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.
