Cyril Ramaphosa is a Racist

Wednesday, November 2, 2016, was a remarkable day in several ways.

It was the day on which the High Court ordered the publication of the Public Protector’s Report on State Capture, after Jacob Zuma had spent months and millions on dodging the bullet, by failing to respond to questions by the Public Protector, the most important of those being in March 2016, then by demanding that he be given the right to question witnesses and to put his own version, then by appointing a new Public Protector, probably in the hope that she would be more compliant to his demands for protection (a hope which, to the consternation of most citizens, appears not to have been in vain), and by launching a Court Action to interdict publication of the Report. The Report has shown that Zuma’s concerns are well-founded, as it details situations and facts that give rise to a view that Zuma, his son, the Minister of Co-operative Government, the Minister of Public Enterprises and the Minister of Mineral Resources have gone to extreme lengths to grant to the Gupta family unusually favourable assistance in their efforts to build a fortune at the cost of the citizens of South Africa. In their offer to Mcebisi Jonas, they are said to have offered a cash down-payment of R600 000 to be followed by a further R600 000 000 if he were to accept the post as Minister of Finance, with the requirement that he extended the largesse to them granted by Zuma. As an honorable man, one of the few in the senior ranks of the ANC, he refused the offer and reported it to the public. It would not be surprising if the same offer was made to Des van Rooyen, a man whose sole claim to fame at the time was that his home had been torched by angry constituents in his previous position, and who was appointed as Minister of Finance, holding the position for four days and bringing a loss to the JSE estimated at over five hundred billon Rands. The Report does not state what benefit the Minister of Mines received to strong-arm Glencore into selling Tageta to the Guptas, but it must have been considerable for him to have made a subsequent announcement that the Cabinet had decided to investigate why the four major banks had withdrawn their banking services to the Gupta group. That announcement was subsequently declared to be incorrect, after it had brought a crash of banking shares. The dealings of Eskom with the Guptas were also found to be suspicious, with the Board of Eskom incorrectly constituted and possibly complicit in a scheme to defraud the public. That seems to be reasonable in view of the fact that a large penalty was imposed on Tageta under the ownership of Glencore, which was withdrawn as soon as the Guptas gained ownership of the company, with Zuma’s son tagging along to share the bonanza, and replaced by a pre-delivery payment for sub-standard coal. There are, no doubt, many other transactions by Eskom that will bear investigation, once the light of day reaches into the murky dealings of that publicly-owned entity, including a shareholding taken up by the ANC in the company that gained the contract to supply turbines (against the strong recommendation of the Committee evaluating the various tenders), with a $10 000 000 ‘finder’s commission being paid to the ANC.

November 2, 2016, was the day on which Vytjie Mentor, who had been offered the position of Minister of Public Enterprises on the condition that she induce South African Airways to abandon the lucrative India route and so permit the Guptas to take it. Mentor entered her name in the Book of Honourable South Africans alongside that of Mcebisi Jonas, by refusing the offer and publicizing both it and the presence of Zuma in an adjoining room in the Gupta mansion. She consolidated that entry by refusing to be interviewed by SABC and ANN7, stating that they were the mouthpieces of Jacob Zuma and the Guptas.

November 2, 2016, was also the day on which the National Prosecuting Authority was to bring criminal charges of fraud and corruption against Pravin Gordhan and two others, which charges were withdrawn two days earlier by the NPA (illegally, as, once a criminal charge has been laid, only the Court has the right to withdraw it). The planned public demonstrations in support of Gordhan were converted to a march to the seat of Government and meetings in the main cities to protest the abuse of power and the corruption of the democracy that Nelson Mandela and many others worked so hard to achieve. Politicians (including many senior ANC Party members), business leaders, churchmen (including some who have been seen to be snuggling up to Zuma) and prominent citizens spoke out against the corruption and outright criminality that has become the hallmark of the ANC Government. The meetings made it plain that the public at large are sick of the abuse of power and the destruction of the rights held by citizens under the Constitution by Zuma and his ANC cronies. Several railed against the galloping racism that has come back to South Africa since Mandela stepped down, making it a State that qualifies in many respects under the characteristics that marked the rise of Apartheid. They demanded a return to the ideals of Nelson Mandela.

November 2, 2016, was also a day when the ‘Commander in Chief’ of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, a ‘man of the people’ and wearer of Breitling watches and designer suits, warned Whites, including citizens and Police, not to be near Church Square because the march against Zuma was one ‘of the people’, thereby stating squarely his Party’s position that Whites are not a part of the people of South Africa. It was a remarkable display of racism in a public speech by a man who has placed himself and his Party firmly in the group that has been dominated by lunatics such as Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. Malema has confirmed the position he has established as a racist opportunist with no regard for the good of the country, a suitable replacement for Jacob Zuma, if ever the citizens are so blinded by his empty mass marketing that they permit him to assume that role.

November 2, 2016, was also the day on which Cyril Ramaphosa, a man who has gained enormous wealth on the back of the racist ANC policies masquerading under the banner of Black Economic Empowerment (and, apparently, with little else to offer, if one is to judge by his abysmal lack of performance as Deputy State President) made his entry in the Book of Modern Racists. In response to a comment by a Democratic Alliance Member of the Council of Provinces that he, Ramaphosa, was attempting to wash the blood of the slaughtered miners at Marikana from his hands in preparation for making his un for the Presidency, Ramaphosa stated that the speaker was a White, and, as a White, he had supported the Apartheid Government that had killed thousands of Blacks, as all Whites did. Apart from being in remarkably poor taste and deeply offensive to a substantial portion of the electorate, that statement, coming from a man who aspires to lead a nation that relies to a very large extent on the economic contribution of the Whites, is factually incorrect. If it had been made outside of the protection of Parliament, it would certainly justify a criminal charge of hate speech. What Ramaphosa has ignored is the fact that a very large minority of Whites voted consistently against the National Party, the founder of Apartheid, in every election.  That vote was sufficient to prevent the National Party gaining a sufficient majority to amend the Constitution. The same Whites voted to grant voting rights to Blacks, as soon as the threat of a communist takeover was removed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. He ignored the thousands of Whites who demonstrated repeatedly against the Apartheid system, at risk of their lives. He ignored the hundreds of White members of the Black Sash, women who stood mutely at the side of the main roads in the cities in winter cold and summer rain, to protest the inhumanity of Apartheid. A brief course in (real, not the ANC revised version of) history would make it very clear to Ramaphosa that his comment was an outright lie, a defamation of the thousands of people who helped to put his dishonest Party into power, so that they could plunder the assets of the State and of the citizens. He puts to shame the millions of honourable and decent Blacks who have suffered poverty and degradation at the hands of the ANC Government, as a result of the degrading of the education system, of the economic mismanagement of the country, of the setting up of a system which has enabled the favoured few, such as Ramaphosa and Zuma, to trample on the Constitution of which he claims to be proud.

November 2, 2016, was a memorable day, in many ways. Let us hope that it will be remembered as the day which started a resurgence of the noble ideals of Nelson Mandela, and not the day that confirmed that South Africa was destined to become just another failed African State.

Zwelenzima Vavi and the Real Problems

Zwelenzima Vavi, in his diatribe entitled Zuma’s Denialism and Betrayal here, demonstrates that he fails to understand that the principles of the ANC’s policies have caused the problems, and that those problems have been exacerbated by the corruption and incompetence of the deployed cadres.  He fails to understand that the millions of employed (other than in Government) owe their jobs and their income to the ‘capitalists’, that hated group that provides the funds, the expertise and the willingness to take risks, all necessary for the creation of the jobs that the Unions then feel free to plunder, and the Government tries to ‘tax out of existence’, to pay the balance of the employed.  Rather than being directed by the 26% of employed people who hand their fate to the Union leaders, the policies should be directed towards supporting the businesses and industries, and the businessmen and industrialists who invest their funds, their expertise and their time to creating the jobs.  In that way, the 1% of people who create wealth would be enabled to generate the jobs that the 99% rely on to live.  It would have ensured that more Black people rise to the rank of ‘capitalist’, and so brought an end to the ‘domination’ of White capital.  The maths are simple – grow your way out of the situation, using the 88% of Black people, working together with the Whites, who are more than willing to support a growing Black middle class, all of whom spend their (non-Black, non-White) money to buy the products and services produced to earn their way into the ‘capitalist economy’.  Certainly there will be abusive practices, by the Black as well as the White capitalists, but they are easy to control, if the Government is free to act in the interests of all.

There are many reasons why Black youths are less skilled than their parents.  One is that the Government has convinced them that the purpose of education is to obtain the certificate, Matric or degree, regardless of the quality of the education required, rather than to actually learn something.  Another reason is that the BEE laws give Blacks the right to take positions, so disincentivising them from undergoing the process of learning to do the job, and this is exacerbated by the acceptance of the employers of the need to pay a salary or profit share to a person who is not fully capable of holding that position, through lack of knowledge or on-the-job experience.  That acceptance has resulted in a higher cost base for those employers, generating inflation and lack of international competitiveness, as well as giving foreign investors a reason to invest their capital and efforts in a more supportive economy.  It is also a reason for the ‘snail’s pace’ in affirming the position of Black people in top management.  A company will want to appoint only the best candidate in top management, because of the high cost of those positions and the risk of a disastrous decision by a less than fully competent manager.  Reaching top management has always been a product of a good education, a supportive (and appropriate) cultural background and vast experience, both in the job and in the world.  Most Blacks do not (yet) qualify o those basics, and their chances of qualifying are reduced by a demand that they enjoy a rapid progression to the higher ranks.  Experience requires both time and exposure to business.  It is no accident that the top managers of large companies are almost exclusively at least middle aged, if not older.  Of course, the pressures exerted against Whites under the empowerment laws has ensured that the best have left the country to seek their future in a place where their skills alone are relevant.  To induce them to stay requires a much higher salary than would be the case where the market is better satisfied in those skills.

Vavi complains that outsourcing, labour broking, casualization and sub-contracting are growing exponentially, while regular employment numbers are declining.  Of course that will happen under the present labour regime, which is strongly skewed in favour of labour, strongly promoted by the Unions, which represent only 26% of the working population, and under 10% of the population that could be working.  It is wonderful to have a job that pays a ‘decent’ salary, but even more wonderful to have a job that pays a salary.  As the labour market becomes more competitive, because there are fewer people seeking work, the laws of economics will push the price of labour up, until the cost of labour is so high that it becomes economic to mechanise and so reduce the labour requirement.  So simple that even a Union leader can understand it.  If the cost of labour is artificially increased by Union demands, usually accompanied by strikes that cause huge loss of production and are usually accompanied by terrorisation of non-Union workers and destruction of employer property, the same process will occur, as it has so clearly on the mines, which today employ fewer than half of the people they used to require, and in industry, where numerous companies have been forced out of business or, if they are so fortunate, to cut back drastically to comply with the falling demand for their products, now much more expensive.

Vavi contends that the Government has ‘bought into the neoliberal approach that says that, in times of crisis, the burden must be shifted to the poor.  The rich must be allowed to accumulate wealth, and the poor must wait until the economy can afford to give them a few crumbs off the table.’  This statement misses entirely the truth of the matter.  The Government has brought about the crisis, by applying economic policies that have no foundation in the facts of the world.  They have neglected the education of the people, failing to provide them with the mental equipment, as well as all the other requirements necessary to be able to sell their skills in this modern world.  The Government has worked on the basis that all people are equal, ignoring the fact that people with equal qualities are equal, and the qualities must be such as to elevate them above the herd.  That has been shown indisputably in all SOEs, where the people who have been placed in top positions have earned those positions by the colour of their skins and of their Party cards.  A corporation like ESKOM has been brought to its knees by people who do not have the education, skills and experience needed to run such a complex organisation, but who have been willing to oversee, or overlook, the massive corruption that has earned them their jobs.  Vavi wants to redistribute wealth, to make the taxation system more progressive, to decisively stop wastage and corruption, to prevent capital flows out of the country, to address super-exploitation.  Redistribution of wealth is a wonderful idea, provided it is redistributed on the basis of earning power.  Wealth disparities are least amongst the successful economies like Germany and Japan, countries in which the education is excellent and on-the-job learning programmes are well-developed.  Redistribution by any other means, particularly taxation of the successful has never worked in the long term.  Stopping wastage and corruption will happen when the people who run the State enterprises are competent managers, with rigorous oversight by responsible and competent Boards of Directors.  Capital will cease to flow out of the country when the laws are fair and just, and equally applied.  Capital seeks the location where it is best rewarded, and where it is not punished.  The anti-capital spoutings of our President at the Freedom Day rally were a wonderful incentive to capital to flee to somewhere which values its contribution.  The same thinking applies to tax havens.  Most taxpayers are willing to bear a fair share of the reasonable cost of running the country, but, when they are forced to pay for Nkandla, ESKOM, SAA and all the other lunacies currently existing, they tend to seek out the best way to reduce the tax burden short of actually removing it entirely by leaving the country.  A fair tax regime will encourage investors, and taxpayers, to remain in, or come to, the country, and this will generate an ever-increasing revenue for the country to spend on what is necessary, rather than to be used to buy votes.  Tax havens are not used to evade a responsibility to the workers, as Vavi implies.  They are used to preserve some of the income flow that is used to reinvest in the businesses and industries.  The higher the penalties of productivity are, the greater will be the incentive to escape them.  The converse also works.  If South Africa were to passed a law freeing income of any tax burden if it is invested in productive assets, the flow of funds into the country, and the reversal of the flow of funds seeking a fair deal in terms of tax outside the country will become a flood, and the number of jobs on offer will soar.  Compare that with what is happening now, when Gordhan asks for applause when he informs Parliament that he plans to take R1,3 trillion from the very small taxpayer base.

Vavi also complains that the President has not had meetings with labour organisations.  What would be the purpose of such meetings, other than to inform them that the Government has suddenly seen the light, and is now moving to cut back on the privileges they enjoy?  That is not likely to happen until Zuma is in jail.  He needs the support of the Unions, or thinks he does, not trusting the good sense of the voters and their ability to recognise the very obvious failings of the Marxist-Stalinist policies he advocates.  Zuma and Vavi should realise that neither Governments nor labour Unions are capable of legislating or striking businesses or industries into existence.  That is the field of capitalist investors, whether one-man shows or multinationals, people who have the qualities to create the entities that employ workers.  People who should be treasured and nurtured, and treated as the valuable resource they are.

A Bad Day for Zuma

Wednesday, March 16 2016, was the sort of day that Jacob Zuma must have wished would never happen.  In that one day, already threatened by the arrival of the Moodys team to consider the downgrading of South African investment instruments to junk status, was made worse by the declaration by a former ANC Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Works, that she had been offered a Ministerial position by the Guptas, while Jacob Zuma was skulking in an adjoining room so that he could claim not to have been a part of the Constitution-breaching act by his co-conspirators.  That was aggravated by the statement of Mcebisi Jonas that he had been offered the position of Minister of Finance by the same Gupta family, an act also in breach of the Constitution and strenuously denied by the Guptas, Zuma and the ANC.  That was exacerbated by the incredibly stupid comment by an ANC spokesperson that the offer could not have been made, as every appointment to the Cabinet was made by Zuma, in his capacity as State President, after close consultation with the Cabinet.  Either Zuma and the ANC are lying, or the whole Cabinet, who expressed clear surprise, as well as lack of foreknowledge of the replacement of Minister Nene by a backbencher, whose sole qualifications for the job (later strenuously denied by Zuma, claiming that van Rooyen was the best-qualified Minister of Finance that the country had ever had) were that his house had been torched by exasperated residents, and that he was more compliant in allowing the Guptas, as well as his son, to advance their personal interests at the costs of the citizens.  That statement implies that the entire Cabinet lied to the people, on more than a few occasions, when they disclaimed having had any part in that disastrous act by the State President.  That came after the Court judgement condemning in very strong terms the permission granted, surreptitiously, to al Bashir, a wanted murderer, and saying that the Government, almost certainly at the direction of Zuma, had committed an act of international criminality in failing to observe an unequivocal Order of the High Court to place the wanted man under arrest and in disregarding a binding Warrant of Arrest by the International Criminal Court.  Then, just to top it off, FIFA has declared that the South African Government paid a bribe to get the 2010 Soccer World Cup, and then lied about its actions in covering up that act of criminality.  Those last chickens are yet to come home to roost, when the facts are revealed of who authorized the bribe, who paid it, and who benefitted from the World Cup, then hailed as a major achievement of the country.  What is the betting that the names ‘Zuma’ and ‘Gupta’ will be part of those revelations?

These facts are a vindication of the increasing level of disgust felt by the average South Africans about the man who tries to fill the space left behind by Nelson Mandela.  It is no surprise that the word ‘Zuma’ is now viewed by South Africans as a swearword, embodying every evil perpetrated by the ANC under the man.

The next question is ‘now what?’

Zuma can take the honourable course and step down from his role as Head of State.  That is unlikely.  Zuma has proved repeatedly that he is a man totally devoid of honour, of any feeling of responsibility for the honest management of the economy in the interests of the people.  In addition to that lack of honour there must also be the fear of the punishment that any halfway decent replacement will wreak on him.  Quite apart from his many criminal acts as State President, he still has to face the 783 criminal charges that were made to disappear in order for him to embark on his role of accumulating wealth while he destroyed the South African economy and spread racial disharmony throughout the population.  The chances are that Zuma will spend the rest of his life behind bars, to the extent that the fellow criminals will permit him to live, given the seemingly prevailing view that Zuma is the Anti-Christ.  The chances seem to be good that Zuma will try to prevent this happening.  That would imply that he is able to enlist the support of the Cabinet Ministers in order to tough it through, spreading liberal amounts of largesse, even more than he has done so far to keep his corrupt group of cronies in office, in order to buy their support.  It seems unlikely that the thinking members of the Party will believe that that process will be able to endure for too long, with the country already on its knees and likely to hold on for much longer in the face of the punishment that will almost certainly be meted to the country for the actions of their leaders.

The chances seem to be good that the only way out for Zuma will be to declare a state of emergency as soon as the impending ratings downgrade becomes reality, making the already tight financial constraints on the country infinitely worse.  Zuma, in his mind a proven State President with the practically unlimited resources of the Gupta family to support him, will take full control of the economy, appointing his henchmen to key positions (those key positions that are not already in his control) and bypassing Parliament altogether, rather than by means of using his horde of witless and unthinking ANC cadres to rubber stamp his insanities.  He has the example of several friends in Africa, people he admires limitlessly, such as Mugabe and al Bashir, that strongman tactics are the best and the easiest.  In addition to that, he has proven, to himself and to the world, that it is possible for the State President of a modern, supposedly civilised country to disregard the Constitution, to lie to Parliament, to ignore questions relating to his conduct, to enrich himself and his family beyond imagination, to brazenly appropriate the funds of the State to his own benefit, and then to suborn a supposedly respectable and honest Cabinet Minister to provide a cover up for his actions.  He has openly displayed his contempt for the laws of the country, even the most important of them, the Constitution, he has repeatedly breached his sacred Oath of Office, he has misled the Ministers of his Cabinet, supposedly honourable men and women sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law, he has ignored the Orders of the High Court on several occasions, and he has got away with it.  Why not now, when his entire future hangs on it?  He has misread the mood of the people, of the country and of the international investment community, and he has believed, and continues to do so, that he is above all of them.  After all, the Speaker of the House has told the world that the President is above the laws that apply to others, that he does not answer to them.  There is certainly nothing, in the sly but untutored mind of this goatherd made good, that can stop him in his quest for complete control, no answerability to Parliament or the people, no overarching rule of law, no moral compunction, to prevent his taking the country as his personal fiefdom.  To strengthen that view, Zuma has a personal security force of seven thousand, paid by the people, and answerable only to him.  He has the Hawks, the South African Police Service, the National Intelligence Agency and the South African Defence Force in his pocket.

What is the betting that we will see a move in this direction in the next days?

While today was a bad day for Zuma, the heavy clouds on the horizon portend much worse for the country in the near future.

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!