Zuma’s speech on Freedom Day

The speech by the State President on Freedom Day 2017 was, as usual, an embarrassment to all thinking people. Apart from the fact that the President, who is, after all, the President of ALL South Africans, used the occasion as an election platform, as he almost always does, it was clear that the speech had been written for him, dredging up all possible statements to show that the ANC has done its job. Unfortunately, apart from the fact that the President was unable to pronounce the word ‘albinism’ and showed clear signs that he did not understand what it meant, in many cases the comments he made were nothing less than an admission of the failings of the ANC Government in meeting the daily needs of the citizens. He gave examples of many Police stations which have inadequate facilities, municipalities that do not perform their functions, and many other examples of failure to govern properly. Heard by an objective listener, Zuma’s speech, in any normal democracy, would be a prelude to the resignation of the President. In this abnormal democracy, Zuma appeared to be proud of his non-achievements.

At the time that Zuma was speaking, numerous marches were taking place, calling for Zuma’s resignation, as ‘he is the man who is solely responsible for bringing South Africa to junk status’. Interviews with several private citizens on television revealed a state of dissatisfaction with the state of the country, with inter-generational rape being common, unemployment high and the performance of local government entities inadequate.

With all of this, Zuma proceeds resolutely on the path of expropriation of land without compensation, a drive to ensure the increase in the representation of Blacks in ownership and management of companies, ignoring the implications on unemployment and economic activity of his hare-brained policies, and concentrating only on the racially-divisive rhetoric for which he is known. He continues to spout the lies on which he bases his policies, and reiterates his unfounded ‘statistics’. There could be no better illustration of this than Zuma’s congratulation of the Chief Justice for his hosting of an international judicial conference. He seemed not to notice that the keynote speech by the Chief Justice could only be interpreted as a stinging indictment of Zuma’s actions.

Zuma is a consummate politician, speaking the words that the electorate wants to hear, directing their sentiments towards the emotional and ignoring reason and truth. If South Africa ever wants to become a rational democracy, the legacy of Zuma will have to be erased from the public conscience. Together with his predecessor, this criminal (yes, criminal: he breached the Constitution in a grave manner, and he breached his sacred Oath of Office, both of which are criminal offences which would put an average citizen behind bars) President has achieved something that Nelson Mandela feared would happen as an extreme failure of democracy.

Cry the beloved country. South Africa deserves better.

 

The chickens come home to roost

It is a truism. You can fool some of the people all the time, and some of them some of the time, but you can’t fool all of them all of the time. Jacob Zuma is learning some hard lessons, and several of his loyal henchmen and –women are learning that you can’t trust a lying manipulator.

Zuma has lied consistently, to the ANC, to Parliament and to the public. He lied when he asserted with a straight face that he did not realize that the Government was spending R245 million on his private home. How he could ever hope to get away with a bald-faced lie of that magnitude is almost beyond belief, but he obviously did. When he was found out, he convinced his Minister of Police to lie for him, to aver, in an outright breach of his Oath of Office and of his duties under the Constitution, that all of that money had been spent on ‘security upgrades’. Another lie, but this time the incredibly stupid Minister was found out by the Constitutional Court, as was his lying boss. The fact that the lying President was in control of the ANC stooges in Parliament, men and women sworn to uphold the Constitution and to hold him to account, enabled both of these liars to worm out of any responsibility for their lack of honesty and integrity, and the Minister of Police was disciplined, in mock accordance and a slap in the face for the Constitutional Court Judges and the public of South Africa, by a meek letter saying in effect “You’ve been a bad boy. Don’t do it again unless I tell you to.” Both of them walked away free, but the ANC received a hearty serving of egg – or something worse – on its face. But they still held to their hero worship of the worst President the country has ever had, National Party included.

The next act of dishonesty came when the Minister of Energy simply rubber-stamped a deal under which the country’s fuel reserves were sold at a price substantially below the market price, and, again, in breach of a Constitutional duty to refer the proposed sale to Parliament for approval. Zuma failed even to reprimand the Minister, or to refer the question to the Police (a bunch of incompetents firmly under his thumb), to the Hawks (ditto) or to the Public Protector (a woman of unquestionable integrity) who would have taken the Minister to the cleaners. He ignored totally the supposed Performance Agreement which, he said, had been signed with all the Minister. In total accordance with the style that one has come to accept from this man, he has never made public the terms of those supposed agreements, never mind his evaluation of the performance of the Ministers.

Zuma followed through in signing an agreement with the Russians committing South Africa to spend R1,2 trillion on totally unnecessary nuclear reactors, no doubt including, in a side agreement, a demand for payment of a ‘finder’s fee’ of 10% to the ANC and another unspecified amount to himself via an unspecified intermediary. When the public came to hear of this lunacy, the lying President denied that there was an agreement, and that the (nonexistent) agreement was no more than an intention to explore possibilities for future co-operation, under which the Russians would train several South Africans in the operation of the nuclear power stations that they hoped, fervently, one imagines, the South African Government would buy from them in a fair and transparent open-market, arms-length deal. Yeah, of course. The Russians are known as generous people, with a strong desire to help a Third World country struggling under the depredations and incompetence of a President who can’t remember the details of his much-vaunted Nine Point Plan. Of course, the Russian embassy spoiled the whole plan by publishing the non-existent agreement on its website. Unfortunately, they failed to publish that part of the agreement that said that it didn’t exist or, in case it was found to exist, that it was not binding. Or something. The resulting furore, Zuma hoped, would be sidelined by fervent lies told by the Minister of Public Enterprises and by various Eskom officials. That didn’t work. By now, the public, represented by the Opposition Parties and numerous civil society bodies, took the matter to Court, which, inconveniently, today declared that the whole process embarked on by Eskom was illegal and to be annulled That process, to foist on the unwitting (Zuma hoped) public was managed (if one can say that anything that Eskom does is managed, in the conventional meaning of the word) first under the supervision of weeping, shebeen-visiting liar Molefe and then under the good step-father liar who did not realize that his step-daughter, who lived in his house, was the Director of a company that had been handed a billion Rand contract by Eskom, under his authority. Yeah, sure.

In the meanwhile, Zuma was the subject of a finding by the honourable Public Protector that reasonable grounds existed to require that the President was an illicit recipient of favours handed to him by the Guptas, who, in turn, had been handed many favours by Zuma and his lying cohorts. Of course, Zuma denied and denied, and applied to Court for a review of the Finding, a puzzling request in view of the fact that the Finding was that a Commission of Enquiry must be established, under the leadership of a Judge appointed by the Chief Justice, again a man of unquestionable courage and integrity, for the explicit purpose of determining whether any guilt existed on the part of Zuma, Molefe or any other minions. The Public protector must have considered the possibility that Zuma would try to appoint a stooge to head the Commission of Enquiry, as he did in the cases of the Marikana Commission of Enquiry and of the Arms Deal Commission of Enquiry. One wonders why she should have suspected that. Perhaps someone might have mentioned to her that the man holding the highest office in the land was not beyond reproach in the matters of honesty and integrity. Of course Zuma lied about his reason for requesting the review, claiming that he was not given the opportunity to state his side of the case, but, unfortunately, the (now) former Public Protector happened to recall that she had interviewed this liar for four hours, and so she released a recording of the interview, which consisted not of Zuma attempting to state his case, but of him ducking the questions, ably supported by his lawyer. Of course, in the twisted state of this man’s mind, forgetting a four-hour interview with a competent (one of the few in Government) person is entirely possible. In the same way as flying pigs are possible.

With this avalanche of misfortune still breaking about him, Zuma then fired the respected Minister of Finance and his respected Deputy, claiming that the firing was done on the basis of a remarkably unintelligent intelligence report (who would ever think that the State Security Agency could produce anything even remotely intelligent?) that these honourable men were working to harm the financial interests of the country (after they had clearly been pulling out all stops in an attempt to hoodwink the investing public into believing that South Africa was on a growth path, despite 23 years of economic decline). When he found that this did not wash, the lying President switched his story, to claim an irrevocable breakdown in the relationship between them and him. Of course there was a breakdown. Zuma was pushing as hard as he could to collect the finder’s fee and commission for the nuclear reactor deal, not to mention keep his stooge, Dudu Myeni, in her (for him) very lucrative job that has cost the South African public R18 billion so far, with another R5 billion still to strike this year, and all the while these two men were preaching a doctrine of financial discipline and fiscal prudence. Those two reasons alone would have been enough for Zuma to see red (not the SA Communist Party colour red, which, in any event, is synonymous with financial losses), but the Minister of Finance was unwilling to sign off on a renewal of an illegal contract, promoted by his Minister of Social Affairs Dlamini (surprisingly, the sister of the woman Zuma is promoting to succeed him as President, presumably to ensure that he is protected against the 783 criminal charges of fraud, corruption and money laundering, inconveniently reinstated by the Court, although still held up by his stooge, the Director of Public Prosecutions – curse those honest Courts!), to renew the contract found by the Court to have been issued illegally, after heavy promotion by the said Minster, followed by a campaign by her against the efforts of her own Department to comply with the Court Order to replace the illegally-appointed contractor. One wonders what the poor, lying, President could have done to get the Minister and Deputy Ministers of Finance on his side, when the Deputy Minister had not only refused to accept a R600 million payoff by his partners, the Gupta Brothers, but had also had the temerity to go public with the fact that the Guptas had made him the offer to become Minister of Finance. How much more could Zuma have afforded to offer, when R600 million was not enough to buy even one of the two?

Zuma followed up this campaign of lies and deceit by responding to the demonstration marches by hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens (predominantly Black citizens) by declaring that the demonstrations were racist. Of course they were, just as his description of the cause of the economic problems brought about by 23 years of unremitting economic incompetence by the ANC were actually the fault of Jan van Riebeeck, or White Monopoly Capital, or the need of the average urbanized Black for a piece of land that those unwilling Whites (who pay most of the taxes that have so carefully been diverted to the benefit of Zuma and his stooges) unreasonably refuse to hand over without being paid for it. Or something.

Now, to add to all his problems, the booted Minister Peters, responsible for the (highly questionable) sale of the country’s strategic fuel reserves at an amazingly bargain basement price and on terms that would not deceive even a grade 5 child, has requested her constituents to forgive her for the things she did wrong. Perhaps she is following the example of the President, who believed that restitution for his fraud in respect of R245 million spent on Nkandla was adequately made by apologizing to the public for the confusion they had suffered about his honest intention to repay the money (an intention which he strenuously denied in Parliament on several occasions, in case he forgets). Perhaps Peters did not get the memo explaining that fraud and corruption on a large scale usually winds up in a long prison sentence (unless pardoned by Zuma for reasons of ill-health), regardless of requests for mercy. To make matters worse, the members of the ANC top six have categorically denied that they apologized to Zuma or the ANC for statements they made calling into question their (unquestionable) support for this fine, lying President, in total contradiction of a clear and unambiguous statement made to the public by Zuma that they had apologized. The worms have begun turning, perhaps realizing for the first time that Zuma is not to be trusted, that to take the bullet for him, no matter how big the payoff offered by him to forfeit any semblance of honesty and integrity, will result in being thrown under the bus. Perhaps they have started to understand that Zuma is there for one person only, himself, and that no amount of fine talk can change the character of the man.

What next?

There are still many matters in which Zuma can be held to public scrutiny and be found wanting. The end is only a matter of time away, but this lying President, thick-skinned as he is, will not relent. He will carry on lying, because the only alternatives to lying are to declare a State of Emergency and take dictatorial power, almost certainly on the basis of a lie regarding the evil intentions of Jan van Riebeeck to destroy the strong economy that Zuma has labored so long and hard to bring about, or accept the inevitable and prepare for a long time behind bars. Realistic observers are fully aware that the end of this sorry story will be messy. The only question in their minds is how many more people Zuma will be willing to sacrifice to his ambition. Will it be only a few dozen, or will it extend to 52 million, before the ANC starts to understand that it was Nelson Mandela who set the example they should be following, not Jacob Zuma?

Some thoughts to bring about a return of sanity in South Africa

 

 

 

It is clear to any thinking observer that Jacob Zuma has not only captured major parts of the State, but he has also captured the leaders of the ANC. Too many of the top people have hitched their wagons to the star of this corrupt man to expect them to make rational decisions in the interests of the country and its people. Their only interest lies in maintaining their power, and that depends on the ANC remaining the dominant Party in Parliament.

However, the top people in the ANC are not the majority of voters, and the key to unseating Zuma and his evil cohorts is to bring the real truth to the knowledge of the voters, something that Zuma and his gang have worked assiduously to prevent happening. They have captured the SABC, on which the majority of the rural population rely for news and views, and they have captured the popular Press. These media feed a carefully-planned diet of adulterated news to the public, avoiding any reporting of criticism of Zuma and his gang, while maintaining the fiction that sends them to cast their vote for the ANC, time after time, regardless of how the country is sinking into the well of national destitution. The average voter is not stupid, but has not been educated to understand precisely what the ANC is doing to his or her country. That is true even of the ANC backbenchers in Parliament. An hour spent listening to the inane comments spouted by these comments must convince even the most hardened socialist that they have zero understanding of the probable effects of the ANC policies and actions, as well as inactions, on the country and its voters. The point has been made that these backbenchers continue to support Zuma because failure to do so will place them on the unemployed list, and one of them have skills, training or professional qualifications to fall back on when that happens. Their only hope for receiving a continuation of their present good income is the maintenance of Jacob Zuma in power, regardless of what that will do to the country, regardless of the overwhelming evidence of what it has already done to the country.

What is needed is an intensification of the efforts to bring down the criminals running the country and the ANC. This may take two routes.

The first route is for the DA, as the Party likely to succeed the ANC, to announce that it will undertake a Truth and Reconciliation process, in which people who can show that they actively worked against corruption will be granted immunity for their participation in it. If a businessman or a civil servant provides evidence to a responsible body, such as the Police, the Public Protector or a political Party which took action on that information, showing evidence of a corrupt act, that person will be immune from prosecution under the incoming Government. That simple announcement will free those potential whistleblowers of the fears that cause them to work for a continuation of the current corrupt regime, and permit them to bring to the attention of the public the acts to which they have been party. The announcement, coupled with a statement of a firm intention to prosecute any act of corruption with the intention of ensuring long jail sentences for those who do not confess now, will go a long way towards loosening the ties of fear that bind those who might otherwise want to see South Africa prosper.

The second route is to find ways to ensure that the vast majority of potential voters know and understand what is actually happening to their country, so that they will be equipped with facts and understanding when they go to the polling stations. That could be achieved by distributing free or at very low cost radios that are fix-tuned to a radio station that provides accurate and complete information. This should be done with an intention not to provide information that is attuned only to the cause of the DA. The objective is to develop an intelligent and rounded voter base, people who understand that there are always plusses and minuses in any situation, and that careful thought must be applied to every claim made by a political Party. We do not need to reinforce the ‘yes-man’ situation that the ANC has cultivated. We need intelligent, informed voters, who can guide the Parties in their actions in Parliament. The cost of such a radio will be very low, but the benefit for the country will be massive.

Currently, South Africa is firmly on the way to becoming a replica of Zimbabwe, Zambia and all the other African basket-case countries, dominated by a group of self-seeking plunderers, with an ever-decreasing ability on the part of the public to stop the decline. Innovative and urgent action is needed to reverse the trend, and inspiring speeches in Parliament do not fill the need. The average person no longer trusts a politician to do what he says he will. He needs reasons to believe again.

 

 

 

 

Some advice for Ramaphosa

Cyril Ramaphosa, an undeclared contender for the position of President of the ANC and so, ultimately of South Africa (if the ANC can hold onto its voter base in the face of its abjectly poor management of the economy) made the first really strong (almost) statement of his political career last night, declaring to an assembly of presumably dyed-in-the-wool Black ANC supporters that the policy of radical economic transformation is ‘non-negotiable’.

This was not the brightest thing to do at this critical time in the country’s economic history. The new Minister of Finance is in New York, attempting to convince the world’s investors, already very leery of the economic policies of the ANC, which have placed the country on a continued economic slide towards the present junk status, will not change, that it will continue on its path of ‘fiscal conservatism’. The fact that this path, together with several other elements of the ANC policy, are the cause of the current junk status, appears to have escaped his attention, and the inflammatory electioneering speech of Ramaphosa will certainly go a long way to convincing the investing public that the ANC will continue to be blind to the failings of its policies.

Junk did not happen overnight. It was the result of a long series of bad decisions, one building on the other, since the ANC came to power on the back of a voter base which is either economically illiterate or blindly trusting in the qualities and moral integrity of one man. The country has been sliding down this increasingly-steep slippery slope for the last twenty-three years, and a continuation of the political lunacy is guaranteed to bring about a continuation of the economic train smash, until, finally, the Government will be forced to accede to the harsh demands of the IMF when it begs for rescue. There are only two ways to avoid this fate: either a less-corrupt leader will take control of the ANC and change the country’s economic direction, or another Party will do the same. The only question is whether the change will come before the IMF takes control, or after.

What Ramaphosa fails to recognize is that the country simply does not have sufficient well-experienced and qualified Black managers to rescue the country. Of all people, Ramaphosa should know that a skilled manager is not born: he or she is the result of a good educational foundation, with the addition of years of on-the-job training and a wide exposure to the advice of people who have seen it all before. South Africa could have been approaching that stage now, if only the ANC had not decided that a certificate that the bearer has been educated is less important than the content of that education. The educational system has demonstrated convincingly that it is not capable of producing the managers of the future that the country needs, and no number of examples of exceptional Black graduates will change that. There are exceptional Blacks, as there are exceptional Whites, Indians, Coloureds and Chinese, but that is not proof that the system produced them – they are exceptions. The country cannot grow on exceptions. It needs an educational system that consistently produces school and university graduates who are amongst the best in the world. South Africans are capable of that, as is shown by the Model C schools that Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma so disparages, but the general system does not harness that talent. That was proven convincingly this week, when the Law Society warned the University of the Witwatersrand that it will lose approval for its Ll B school unless it tightens its law educational standards. That comes only a few years after the Law Society reported that a significant proportion of new law graduates were incapable of using language efficiently. It is a frightening state of affairs when a formerly prestigious law school, which, over the decades, has consistently represented the pinnacle of university education in South Africa, and the graduates of which have, until the past two decades, been held in high regard by most of the world’s academia as well as big business, has to be warned that its education is sub-standard. Unfortunately, in the international Management Consultancy of which the author is part, a recent degree from a South African university is treated as an indicator of below-par capabilities. Once again, the ANC has shown its belief that tens of thousands of certificate bearers is of greater value to the country than a smaller number of graduates of excellent quality.

The quality of management of the State Owned Entities, such as Eskom, SAA, Sanral, Denel, SASSA and SABC, as well as of most ANC-controlled State Departments is an unmistakable testimony to the extremely poor standard of the Black management available in the country. The South African Police Services seems incapable of producing a Commissioner who is able to hold the top job for more than a year! Apart from the rampant corruption (another manifestation of poor management), it is clear that the policy of pushing an ANC cadre into the top job years before he has the skills, the integrity and the personal qualities to perform adequately is a virtual guarantee of failure, and no amount of Hlaudi-speak will be enough to convince the world that the financial woes of the organization are a figment of the Opposition’s fevered imagination. SABC requires another R3 billion, although the former CEO, now out of the job for only a few months claims it had a cash surplus of R800 million, and SAA requires another R4 billion only a month after the last R5 billion was injected to save it from bankruptcy – who has ever heard of a State-owned airline failing to publish its annual accounts for fifteen months after the statutorily-required date, in order to save it from insolvency! The incompetence and corruption (another manifestation of managerial incompetence) of Eskom has resulted in a massive slide in the industrial and mining output of the country, causing it to miss out on two world booms. The reliable, affordable supply of electricity is universally recognized as a promoter of economic activity, and Eskom has been singularly negative in its role in that regard, while the ANC and its leaders have benefitted enormously from the endemic corruption on the corporation.

The management talent is available in South Africa, amongst the thousands of sidelined White managers who would love to be in a position to help their Black counterparts, and tens of thousands of South Africans abroad would be delighted to return to add their skills and efforts to the drive. Believe it or not, Mr. Ramaphosa, Whites want the country to succeed as much as Blacks do! They all understand that the future of the country lies in the hands of all its citizens, and the amount of goodwill on the ground, amongst all races, is considerably greater than the ANC wants to believe. The average citizen wants the Rainbow Nation of Nelson Mandela to succeed, and he or she will do whatever it takes to make that happen, if only the Government will step aside and allow them to do that.

The real problem of the ANC and its hangers-on is that they believe that the size of the economic pie is fixed, and that the only way that the Blacks can get more is to ensure that the Whites get less. That may be true in the world of the ANC, as is demonstrated by the fact that the economic pie has been shrinking consistently since they have been in power. Numerous non-ANC initiatives to grow it have failed because the ANC policies have ensured that the preconditions for growth – good education, good experienced management, good control of corruption – have been removed, rather than being expanded. An attempt in the 1990s to bring about 350 000 sustainable jobs failed because the Premier of KwaZulu Natal demanded from the German sponsor of the project a bribe of 15% of the cost of the project, promising that payment would ensure the co-operation of the Premier and the MEC for Economic Development! The economic pie is, in fact, not fixed, as is demonstrated by the fact that several economies, around the world as well as around Africa, have been growing at a pace greater than 5% p.a., even in times of world economic slowdown (with the South African GDP growth rate now projected at under 1% in 2017/8, and likely to be less). Even a smaller share of a bigger pie will translate into a better standard of living for tens of millions of South Africans, Black and White, with a brighter future for the Blacks making their way up the educational and experience ladder. Black Empowerment will happen inevitably in a growing economy, but cannot in a declining economy. No amount of entrepreneurial training in school will substitute for the quality education that is required to allow the schoolchildren to become citizens of the world.

Mr. Ramaphosa, as an intelligent politician, it is necessary for you to recognize the facts of the situation. A continuation of the mantra of Radical Economic Transformation cannot achieve anything of value for your Black voter base. A continuation of putting down the Whites who managed the growth of South Africa from a small colony at the end of Africa to a country that was important to the world, in the face of abjectly poor political management over many decades, will only deprive the country of a significant base of skills, knowledge and entrepreneurial capability, to the cost of all.

Mr. Ramaphosa, you are the Deputy President of all South Africans, Black, White, Coloured, Indian, Chinese, not only of the ANC portion of the country. The continuation of the present Zuma-ANC lunacy will serve only to drive away an increasing number of the people who supported the delivery of a democracy in this country on the basis of the moral character of a great man, Nelson Mandela, as well as the capital that is so essential to economic growth.

Now you have the opportunity to stand up, to speak truth to your political boss and to your nation, and prove to them that you have what it takes to be the next President.

Why are businesspeople smuggling funds out of the country?

There has been much ado about the evil businessmen smuggling funds out of South Africa, as well as out of other developing countries, thereby depriving those countries of the capital needed to develop their industries, and so causing the poor to remain poor. This has been the reason for the United Nations to appoint Thabo Mbeki as Commissioner of a learned group to determine the extent of the smuggling, and make recommendations on what to do about it. That appointment was remarkable, given the ex-President’s background, but it does illustrate the priority given to the situation by at least some pressure groups in the world body. Apart from much noise and publicity, and the expenditure of large sums of money, however, not much seems to have resulted from the work of the Commission. Recently, a righteously indignant article was penned on the subject in the Cape Times under the title ‘Accomplices to financial murder’ by Wesley Seale, a lecturer at Rhodes University’s Department of Politics & International Studies, in which the author asserts, with some evidence, that some R58 billion left the country in illicit funds flows, and states that ‘The capital is unrecorded and cannot be used or accessed as public funds or private investment capital, meaning that the population does not benefit from its potential impact of infrastructure investment and inevitably pay more, whether through taxes or at the till.’

At first glance it appears true that the country is being deprived of a significant amount of capital, which, presumably, could be well used to improve the conditions for all in the country, probably most notably for the poor. However, in most of the developing countries of the world, which are the ones to complain most vocally about the problem, the amount of capital lost to them in this way is a small fraction of the sums lost to Government-sponsored corruption and fraud, to sheer incompetence in the implementation of measures designed to ‘boost the economy’ which are, in reality, no more than ways to feather the nests of those promoting them, and to the costs of implementing abjectly poor economic policies, which are the real reasons those countries are home to so many poor. The complaints are, in reality, only another way of blaming ‘White Monopoly Capital’ for the problems caused by the Governments in those countries, a way at pointing fingers at others to distract attention from their own failings.

This does not mean to say that the flight of capital, illegal or otherwise is not real, nor that the funds so exported could not have been used by those taking them for the ultimate benefit of the mass of people in the country. Those statements are true, although one may question how the amount was determined. In fact, it is almost certainly significantly greater than the R54,48 billion claimed. However, the correct way to approach this problem is not to demand more legislation or more tightly-imposed legislation. As is always the case in matters such as this, the people drafting the legislation and then enforcing it probably do not number more than a few thousand, and they are poorly funded and poorly experienced to boot, while those doing the exporting of funds number in their millions, and have access to tens of billions of Rands to plan and execute their moves. In addition, those advising the legislators and enforcers do so with a clear eye to their own benefit, which is almost never aligned with those aims seemingly espoused by the writer. A fight against the illicit export of capital is ultimately doomed to at least partial failure. If the flight of capital from the country is to be combatted, it is necessary to understand why it occurs.

There are probably two main reasons why funds are exported illicitly.

The first reason is that the funds were gained illicitly in the first place, and so are exported, or not repatriated, to avoid having evidence of the illicit activities within the reach of the law enforcement agencies, if those bodies could ever be induced to carry out their lawful duties against the perpetrators. If you were planning to steal R254 000 000 from the State, it would require a remarkably low level of intelligence to leave the evidence in plain sight, at Nkandla, for instance, or an absolute assurance that the Minister of Police would be subject to inducement to lie to Parliament about the evidence. If you were planning to take a huge bribe, about $20 000 000, from a munitions supplier as an inducement to grant a contract of supply amounting, ultimately, to $5,4 billion, you would be much more inclined to direct that the funds be paid into your personal bank account in Geneva, where they would, hopefully, remain hidden from the investigative authorities in your own country as well as that of the supplier, discounting as unlikely the possibility that a slightly inebriated representative of the bribing company would brag to drinking companions about his role in making the deposit, or that, as a result of that bragging, the Police in the foreign country would investigate and find a written note of the negotiations for that and other similar bribes.

There is persuasive evidence that at least one of the many crooked Presidents of developing countries has been deeply involved in nefarious activities of this nature, and any determined investigation of their involvement in business activities such as those illustrated will certainly raise many questions that need to be answered, by, unfortunately, those who are also compromised in this way. It is remarkable how few sitting Presidents and Ministers of State have been imprisoned for conduct of this nature, but, given the rumors, it is almost certain that their actions represent a multiple of the amount of R54 billion spirited away illicitly. There are methods of countering this reason for illicit flow of funds already in place: They must simply be applied vigourously and with determination, by people who are not dependent for their jobs on the goodwill of those in power who may benefit from the perversion of those methods.

The second reason why funds are lost to the country is much more profound. The funds are mostly derived from business activities that, in their essence, are mostly honest and, in most cases, result in the legitimate generation of economic activity and jobs. The money is, in all conscience, the property of the person or company that conducted that activity and would not otherwise be subject to censure. If it were not exported, it would be subject to taxation in that country, and thereafter to the rules and laws of BBEEE, to levies and limitations, to an obligation to service the wishes of all ‘stakeholders’, most of whom are rewarded for whatever contribution they may have made in the earning of that wealth by land taxes, by high wages gained by means of union blackmail and by the payment of an unreasonably high level of taxes and levies, and, ultimately, to further taxation when the residue is distributed to the shareholders of its legitimate owners. And therein lies the real source of the problem. The modern State, as represented by the Governments of developing countries have an absolute conviction that they are the owners of the wealth of the countries, disregarding the people who generate that wealth as inconvenient necessities in the generation of the wealth. The entrepreneurs who invest capital, time, ingenuity and risk do not share this socialist-Marxist view, and feel that they are entitled to retain a greater proportion of the profit they create, often in spite of the actions of the Government, and a greater proportion of control over how those profits should be applied. By virtue of the fact that they are in a small minority, at best, in the voting process to decide who will form the Government that will decide the rules, they do not believe that they can possibly get a fair deal from the State, and so take steps to protect what they can of the total of the wealth that they create.

The limits of what these entrepreneurs are prepared to tolerate are stretched a little by the amounts that they are able to move to a place where they can have better control of the fruits of their creation, and so those entrepreneurs are willing to retain their investment in the country. Where the opportunities do not exist to stretch those limits to an acceptable extent, the entrepreneurs and investors will take the obvious step of departing altogether from that State, a step which, although small each time, will ultimately have a disastrous effect on the State. Without the capital they invest, the skills they are able to muster and the activities they create, the countries they leave will increasingly take on the hue that is Zimbabwe. That is the simple set of facts that need to be understood by any analyst willing to forego the socialist-Marxist line of belief, and understand that capitalism is significantly more good than bad. Capitalism does have bad facets, but it also has significant good ones too, and the art of good government is to enhance the good and minimize the bad by means that do not throw the good baby out with the bad bathwater. Unfortunately, those elected by the (relatively) poor majority feel that they have been given a mandate to exploit the productive minority which makes up the bulk of real economic activity in order to appease the vocal majority while, incidentally, skimming off enough to make their own efforts sufficiently rewarding to remain in the ‘demanding’ positions required to rule the country. As in the case of Robin Hood, they steal from the rich to give to the poor, mainly because the poor have nothing to steal.

All nice theory, you might say, but is it true? The short answer is that cases abound to demonstrate that the theory is correct. Switzerland and Hong Kong have been strong economies for years, in which the owners of capital felt safe, protected from the depredations of the semi-dictatorships that abound in Africa. No entrepreneur in those countries would wish to take the risk of large-scale illicit export of capital, simply because they feel that the amount taken from them by those countries is in an acceptable proportion to the value of what those countries provide to them. The same applies to a somewhat lesser extent in Germany, Britain and the United States (in the immediate past), in the Nordic countries and in Singapore. It does not apply in most African developing countries, not at all in Zimbabwe and, to a rapidly increasing extent, not in South Africa. Zimbabwe has passed the point of earning the trust of entrepreneurs, with the result that there is practically no significant entrepreneurial activity there, and what little there is would abscond in an instant if a possibility to do so existed. In South Africa, the level of investment by foreignors has dropped alarmingly, albeit predictably, and there are continuous complaints by Government that the local companies are ‘sitting on piles of cash’, which could work wonders in increasing employment if it were to be invested in the economy. And all the while, those companies are taking active steps to move their activities outside of South Africa while not increasing, or even actively running down their exposure in the country. The simple fact is that the investors do not trust the South African Government to give them a fair deal. They know that they will be subjected to increasing levels and forms of taxation, both direct and indirect (by Eskom increasing its tariffs, for example, and by an increase in the already unjust BBEEE regulations, which seek to punish White Monopoly Capital for its productiveness, rather than harnessing the brains behind that capital, which is only partly White, in the interests of increasing the economic activity for the entire population), and that the Government will continue blithely along the route that has been proven over the duration of ANC rule to be bringing the country to destitution. The recent Ratings Agencies downgrades of South African securities was not the result of an illicit export of capital: it was a direct result of policies that sideline the productive areas of the economy while promoting those activities that are destructive of capital and wealth, such as the continuing subsidy of the terminally-incapable rule by ANC cadres of State-owned entities, supporting the economically-ineffective SAA, PRASA, Sanral, and all their sister companies, and demanding ever more from the wealth creators while pursuing insane policies such as enhanced BBEEE.

It is essential to understand that those who might be persuaded to undertake an illicit transfer of funds are more intelligent as a group than those trying to stop them, that they are, by their very nature, disposed to analyse all possible avenues to increase their net profit, to undertake acceptable risks to do so, and to apply their resources in the best possible way. They will always find a way to avoid the nets that Governments set for them, until the effort is no longer worth the reward, when they will move entirely away from the country, taking their skills, their capital, their business genius and their drive with them.

The cure for the flight of illicit funds from the country? Simple. Understand that the creators of wealth are the owners of that wealth. Give the owners of those funds a reason to keep them in the country, to invest them in the productive activities that created them in the first case. Abandon every policy that aims to move wealth from the producers of wealth to the consumers of wealth, allowing them the opportunity to build the wealth of the nation as a whole. Give tax advantages to every entity, human or corporate, that generates economic advantage, and that converts the onus of supporting the indigent to one that creates income-earning opportunities for those people. Turn the economy around from one that takes from the rich to give to the poor (with a small indulgence to the masters of this process) to one that harnesses the energies and ingenuity of all in driving the economy to the heights of which it is capable.

And most of all, relegate to the garbage heap of history those socialist-Marxist views that make capitalists evil and the poor noble.

Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma shows her Stripes

The aspirant to the position of President, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has shown her stripes early in her campaign. She has stated that the former Model C schools, the only group of educational institutions in the country to offer anything approaching a decent education, is conspiring to teach the children things to discredit the ANC. This mediocre woman, who managed by her leadership of the Department of Home Affairs to cause Britain and other countries to impose a visa requirement on South African visitors for the first time ever, in order to compensate for the illegal sale of South African passports to foreignors, many of them criminals or terrorists in other respects (not surprising, in view of the close ties of the ANC to countries that have supported terrorist activity, such as Libya under Gaddafi and Iran), and went on from that to preside over the African Union in a term that achieved close to nothing for the peoples of Africa, seems determined to continue in the footsteps of her ex-husband, the present President, in finding ways to blame those who demonstrate success in what they do for the disastrous performance of her Party over the 23 years it has been in power. This woman would be much better served by investigating the reasons why anyone would want to do that. The Government schools with which the Model C Schools compete, offer the third-worst standard of education in the world, even though they cost the highest proportion of the annual Budget of any country. It seems that Dlamini Zuma does not wish to know what is wrong – it is enough to know that the Party has earned the reputation as the Association for Nepotism and Corruption, and has brought the country from a land of hope to one of despair.

President Zuma, the man known as the singlehanded wrecking ball of the economy and by far the most corrupt and incompetent President the country has ever known, blames all the failings of his Presidency and his Party on Jan van Riebeeck, the first Governor of the Dutch settlement at what is now Cape Town in 1652, when he is not blaming White Monopoly Capital for them, disregarding the fact that the company is supported by the tax revenues generated by Capital, whether White Monopoly or otherwise, or the mythical anti-Zuma marchers carrying posters describing the Blacks as baboons, certainly an outright lie in the Zuma tradition, designed to create racial division in the country in order to consolidate his hold on the rapidly-decreasing number of ANC adherents. His ex-wife, on whom he appears to be pinning his hopes of granting protection against the prosecution of the 783 criminal charges of corruption, fraud and money-laundering that will certainly put him in the big house for the rest of his natural life if an honest President comes to power when he steps down (if he actually does that, in accordance with the Constitution – Jacob has demonstrated on several occasions that he views the Constitution as an inconvenient piece of paper to be circumvented at every opportunity).

On the evidence of her history and her performance in the jobs she has held, supported by her current statements, this woman will pose a real threat to her ex-husband if she manages to convince the morally-impoverished leaders of the ANC to elect her to the highest office. He threat that she will pose to the country in that office would be even greater than that likely to be expected from the demonstrably spineless Cyril Ramaphosa, a man who seemed to be better President material than other ANC leaders, as he has stood by and watched his boss wreck virtually every aspect of Nelson Mandela’s legacy, putting out the story that he is waiting for the right opportunity to make his move, while, apparently, he has decided to hold onto the fat salary and the perks of the office, either of which he could claim to have earned, while basking in the glory of his office.

It is time, South Africa, to rid this country of this succession of worthless parasites.

A Word of Advice to the SA Minister of Finance

In an interview prior to his planned post-Easter Roadshow to the United States, Minister of Finance Gigaba stated that he would reaffirm the ANC Government’s commitment to fiscal prudence, and all the other nice things they have been promising for years, but consistently failed to deliver. He then went on to explain that the Government would undertake a drive, spearheaded by him, to use the Government’s annual spend of R500 billion to promote Black Economic Empowerment, in accordance with its (new-old) policy, which was designed to deprive White Monopoly Capital of a part of its lifeblood, in the process assisting the Small and Medium Enterprises to develop. The theory sounds good, particularly to the voters, deprived of formal employment by the ANC’s policies over the 23 years it has been in power, until one starts to examine the facts.

The first thing that should be taken into account is that the economic strength of South Africa was built by that Capital, which has now become substantially owned by Black citizens, in the process creating millions of jobs, which paid over to the citizens a multiple of the money accruing to the shareholders, and to the fiscus taxes totaling tens of times the dividends the shareholders received. That strength was built on the capital, the risk-taking, the management capability and the enterprise of the shareholders, the lenders and the employees, Black as well as White.

The BBEEE policy provides for an overcharge of up to 90% of the value of the work done for the Government or goods supplied to the Government if provided by Black enterprises, who, in any event, will sub-contract much of the work to qualified Whites and purchase almost all of the goods supplied from White-owned companies. Apart from the fact that a substantial part of the surplus cost will flow to corrupt cadres, that is a huge burden for the Government (read the Taxpayers) to bear, one that no commercial enterprise could survive, even if it were a financially-strong, effectively-managed and competitive entity. In the current state it will be destructive, where the Government is heading towards insolvency, with falling revenues, debt of over 53% of GDP, increasing loan-carry costs probably biting off an additional 10% of the revenue stream (even before taking into account the expected decline in that revenue stream), management at all levels that has been shown to be hopelessly incompetent and corrupt to a level that is surprising even in Africa, a rapidly-retreating foreign investment body of former well-wishers, a new group of Ministers who have, in many cases, already shown their abysmally poor capability to actually do the job (unless that job is defined as kowtowing to their corrupt boss), a cadre of Ministers who consistently refuse to comply with their constitutional obligation to account to Parliament, and a Parliament, the ultimate oversight body, that has repeatedly shown that it will support the dishonest President, even at the cost of breaching their constitutional Oath to represent the citizens of the Republic.

Gigaba confidently states that the foreign investors will understand that his statement of the plans for ‘inclusive growth’, even though they specifically exclude the most productive part of the economy, represent a responsible way of managing the economy. He seems not to have heard Einstein’s definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The present insanity is the same as the insanity that has systematically brought a vibrant economy to its knees over the 23 years of ANC misrule. They believe that a policy that states support for a small part of its voter base will make up for the systematic destruction of tens of thousands of (previously) sustainable jobs by a corrupt group of ANC cadres who want to acquire, at practically no cost, viable businesses, and do so by using the Department of Minerals to cancel the mining licenses of operating mines that were generating tens of millions of dollars of foreign exchange each year in the export of processed minerals, by using SARS to impose bogus tax claims, including penalties, amounting to tens of millions of dollars on honest companies in order to drive them to the point of accepting nominated (ANC cadre) shareholders at practically no contribution in cash or in expertise of any sort (other than the ability to make the tax demands go away. They have also bled the foreign and local investors dry by failing to provide trains for transport of export goods as agreed in writing by Spoornet until a huge bribe had been paid by way of ‘consulting fees’ to ANC hangers-on, by delaying tax queries until the last day of the six-month response time allowed for decision on objections by taxpayers against an assessment (using the principle that the SARS demand be satisfied by payment before an objection could be considered), and then reimposing the same demand, possibly at a slightly-reduced amount, the following day, over and over, so dragging out the effective resolution of the objection for at least several years. They have reinforced this tactic by appointing the attorney of the taxpayer in question as a ‘collection agent’, requiring him to pay over to SARS any amount paid to him by the taxpayer, so effectively depriving the taxpayer of the ability to avail himself of legal advice, by using the South African Reserve Bank to freeze the taxpayer’s bank accounts, as well as those of all other companies which shared a director or even an accounting firm, thereby imposing a form of illegitimate compulsion that goes well beyond a right to collect any legitimate tax demand, and then, when all of this fails to achieve the objective, by demanding disclosure of all documentation held by the taxpayer’s attorney in respect of that taxpayer or any remotely-possible connected party, totally ignoring the right of the client to confidentiality in its communications with its legal adviser, and then, when that fails to beat the taxpayer into submission, to threaten the attorney with a VAT audit that, in all probability, will suffer from the same level of illegal conduct that he is protecting his client against.

Gigaba totally ignores the fact that, under the ANC, business in South Africa has becoming extremely difficult and expensive, quite apart from the declining economy’s effects on the market, with dozens of rules and regulations to comply with every month, most of which have no conceivable use in the management of the company or the economy, nor that the Government bodies that undertake the controls of every form of activity are abjectly poor in the performance of their functions. A request to the Companies Registrar for disclosure of the directorships held by the requesting party fails to elicit any response. A birth certificate, which was paid for in advance three years ago, remains outstanding, with the Department of Home Affairs (the Ministry previously managed(?) by Gigaba and before him by Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, an aspirant President who managed the Department so badly that the United Kingdom was forced to impose a visa requirement on South Africans for the first time ever) promising that they will look into the matter. An enquiry in writing to the Department of Education that manages the certification of new SETAs (a registration required before training can be offered) failed to elicit any response for five months, notwithstanding fortnightly reminders, leading to the company wishing to offer such training at an advanced level of professionalism, to refer prospective trainees to a sister organization established in Germany, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Euros per year in fee income, as well as the loss of several highly-qualified lecturers. An offer to provide a subsidized project to establish a minimum of 350 000 sustainable jobs over a period of three years drew an interested response from the Premier of KwaZulu Natal, whose ‘personal representative’ demanded an up-front payment of 30% of the total cost of the project (which was to be subsidized by payment of 60% of the total by a foreign investor), stating that “You should not be concerned, because the payment includes the Premier and the MEC for Economic Development”.

The examples set out above have cost the country in excess of US$254 000 000 investment, an amount that was already committed, in addition to at least several billion dollars of investment under consideration. At least 300 Black people lost their jobs as a result of the dishonesty and corrupt actions of the ANC Government, and many of those jobs were at junior management level, with plans already in operation to upgrade their capabilities to a more senior level, and several hundred thousand prospective jobs were canceled when the investors realized that their main function in assisting the Rainbow Nation to achieve the aspirations of Nelson Mandela was simply to be bled dry by the crooks that run the nation.

Mr. Minister, please do not believe that the foreign investors are stupid, that they have permanent rose-tinted spectacles when they read your drivel. Please understand that they have seen it all before, and that your pious protestations, no matter how badly articulated they might be by you, merely serve to plunge the country deeper into the morass of disbelief inculcated by your racist, communist President. Your amateurish efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of the American Division of White Monopoly Capital, which you court for their money while proclaiming to hate with your very soul, will be assessed by people who are smart enough to know what the real truth of South Africa is.

Mr. Gigaba, if you wish to pull the country out of the hole your Party has dug for it, what you must do is vote in favor of the Motion of No Confidence against the President, admit to what you have done wrong, and allow competent and honest politicians, if there are any left after so many years of your Party demonstrating that the easy way to wealth is to exploit the sucker citizens, to take over the reins of Government and start the long and painful process of rooting out the corruption and incompetence that have become deeply ingrained in every part of the Government and Civil Service over the past 23 years, so that 52 000 000 people can say with pride that they are part of the Rainbow Nation.

Stop the lies to foreign investors, to South Africans and, above all, to yourself.

Economic Planning ANC Style – Wait for the Disaster First

An interview on SABC with Enoch Godongwana today revealed a frightening fact.

Godongwana is the head of the part of the ANC charged with economic planning. When he was asked what the reaction of the Government would be to the Ratings Agencies’ downgrade of South African bonds, Godongwana replied that they were starting to think about it, but it was difficult, because the second downgrade came only four days after the first, and they need now to digest what the effects will be!

The answer is frightening, because such a Ratings Agency downgrade has been an imminent reality since at the latest Nene-Gate, in December 2015. In any responsible group dealing with economic planning, consideration must be given to possible threats, even if they are not imminent. Planning can be defined as dealing with a problem situation before it becomes a reality, and the threat that has now become reality has been considered in the Press for at least as long as Zuma’s second term as President. The ANC has had at least three years to do the research and considerations, yet it was still taken by surprise when it happened. Even now, Godongwana appears to be confused by the scope and complexity of the downgrades’ effects.

One wonders how effectively the ANC will respond to this crisis in our economy. The President seems to be almost completely ignorant of what it really means, and seems to believe that the cause for the downgrading lies at the feet of White Monopoly Capital (whatever that might be), as driven by the ‘agents of regime change’, another undefined but clearly evil group of Western capitalists, or imperialists, or whatever, as long as they are not ANC drones, whose sole aim in life is the downfall of the ‘glorious democratic revolution’ that swept this ignorant bunch of terrorists to power. Godongwana appears to subscribe to the same level of ignorance, and one wonders whether this state is at the behest of the President. The new Minister of Finance, whose sole qualification for the job seems to be that he is beholden to Zuma (one wonders what happened to Des van Rooyen, who, Zuma has stated several times, was the best-qualified Minister of Finance ever, but was nevertheless not chosen again for the job again), gives every appearance of being overwhelmed by the job, perhaps now understanding that, if he goes against his boss’ order to facilitate the Russian nuclear deal, he will lose the job, while, if he gives effect to that order, he will end up at the end of the same rope that is being talked about as Zuma’s likely fate once the people come to understand what he has done to them.

And all of this is happening as the economy spirals down, with factory output down 3,7% in February 2017 (before the downgrades became reality), and the President’s public acceptance at 15%, the lowest of any sitting President ever. How much worse will it be when the effects of the downgrades start to bite? When another million people are added to the list of unemployed? When another two hundred factories close their doors? When interest rates on the home loans taken by the tens of thousands of new Government employees rise by a half, making the repayments unaffordable while the Government (or the other employers) put a freeze on salary hikes in a desperate bid to remain solvent, making those loans unaffordable? When the White Monopoly Capital banks decide that they cannot afford the tens of thousands of defaulting loans and foreclose, putting those homes on the market at knock-down prices, because no-one else in the stagflation economy can afford to pay even those low prices? When the Government is unable to pay the social grants to 17 500 000 grant recipients, because the tax revenue has collapsed and foreign lenders are unwilling to take the risk of advancing more money to this Government, which has demonstrated its inability to meet the most elementary planning requirement of a Government in the civilized world?

There can be no doubt that South Africa is now deeply ensnared in an economic crisis, one that is deepening by the day. South Africa has been in this crisis for many years, as the Government has worked hard to make business ever-more difficult, to impose ever-more stringent requirements for those within the country and from beyond its borders to undertake investments (by means of equity participation and the requirement to employ a percentage of Blacks in positions for which none on the employment market are qualified, and by means of lowering the standard of education to the point where South Africans rank as one of the 5% worst-educated people, despite expending more per capita on the educations system), and all the while blaming Jan van Riebeeck, who passed away 350 years ago, and who ran the then South African economy for less than a quarter of the time that the ANC has been in power. There can also be no doubt that the ANC is one of the worst-equipped Parties in the world to manage its way out of the crisis.

The worst of it all is that Enoch Godongwana, the man charged with formulating the policies that will guide the ANC in its attempts to resolve the situation, is willing to demonstrate so clearly to the public, in South Africa and the world at large, that he has no clue as to what the crisis is, and what the way out might be.

Now we know What is Next

Hardly had the question been asked, what Zuma plans to do after he has brought the country to its knees by precipitating ratings downgrades by two of the three Ratings Agencies, with the third almost certain to follow, when he gave an indication of his plans.

It requires no great understanding to realize that the catastrophe that has been launched by Zuma and his one-man Party, the ANC. The Ratings downgrade is almost certain to bring about a marked rise in inflation, resulting in large increases in interest rates, a withdrawal of international investors from the country (and probably, to a lesser extent, from the continent as a fear of contagion from the largest industrial economy in Africa grows), a sharp decline in new investment and a withdrawal of investment plans, with a concomitant decline in employment, sharply reduced tax collections and so of non-loan funds available to fund the Governments activities, while, at the same time, the funding by loan investors will dry up. The knock on effects throughout the economy will be large, and there is no indication that Zuma or his yes-men understand precisely what is almost certain to come down on them. The country is facing a coming together of a huge set of problems and difficulties, and the Government that will be required to solve them has demonstrated that it has no capability, no plans, to meet them.

The most outstanding comment that Zuma has made to the Ratings downgrade is that BRICS is establishing its own Ratings Agency, which will not be an ‘agent’ of Western imperialists. He seems to believe that a Rating certificate will have the same effect on investors as he believes a Matriculation certificate has on employers, that the certificate in itself establishes a level of creditworthiness. That can be understood in a man who failed to secure even a matriculation certificate, but such a naive belief is inexcusable in a man who is charged with managing the economic (and education) affairs of an advanced country. The certificate is meaningful only to the extent that investors can believe that it reflects adequately the creditworthiness of the economy, just as employers believe that the matriculation certificate adequately reflects the standard of education of the potential employee. The current matriculation certificate does not, nor will a BRICS Rating certificate. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply demonstrating an abject lack of understanding.

Zuma has shown the route he plans to take in countering the public demonstrations by persons who object to his replacement of an experienced and reasonably competent Minister of Finance and his Deputy with a pair of compliant yes-men, both of whom have demonstrated their lack of capability in the past, and continue to do so now. The plan is clear – blame it all on the Whites. He complained at the Chris Hani Memorial Ceremony that the protest marches show a large element of racism, in both their composition of protestors and in the posters showing that Whites believe that Blacks are baboons. He chose not to be specific in either charge. A scanning of photographs of the crowds at each of the large demonstrations reveals that an overwhelming proportion of the large numbers present were Black, while the same photographs failed to show even one poster claiming that a White believed that Blacks were baboons, or even inferior in any way to Whites. Once again, Zuma has shown his absolute conviction that a lie, no matter how incredible, is a good substitute for an inconvenient truth. He showed that conviction during the Nkandla scandal, where he suborned his Minister of Police to lie to Parliament, in breach of his sacred Oath of Office, when he stated that he did not know that so much money was being spent on his private home, and subsequently in his ‘apology’ to the people of South Africa for their misunderstanding of his intention to pay back the money, a blatant insult to the people for which he went unpunished. Unfortunately, his many brainwashed minions will take his words at face value. It is highly probable that the President, in his increasingly frantic and desperate attempts to escape jail time at the end of his term, has taken his policy of racialization of the ideological and economic disputes to a new level, bringing back the threat of civil war that Nelson Mandela was able to subdue in the 1990s. For this act alone, Zuma must fall. South Africa, like it or not, is dependent on the Whites for its economic wellbeing, and they continue to do a fair job in that, despite repeated attempts by two racialist Presidents, first Mbeki and now Zuma, to foil their efforts at bringing their Black compatriots up to the standard of competence that will enable them to be true partners in economic success. (This is not a racialist statement – an effective manager requires both education and experience, gained with the assistance of a more experienced mentor over many years. Unfortunately, Whites have the experience, and most Blacks do not. That is a bald fact, and it must be accepted if the country is to make progress towards a brighter future. Most Whites and most Blacks accept this truth and work hard towards providing the equalization needed, but Zuma and his faction of the ANC do not want to know this.)

As the Ratings downgrade has belatedly demonstrated, South Africa has need of radical changes, the replacement of the sitting President being the most urgent of them, closely followed by its drift towards the Venezuela model of communism. If the ANC fails to do this, it will be brought about by other means. History has a way of resolving problems such as those created by Zuma, as can be seen in the cases of Hitler, Stalin, Honecker, Mao, Castro and their ilk, sometimes less pleasantly, as with Mussolini and Gaddafi, and sometimes over the longer term, but it will happen, and Zuma and Mbeki will eventually be assigned to the trash heap of dishonest men, alongside Botha and others who could not see the truth when it hit them on the head.

Ratings downgrade. What Next?

The second set of Ratings downgrades has set the scene for the unfolding of the disaster that the ANC has been working towards since it came to power. The ANC seems to be oblivious to the likely consequences of its several sets of policies, all aimed at turning the country into a communist oriented tribal society, in complete contradiction to the world-wide experience of numerous countries. Nowhere in the world has a country been successful under an economic system that relies on Marxist principles, while every country that has applied capitalism as its guiding light has enjoyed at least some growth on a sustained basis. Equally, no country managed under the tribal system that seems to be the objective of the current President has enjoyed either freedom for its citizens or strong growth. The reasons for the insistence of the ANC under Jacob Zuma to apply these systems in what used to be a progressive democracy might appear unclear, until one looks at the background to the man.

Zuma grew up in a tribal society, where education was parlous, wealth was indicated by the large car driven by the local strongman while everyone else walked, and where the man in the family enjoyed all the power and made all the decisions. Zuma’s ambition was to become one of those strongmen, and his early brainwashing in the ideals of Marxism, imparted by his comrades in the Soviet-supported Freedom Struggle was convincing to a mind not opened by exposure to any other understanding. Mandela was similarly brainwashed by experts, but Mandela was an intelligent, learned man, with the ability to understand what he was told and what he saw, and the mental capacity to apply that knowledge and understanding to his actions when he came to power. Zuma is neither educated nor intelligent. His driving force remains the desire to be the village strongman, although he has shifted his aim from the village to the continent, and his understanding of how to reach that goal has not changed. He believes that a leader is a ruler. He slyly works out his political moves to gain power, and he has gathered around him a group of yes-men and women who have as little understanding and intelligence as he, and who recognize that the reason they are in that position is entirely their support of Zuma. They cannot contradict him, even if they had enough understanding of what they are doing to know that what he proposes is a sure way to disaster. They cannot take the risk of offering good advice, as this will be seen by him as a subversion of his authority, to be punished by removal from the source of their good fortune. The result is a frightening mix of servility and incompetence, at an extremely high cost to the citizens.

Zuma is not a leader, but then, in his warped view of the way the world works, his position is reliant on an exercise of power, not on making decisions that are good for the majority. In his tribal background, the chief was the ultimate authority, with the right to receive obeisance from his subjects as well as the proceeds of the rule of law. The Constitution is, to a very large extent, an inconvenient fetter on his freedom of actions, to be subverted in its words as in its spirit, and he works tirelessly to disempower the safeguards for the citizens imposed by it. Where that cannot be done, he takes steps to redirect the aims of the Constitution by appointing stooges to key positions, as he has now done in virtually every important Ministry and every Chapter 9 institution. He, and Mbeki, his predecessor, have, to a very large extent, removed Parliament by refusing to indulge in a meaningful debate, the very essence of a Parliamentary system, in which the mental capabilities of every Member should be applied to resolving the needs of the country. He and his Party use Parliament as a rubber stamp for what Zuma and his stooges want done. The fact that this does not work to the advantage of the country appears to be lost on this strongman.

With his background, and supported by his successes in gaining an unprecedented level of raw power in the society, Zuma is now confronted with a situation in which the previously compliant suppliers of funds will be withdrawing those funds. Such international lending and investment is the lifeblood of a modern economy, but Zuma has no background of education or experience, education or reading to understand that. His comment during the State of the Nation Address, that, if the Ratings Agencies chose to downgrade South Africa, they would be replaced by a BRICS Rating Agency, is a very clear indication of his lack of understanding, and the comments by a Minister, Nomvula Mokonyane, that the withdrawal by foreign investors from the country is a good thing, because the ANC could then allow them to invest in the future on our terms, presumably a comment deriving from Zuma himself, is a frightening demonstration of the lack of mental capability present in his Cabinet.

Given all of this, coupled with the statements by the Minister of Police encouraging a more militaristic approach and the reports that the nuclear deal, with Russia, will now proceed at full steam, regardless of the parlous state of the country’s finances, and capped off by the seeming impossibility of Zuma being able to protect himself against the imposition of criminal charges after he steps down as President, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to understand that Zuma will do whatever he must to remain in the position of power that he so enjoys. There can be little doubt that he will set his Military Veterans and Youth League thugs to work to terrorise the population into accepting the extension of his ‘leadership’ indefinitely, as a dictator in the form made popular by Robert Mugabe. The only difference between the two ‘leaders’ is that Mugabe is an intelligent man, although devoid of principles. Imagine what the life dictatorship of Zuma, a man in whom slyness and cunning take the place of every good trait embodied in Nelson Mandela, will make of the Rainbow Nation.

White Monopoly Capital

There is an ongoing call from the Zuma camp of the ANC that White Monopoly Capital must go. The fact that this call is based entirely on the same demand by the EFF is a clear statement of the lack of ideas in the ANC. But the questions still remain: Why must it go? And do those mouthing the slogan really understand what they are asking?

The story that all the ills of the South African economy stem from the domination of the economy by White Monopoly Capital is a myth created for reasons of political expediency, and is demonstrably devoid of any truth. Almost every medium-large company, and every large one, is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and the shares in them are available for purchase by any person, including persons who are not part of the supposed White clique whose sole aim in life is to dominate the economy at the cost of the Blacks. The simple fact is that a large proportion of those shares is already owned, indirectly at least, by Blacks, through their pension funds and insurance policies, and more could be purchased for a relatively modest sum.

Even if we were to ignore those facts, the question is why should Whites, monopolists or otherwise, not run those companies?

The companies in question represent the vast bulk of employment opportunities in the economy, apart from the Government jobs which are a form of grossly-overpaid unemployment insurance for mainly unqualified persons, a system of subsidy that has come at great cost to the South African public, but which forms an effective way of buying the votes of those so employed. If the supposedly White-dominated companies were to disappear, the present rate of unemployment would almost certainly soar, probably to more than double the 35%+ that it now is. If you doubt that figure, consider the fate of the numerous successful commercial farms that collapsed within, at most, two years after the Government handed them over to Blacks. It is rumoured that the failure rate of those farms lies at about 97%, notwithstanding the huge amount of public money that has been sunk into them. The fault for that did not lie in any inferiority of the new Black owners, but rather in the fact that to be a successful commercial farmer, the managers of the farm must have extensive training after receiving a good education. In most cases, that is added after the farmer has acquired a cultural background of the processes and mindset of such farming. A man does not become a good farmer, a successful commercial farmer, simply by acquiring the land. The same applies to a manager in a business. It is something that is learned over many years, and the number of Blacks who have acquired that learning is small at present. That number will increase, as the best of the current crop of young Black employees work their way through the system, in exactly the same way as their Indian, Chinese, Coloured and White counterparts, and they should be encouraged to compete for the relatively few jobs available at the senior levels, to ensure that the new generation of senior managers are the best that the country can produce.

The fact that those shouting the slogan do not have even a low level of understanding of what realization of their demands would imply is evident from the catastrophic shape of the economy. They are making the call on the basis of a background of political training and political, communist, brainwashing by others who were equally unaware of the hard facts of business life. Jacob Zuma was a herd boy, and then a terrorist, neither of which could give any understanding of the thinking and economic background of the way the world operates, which are required to be effective at even a low level in a modern business activity. He has made numerous statements that are proof of this assertion, and his performance as a manager of the economy and of the activities of the members of his Cabinet is abysmal, to say the least. Zuma’s chief protégé at one time is Julius Malema, another man with absolutely no understanding of the business world. These two men know how to buy favours, but neither of them has contributed to the promotion of economic activity. Do they seriously believe that the disappearance of White Monopoly Capitalists would create a stronger economy or more jobs? Who do they think would create the profits to pay the taxes that their polices would distribute so profligately?

Quite apart from these considerations, the insistence by the political leaders on the use of the term ‘White Monoply Capital’ places a heavy emphasis on the ‘White’ element, placing on the broad group of Whites by implication an accusation of wrongdoing, that the Whites are to blame for everything that is wrong in the society, even after 23 years of rule by the ANC. Surely that would be long enough to rid the country of those ‘evil’ whites if, in fact, they are evil. That term is creating a racial disharmony that threatens to undo much of what Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada worked to achieve, a non-racial South Africa in which every person is free to contribute what he or she can to the country, and to benefit from the common welfare. By the very nature of the situation that existed at the start of that time, the Whites had more knowhow and capital to contribute, which they did with delight, in the knowledge that their efforts would assist their Black (and other) compatriots to step up to their own level of capability. However, as the racism propagated by the ANC and the EFF has grown, so the willingness of the Whites to play that role of helper and equal partner has declined. The stronger and more unfair the rules of Black Economic Empowerment have become, the closer the country has come to a White Economic Empowerment backlash. That may take the form of a faking or downgrading of the BEE activities so essential to the development of a Black managerial class, or the emigration of White capital, or, worst, the emigration of the skilled Whites to countries which value their capabilities more than do their own countrymen.

Political sloganeering is dangerous at the best of times, but the type of sloganeering typified by “White Monopoly Capital’ in the South African context constitutes economic suicide.

The ANC Theory of Economic Development

During a whitewashing session for the Minister of Social Development, a major question that has puzzled many was answered.

As an aside, during the session on SABC TV, Dlamini stated that ‘the Constitutional Court Judges are people; they also read newspapers and watch television, so they gain incorrect understandings of what has happened regarding the payment of social grants.” That extreme insult to the Judges of the Constitutional Court, who each have more intelligence than the entire Cabinet of the President, and more integrity in their fingernails than the entire leadership of the ANC, was accepted unquestioningly by the sycophantic Peter Ndoro, who enthusiastically nodded his agreement of every word uttered by the criminally-convicted and Constitutionally-sanctioned Minister.

To return to the new understanding.

One of the speakers, justifying the policy of wealth redistribution, explained that poor people don’t have much to spend. By redistributing the wealth of wealthy people, who would otherwise simply spend it on the imported goods they favour, the poor people are given the means to spend on goods they need, so creating economic activity.

That remarkable explanation ignores a number of important things. The first is that wealthy people use their wealth, at least a considerable portion of it, to create the economic activity the country needs, the mines, factories and other businesses, as well as providing the finance needed for research and development, of goods and ideas, that would otherwise have to be sourced from abroad. Without that wealth, there would be no jobs, and so no way for the poor to earn the income to spend on ‘what they need’. Experience worldwide (yes, my own experience – I have earned a living for many years by generating new businesses for ex-employees of my management consultancy clients, who were displaced as a result of making the client’s businesses more efficient. Every one of those new businesses remained in businesses for at least three years, and many of them have become management consultancy clients.) has shown me that the average investment required for the creating of new jobs is around US$250 000, in addition to the requirement that the employees in those new jobs need a good education (an important disqualifier for most South Africans, as a result of the ANC-inspired sausage-factory education system producing an education standard ranking 183 of 185 countries) and years of relevant on-the-job experience, under the tutelage of an experienced manager (also precluded under the BEE system, which views skin colour as a suitable replacement for experience, resulting in a downgrading of the capability of South African businesses). This must not be seen as a criticism of Black South Africans. In my experience, a black South African has the personal qualities and mental capabilities to be the equal of a White South African, or of the citizens of any other country. What they lack is a decent education and suitable experience. This would be assisted by them having enjoyed exposure to a culture that values reading and understanding, questioning and critical discussion – as the President has often demonstrated, a background as a herd boy provides a very poor foundation for understanding how the world works. That background can be supplemented by reading and discussion, and by relevant (not political brainwashing) education that opens the world to the mind, and the mind to the world.

The Minister repeated the same public relations line that is taken by so many others who do not wish to expose their failings, saying that there are many accountants and lawyers who cannot find work, without going to the obvious next step of asking why. They cannot find work because their qualifications are inferior – a degreed South African of any colour who seeks work in the UK, the US or Europe is now not really sought after, unless their work experience demonstrates clearly that their work ethic puts them on a higher plane of capability, in contrast to those with a pre-ANC education, who could take virtually any relevant position in those countries without effort. Don’t forget that the Law Society published a report some years ago that the average Ll B graduate now is incapable of using language effectively! A client who employed a newly-graduated M Sc in chemistry (White) found that he had no knowledge or understanding of some basic chemical reactions! A university lecturer in engineering resigned because the instruction that he ensured that a certain proportion of Black students passed his course, in order to fulfill quota requirements, was not acceptable to him. He commented “Imagine using a bridge designed by a civil engineer who was required to achieve a 40% pass in mathematics!”

South Africans are capable and willing; they need a government that understands some of the basic rules of economics, and that demands that they perform to the highest standards. They need teachers who know their subjects and are willing to put in the effort and the time to ensure that their pupils achieve what they are capable of doing. And, most of all, they need to understand that by working to a belief that all people are equal and that they must all be entitled to share in what they don’t produce is a certain recipe for mediocrity.