitted by him to be in breach of his Oath of Office and of the Constitution, has created a firm disbelief in the value of that Oath of Office and any statement made to assert the meaning of it. 

The public now believes firmly that the example that Zuma has set, of disregarding the Oath of Office whenever he chooses, is followed by his minions.  That belief was reinforced by the ludicrous ‘findings’ of the Minister of Police that the fire pool was actually a fire pool, not the luxurious swimming pool that the spectators could clearly see it to be.  The Minister of Police has admitted that he lied, that he made ‘findings’ in breach of his Oath of Office to uphold the Constitution and to protect the assets of the State, because he was instructed to do so  by the President, that he was ‘following orders’.  That statement put him firmly in the ranks of war criminals, men who proved themselves to be evil, and demonstrated that the Oath of Office is viewed by the ANC cadres only as a necessity to gain and hold the lucrative offices they need to carry out their depredations.  It is not the sacred and binding oath that the Constitution intended it to be, and it is no indication of the intention of the man taking it to protect the provisions of the Constitution, unless that happens to be convenient.  The loyalty to the man, and to the flow of benefits he confers, overrides the terms of the oath and of the Constitution.  Jacob Zuma made that clear in a public speech, in which he stated that his love of the ANC supersedes that for the country and, presumably, that for the requirements of his office.  The Oath of Office is considered by the State President and his minions to be just one of the preconditions to the gaining of great wealth, to flow from the (in their minds) unlimited funds of the State.  It is not sacred, or is it binding on their consciences.

The worst of the situation is that the body of the ANC, by its unquestioning support of these men, has shown convincingly that they subscribe wholeheartedly to the new standard set by their leader.  The only way for them to demonstrate that they are the good, honest man and women that the voters believed them to be would be to impeach the President.  We all know that will not happen.  The President and the ANC are all of the same class.

The public has received the message.  The citizens now know that the easiest way to detect a lie is to determine who spoke the words.  The public knows now that it cannot trust the statement of any member of Government, and particularly if the statement is reinforced by reference to that sacred Oath of Office.

It will take huge persuasion and proof by example for people to believe any member of Government in the future.  Thank you for that, Mr. President.  You have achieved a reversal of the belief in our leadership that Nelson Mandela spent 27 years to build up.

Nicole Stuart – Acclaimed Author - Guest Post by Karin Buechler

Nicole Stuart – Acclaimed Author

This contribution is by guest writer, Karin Buechler.

The Nicole Stuart series of books covers a wide range of themes and places.  She has an ability to distill the essence of an event and convert it to an entertaining and instructive read, often leading to the reader asking him to herself ‘What would I have done?’  The answer is frequently instructive.

My advice to anyone who is interested in the world and in people is to peruse the long list of her books – at the time of writing, more than forty have been published in eBook format available here – and choose one to suit your fancy.  Whether you are looking for an explanation of modern times, a glimpse of a scientifically-plausible near-future, a thriller or simply a wonderful read that will stay in your mind, you will find one that you will love, and I guarantee that you will want to read the rest of her books!

Zuma is not to blame.

Anyone who has a degree will have undergone the unpleasant experience of being told, by someone without a degree, that his education is worthless, that life’s experiences are more valuable than book learning, that people who come out of university are worth much less than those who took the opportunity to experience the real world while the university worm was locked away in valueless lectures.  One learns to ignore these stupidities, gaining the understanding that the un-degreed critic simply does not have the understanding to realise the value of the educational experience,  Trying to convince such people of the value of learning to think in a structured way, integrating learning, experience, observation and the valid views of others is a waste of time.  Some un-degreed people have the ability to break out of the mould they have been born into, but, unfortunately, many of them are unable to stretch their minds beyond the slogans, the sensational statements of others of their ilk, the tee shirt summaries, the sound-bite statements of ‘absolute truth’, and actually apply their minds to a situation.  These people are fated to remain ignorant of the realities of life, to be uncritical of ‘what they know’ without ever questioning the validity of it, and unable to go beyond what they were born into.  They are not innately evil, but they are ignorant, and they choose to remain ignorant.  The evil ones are those who use that propensity not to want to know, to gain their personal objectives, to use those people for their own ends.

Jacob Zuma is a product of his background.  He grew up as a herd boy, watching the animals in a field, without ever having had the mental training or the accumulation of knowledge to be able to apply his mental capabilities in a rational way.  He saw the wealthy and powerful people of his environment as models of the life and lifestyle to aspire to.  The village chief in his community was a man who exercised unlimited power, using his hereditary position to influence the recommendations of the elders.  His wealth, although modest in absolute terms, was huge to the eyes of the simple herd boy, whose family could not afford the economic cost of allowing him to gain more than a rudimentary education.  He was influenced by the village thinking, which saw the White man as an oppressor and could not understand how that White man gained his comparative wealth through directed work and the application of learned skills.  To the young boy’s mind, the wealth displayed by the White man was enormous, and was to be gained by the use of power, as was that of the village chief.

The young boy, growing up in the back of beyond in Zululand became imbued by the Black ‘leadership’ belief that the best opportunity for him would be to aspire to the ideals of communism, which held that the assets of the community should be shared by the community, which is, after all, only a slight extension of the tribal system, in which the land is the property of the community.  When he was old enough to act on his own, but not yet old enough to have gained the wisdom, experience and thinking capability of a mature adult, the young Zuma joined the ‘liberation movement’.  Using his native cunning and, no doubt, the inherent ruthlessness of the young, Zuma rose in the ranks of the ‘freedom fighters, to become the head of Intelligence in the liberation army, a position which entitled him to enjoy the benefits of senior rank.  His indoctrination by the Soviet masters of his movement made him more capable in the skills of manoeuvring and manipulating, and his position gave him an ability to gain knowledge of the doings and desires of his peers that would stand him in good stead in the years to come. 

The ‘revolution’, a rewritten statement of the real history of the acceptance by the Apartheid (a word that, even now, Zuma mispronounces in a way that suggests he did not understand that the policy was one by which the separate racial groups in the country would be free to determine their own separate futures) government that the Soviet threat no longer existed after the ignominious collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, gave Zuma the next opportunity to achieve his aspirations.  The adoption of the principles of communism by the Black movements had given rise to a fear in the minds of the Whites that their way of life, their very religion, would be destroyed by the accession to Government of a Black majority dominated by Soviet thinking.  The Soviets had no real interest in the form of government that would be adopted when their puppets came to power in the newly decolonised African countries.  Their sole interest was in dominating that country and depriving the West, specifically the United States, of any influence in those countries.  They were not benevolent benefactors of those countries, as is clearly seen in the oppression they imposed in their vassal States in Eastern Europe.  They were colonisers in a different form.  The ‘education’, particularly the ‘political education’ they provided to their ‘friends, the freedom fighters’, was necessarily indoctrination in the thinking of the Marxist-Stalinists who were in control, and that thinking has endured in those people and in those who have been influenced by them.  The lack of logic in that thinking, the absolute, unthinking conviction that what they were told is right, can be seen in the strict adherence to Soviet economic theory, regardless of the fact that experience has shown convincingly that it cannot succeed in the modern world.  There is no Communist State that can be deemed successful in economic terms, unless, as in the case of China, there is a liberal admixture of capitalism to the control elements that the Communists developed.  The fact that the collapse of the Soviets in 1989 convinced the Whites that there was no longer a risk and so created the possibility of a rapprochement to the Black movements has been ignored in the modern history of South Africa, with the story of a ‘glorious revolution’ being more palatable to the political leaders of today. In truth, Mkonto we Sizwe was an abject failure in military terms.  The transition from the Apartheid Government to the democracy we have was based on the realisation by the Whites that the policies were wrong and unjust, a realisation that built on a long-held belief expressed in the fact that the National Party was never able to gain the two-thirds majority necessary to change the Constitution, even though the leadership of the Opposition Party was markedly incompetent.  The Black governments throughout Africa have almost all adopted the Soviet thinking in their policies, and they have all experienced the lack of success that thinking was bound to bring.  Those that have been fortunate to gain leadership by capable leaders have adjusted those policies, some obviously, such as the new leadership of Tanzania, some surreptitiously, to avoid being seen to admit to a huge mistake that cost their people dearly.  South Africa was fortunate to have a leader in Nelson Mandela who was able to use his mind effectively, although he was constrained in this by those around him who were less fortunate in this regard, and he espoused Western thinking, modified by the need to correct the failings of the incompetent Apartheid governments which became more and more fanatical in their application of the lunatic theories developed by Hendrick Verwoerd.  When Mandela departed the scene of government, he was replaced by more devout and unthinking communists, and South Africa is now led by a man who applies his communist training and tribal thinking without the benefit of education, exposure to modern thought or criticism, one who has surrounded himself with others of the same persuasion, the same moral standards and the same indoctrination.  Zuma is reported not to read newspapers or books, both essential to the development of the capability to think in a structured way and with input from numerous other thinking people.  He runs on autopilot, a set of ideas derived from his tribal, herd boy and terrorist training, and applying the principles absorbed from his Soviet puppet-masters.  It can come as no surprise that he is obsessed with the building of wealth through manipulation and intrigue, the building of power by pay-off and blackmail, and that he has no conception of how a modern economy can provide an improving life for all citizens.  In Zuma’s book, the gain by one implies the loss by another.  The essential requirement, in his mind, of a decent life is the ownership of land, although it is clear that he has no idea of why that should be so.  The construction of a huge mansion by the theft (to call a spade a spade) from the ‘endless’ coffers of the State is a statement of his personal value, regardless of the fact that this symbol of ostentation is located in one of the poorest areas of his homeland, in which it was necessary to build a fire pool because the average citizen lacks an adequate supply of water sufficient to put out a fire, and the level of criminality is high enough to demand the construction of a Police Station dedicated to his protection.  The purchase of a fleet of aircraft dedicated to his personal (and family) use is essential to satisfy his pretensions to glory as the Head of State of a country which can pay for them (in a continent where the average Head of State has difficulty in affording a car equivalent to one of the fleet available to him), regardless of the fact that the economy of his country is performing so badly that its debt instruments hover barely above junk status, and its economic performance puts it firmly in the company of the worst-performing economies in the world.  He has a need to emulate, or even outperform, Robert Mugabe, who still spouts a line of racist hatred and economic garbage as bad as any terrorist organisation, and whose reign of terror and economic incompetence has brought his once-strong nation to its knees, with millions of its citizens either dead of starvation of economic refugees in other countries. He admires Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has also brought his country to destitution by the application of policies similar to those in which Zuma believes.  He has a desire to name the streets after the great leaders he so admires, such as Stalin, Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Samora Machel, Fidel Castro, Julius Nyerere, all of whom are textbook examples of abjectly poor governance, terrorism of their own people and rule by force.  He uses the tool of adulation of dead freedom fighters to inspire hatred of the Whites for their success when contrasted with his failures, without emulating any of good the qualities they may have had.

Taking his background and the self-imposed limitations on his own thinking, one cannot blame Jacob Zuma for the abjectly poor leadership and economic management that have been hallmarks of his terms of Presidency.  Knowing the man and his background, South Africa should have expected those results of him.  After all, one cannot expect a nation in one generation to produce two persons of the class and qualities of Nelson Mandela.  The transition from Mandela through Mbeki to Zuma clearly demonstrated a slide from the top end of the good-bad scale.  We can only hope that Zuma represents the stop mark at the bottom end of the scale, and that his successor will start the climb again.

Zuma still does not get it

All knowledgeable observers are in agreement.  South Africa is in the early stages of a financial crisis.

Business confidence has collapsed, and is still heading south at an increasing rate.  The investor world is in agreement that the country is one tiny step away from junk status.  Economic growth has collapsed, with the World Bank and the IMF in agreement that growth this year will be considerably less than 1%, less than half of last year.  The Rand is testing new limits against all other currencies.  The cost of living is skyrocketing, with prices moving up on a daily basis.  Local companies are looking elsewhere for new areas of investment, with the assurance that the South African market is close to dead.  Inbound foreign investment is dying off rapidly, and existing foreign direct investments are fleeing the country.

The only body that sees a different world is the ANC.  Gwede Mantashe, after the State of the Nation fiasco, stated in a TV interview that we are not in recession.  ‘Recession,’ he said in an arrogant tone, ‘requires three quarters of negative growth, and we have not had that yet.’  His one concession to the truth was that telling word ‘yet’.  Even Mantashe apparently knows that South Africa is on a slide under the leadership of the ANC.

Zuma read his normal SONA speech, apparently oblivious of the fact that he now is acceptable as a leader of the nation to fewer than 16% of the population.  He spoke passionately about how some Black soldiers had died at the Battle of Delville Wood, a hundred years ago, after they had been badly treated by the Government.  He raised the point that, fifty years ago, the residents of District Six, which was a slum, were moved to another area to make way for Whites, a development that never took place.  He also referred to the school riots in 1974, including the killing of Hector Pietersen, riots which were instigated by the ‘freedom fighters’ in order to create martyrs in the fight against Apartheid and have since been sold by the ANC as spontaneous outbursts of student anger.  He referred to the fact that the University of Fort Hare, a Black university attended by Nelson Mandela and Chief Buthelezi, is celebrating a hundred years of existence, conveniently ignoring the mantra that the Apartheid Government refused education to the Blacks.  All of these references were undoubtedly a snide racist attack on the Whites and the Party he claims to be White-dominated, the DA, and then he went on to denounce racism and announce a campaign against racism.  It is a sure sign of the duplicity of the man, a clearly racist attack followed by a denial that he meant it.

The speech made the apparently important point, reiterated in his post-SONA interview a day later, that Government plans to cut the costs of international travel while Zuma’s travel budget has been exceeded by sixty million Rand), the size of international delegations (only a fortnight after an eighty-man delegation attended the World Economic Forum at Davos, during which Zuma failed to attend a panel discussion on Africa), the after-budget parties (although SONA is preceded by a praise singer extolling the virtues, imagined or otherwise, of the Great Leader of the Nation) and similar petty cash items.  Mantashe made the point after SONA that not all of these were new.  After all, he pointed out, there had never been any rule regarding the size of delegations!  Really?  Any competent businessman imposes limitations on expenditure, and demands accounting of the results of the expenditure, which has never been done by the ANC Government!

Zuma carefully avoided any mention of:

• the hijacking of the Government by the Gupta family, together with his own family,
• his admission to the Constitutional Court that he had breached the Constitution and his Oath of Office in regard to his own plundering of State resources and in contravention of a binding Finding by the Public Protector, rumoured to be in excess of R150 000 000,
• his subversion of the rule of law in co-opting the Minister of Police to produce a fictitious report exonerating his boss from any liability for repayment of the stolen funds used for Nkandla, using the flimsy excuse offered by all evil men, including the Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg, that he was following orders,
• his blunder in replacing a standing Minister of Finance with a failed nonentity, which was followed three days later by an about face, all without reason (other than an outright lie) or explanation, although it cost the economy an immediate R500 billion with much more to follow in the form of dramatically-increased cost of borrowing,
• the downgrading of Government securities by the Ratings Agencies, taking them to one tiny step above junk status, which will remove them from the list of permissible investments for most of the organisations that have provided funding to the country and to its banks,
• his breach of a High Court Order that the Government enforce a Warrant of Arrest of al Bashir, permitting him to flee the country while telling the huge untruth that ‘his name was not on a passenger list (!), an outright breach of the legally-binding Treaty of Rome and a flagrant statement of support for a terrorist leader accused of genocide,
• the fact that South Africa’s economic performance alone brought the economic growth of the African continent down from 7,4% without inclusion of South Africa to 4,3% with inclusion, stating that the country faced difficult external economic conditions, of which, apparently, the rest of the continent was unaware,
• the continuing brain drain, of all racial groups, fleeing the disastrous conditions in the country to seek their fortune in other economies, all subject to the same economic conditions,
• the collapse of the mining industry under the weight of trade union demands for uneconomic wages, supported by ruinous strikes accompanied by extreme violence,
• the abject failure of the education system to provide an acceptable education to millions of children, even at the highest cost in the world as a proportion of GDP,
• the continuing disasters in State-Owned Entities, such as Eskom, SAA, SABC, PetroSA,
• the worst drought in fifty years, exacerbated by a total lack of preparation of the necessary supportive infrastructure, even though the drought was known to be on the cards for several years, and by a lack of foreign exchange and economic strength to import the necessary food to prevent widespread starvation,
• the status of South Africa amongst the lowest in the world on indices of
• transparency,
• corruption,
• education,
• attractiveness as an investment destination,
• security of investment, after the country cancelled Treaties in this regard with European countries, the source of most of the foreign direct investment,
• ease and speed of starting a new business.

Zuma read his speech, badly, as though he was going through the motions.  He believes that his hold on the Party is strong enough to enable him to muddle through to the end of his term (remember the FBI’s Mc Carthy and his famous files on Congressmen?) and possibly even longer, by use of his seven thousand-strong personal security force.

After witnessing Zuma’s State of the Nation address, one can be left with only one thought.  Zuma really does not get it, and the ANC will continue to support him for as long as they can, to continue their depredations.  They have no interest in governing the country.  Their only interest is what they can take from it.  Joe Slovo, the leader of the Communist Party responded, in the early years of the ‘new South Africa’, to a question why he believed that the proposed form of government would succeed when all others that had tried it had failed.  “Communism needs capital, and South Africa has that capital.”  “And when the capital is exhausted, what the?”  His famous response was “Then we’ll try another system.”

Cry the Beloved Country.