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.

Zuma explains. Crisis, what crisis?

The responses given by President Zuma to questions in Parliament regarding the crisis in the payment of social grants makes it clear why the ANC Government has consistently demonstrated a high level of incompetence in its functions. There are two main reasons.

The first is that President Zuma, and, by implication, the rest of his bloated Cabinet – numbering about one hundred incompetents, including Ministers and Deputy Ministers – simply do not understand one of the most basic and most important rules of management, the requirement to monitor potential threats and problems, and take preemptive action to prevent them materializing. Zuma declared that ‘this is a funny sort of democracy’, in which people are found guilty of a crime before they have committed the crime. It is clear that he does not understand the difference between what has happened and what he is describing. Any Managing Director of a company, large or small, who waits for the clearly forespelled result of a course of conduct to materialize before taking action to prevent that result would be thrown out of office, if the Board and the shareholders had the time to do so before the company became bankrupt. Such a method of management is clearly in breach of one of the most basic principles of management, and represents a level of managerial incompetence that one would be surprised to find in even the smallest and meanest of business.

The second reason is that Zuma has clearly demonstrated a desire, probably an imperative, to retain the goodwill of Bathabile Dlamini, a woman who has made clear on more than one occasion her disdain for the law, or her Oath of Office, and for her duty to the people of South Africa, as well as her support. The background to this seems to be partly her support for his chosen candidate as his successor as President, Nkosozana Dlamini Zuma (note the names!), who, he hopes, will protect him from the 783 criminal charges hanging over his head, as well as the several more that will be added as a result of his conduct during his Presidency. If Minister Dlamini goes, so will go his hopes of being able to avoid the need to take other action to fend off his loss of freedom as well as the loss of the ill-gotten gains he has accumulated during his Presidency. One wonders whether his inaction during the build up to the present crisis was not intended to permit, if not encourage, the riots and civil disorder that would inevitably ensue if the 17 000 000 social grants were not paid on time! The realization of that crisis would present a perfect reason for the declaration of a State of Emergency by Zuma, leading to a suspension of Parliament and rule by decree, a situation he is on record as desiring, and one which would relieve him of the anxiety attending any stepping down by him as President, even under the succession of his ex-wife to the Presidency. There can be no guarantee that she will protect him, or that she, and the ANC, will win the next election. Of course, the State of Emergency would allow Zuma to take from Robert Mugabe, a man he greatly admires, the crown as the worst African Dictator of recent years. Zuma has taken many steps to prepare for this event, including putting in his pocket the Minister of Police, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority, the Minister of State Security, building up of a seven thousand strong personal security body responsible only to him, with only a part of the Judiciary, including the Constitutional Court Judges, being excepted. Unfortunately, even the newly-appointed Public Protector, a woman following in the footsteps of her illustrious predecessor, appears to have failed the test of strong independence expected of her.

The picture of South Africa’s future remains gloomy, and has become darker than it was before, with the only bright spot in the future being the hope that the ANC will lose enough support in the next election to permit the election of a new Government which may, hopefully, have enough collective intelligence, managerial competence and understanding of democracy to turn the country away from its present course, which is solidly towards becoming another failed African State. That glimmer of hope is receding as Zuma and his support base in the ANC demonstrate ever more clearly their determination to hang onto power at any cost. All the signs are there, and the failure by most of the ANC politicians to stand up against what even the most obdurate Marxist must see as a developing disaster reinforces the view that they are determined to take the country into the abyss. The recent Budget proposed by Pravin Gordhan cannot be seen as an attempt to change course, and his admission during the Budget speech that the country, under ANC rule, has enjoyed a GDP growth of less than 1% per annum in the last twenty-three years must be seen as an admission of failure, yet there is no sign that any change is being targeted.

The pattern of conduct shown by Zuma in relation to the Social Grants Crisis (“What crisis?”, Zuma asks. “It has not happened yet!”) highlights the crises in Health, where the abject lack of management has resulted in 101 mental health patients dying after being removed from an established health care unit to unlicensed facilities, without any action being taken by Government to prevent the crisis developing despite Press coverage for more than three months, in the SABC, where a dictator was allowed free reign for more than two years during which the Press and MPs repeatedly raised the issue, in PRASA, where a Finding by the Public Protector regarding R14 billion of fraud and corruption has been allowed to fester without any action being taken by the Minister, in SAA, where the Treasury has been forced to contribute hundreds of millions of Rands to counter the disastrous and unconstitutional management by a Zuma favorite, in Eskom, where the country’s economy has been derailed by successive incompetent managements and the public has been bled dry to support corrupt dealings and inefficient and ineffective management actions, despite Press coverage over years, in the sale of the country’s fuel oil reserves at a price significantly below market while the Minister gives puerile excuses that not even a schoolchild could believe, with no action being taken despite extensive Press coverage, in Education, where the schoolchildren have been fed the third worst education in the world, with the Minister proclaiming yearly that the adjusted grades show that the standard is improving, in delivery of public services, where the man, whose house was burned down by a community incensed at his lack of performance, was then rewarded by Zuma in appointment as Minister of Finance! The successive Ministers of Finance, proudly lauded as custodians of the country’s finances, have brought the country to the brink of a ratings downgrade, with massive growth in deficits and concomitant increases in the proportion of the massively growing annual Budget being eaten up by interest payments, strongly declining business confidence resulting in sharply reducing new investment and foreign direct invest, and a flight of the best and brightest of our business community to more attractive economies. The mining industry has shown strong decline as a result of incompetent management of the sector by another Zuma favorite, a man who is on record as having lied to Parliament. South Africa, formerly the strongest economy on the continent, is now one of the weakest. The continent’s growth in GDP, if the calculation excludes South Africa, would be a full 4,7% higher than it is including South Africa.

It can truly be said that the only successful aspect of ANC rule has been its ability to convince the illiterate and unknowing mass of voters that the Party is the sole reason for the social grants being paid! Even the SACP, the ANC’s alliance partner, has stated that, if the average voter could read a newspaper, the ANC would no longer be in power.

What can be done to correct this situation?

It is clear that Zuma is beyond any hope of correction. The fear is growing that he will seize power in an Idi Amin-like coup, unless he can gain the assurance that he will be protected against retribution for his criminal conduct. (The word ‘criminal’ is used advisedly. Even though the 783 criminal charges have still to be adjudicated by a Court, Zuma has admitted before the Constitutional Court that he has knowingly breached the Constitution, as well as his Oath of Office. Both of such breaches constitute criminal conduct.) If South Africa can escape the treat of a State of Emergency, so well foreshadowed by Zuma’s illegal use of the South African National Defence Force during his State of the Nation Address, the threat of the ANC remains. Zuma could not have remained in office without the support of at least a significant number of the senior ANC office bearers, and the unanimous support for Zuma during Motions of No Confidence and attempts at Impeachment brought against him is a sure indication that the vast bulk of ANC members have irrevocably hitched their wagon to his star.

It seems that the only way to bring about change in the political domination of the ANC will be for foreign investors and Aid Agencies to recognize that, in providing funds to the ANC Government, they are supporting a Government that is at least as bad as the Apartheid National Party Government, and that investments made in the country are supporting something that will inevitably collapse. Only by starving the ANC Government of funds will it be possible to ensure that all 17 000 000 social grants recipients and the hundreds of thousands of ANC cadres holding sinecure government jobs that add nothing to the economy start to understand that their best interests lie in ensuring that an honest Government takes power.

An educated lower-middle class Black man, more than a year ago, stated that he and a number of his friends believed that Jacob Zuma was truly the Anti-Christ. He could not understand why any human could do what Jacob Zuma and his associates are doing to the people they were elected to represent. Discrete questioning seems to be indicative that the belief is gaining ground. One can only hope that the voters and the honest and good ANC members will act on that conviction before it becomes a fait accompli.

 

Postscript

Since writing this article, the public has been delighted to hear that the Constitutional Court has delivered judgment in the case brought against SASSA by the Black Sash. The Court had previously described the situation as a ‘crisis’, a description that is exactly opposite to what both the Minister and the President described it to be, and now ordered Bathabile Dlamini, the Minister, to provide an affidavit as to why she personally should not be ordered to pay the costs of the action. That will be a substantial sum, although not nearly enough to compensate the public for the lies, the obfuscations, the denials and the incompetence of the Minister. It is, most tellingly, a clear indicator of the hardening of the attitude of the Constitutional Court to the actions of the various Ministers in the Government, led by Jacob Zuma’s insult to the Court when, after a lengthy delay, he ‘apologized’ to the public for the confusion they had suffered in their misunderstanding of his honest intention to repay the funds he had stolen from the public to build his ‘mansion’ at Nkandla. One can only hope that the costs will be on a penalty scale, to drive home to the Minister and her partners in malfeasance that they are the servants of the people, appointed on their behalf and paid by them to do the job that is described. It is to be hoped that the numerous other cases brought by or against Ministers and the President will incur similar costs Orders, particularly the Review brought by Jacob Zuma against the Finding by the Public Protector in the matter of State Capture.

Zuma still does not get it

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

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

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

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

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

Zuma carefully avoided any mention of:

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

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

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

Cry the Beloved Country.

SONA 2015 – Cellphone Jamming in Parliament

It is now official – The National Intelligence Agency was responsible for the plot to act against the word and spirit of the Constitution by jamming the cellphone signals from the Chamber of the House of Parliament.  The Speaker of the House has also made the damning admission that she and her co-Chair of the sitting, the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, knew in advance of the joint Sitting that the device would be operative.  She, however, denied that she understood what the jamming device would do.  However, she claims that she knew that the media would not be the ‘target’.  These startling revelations are even more concerning than the fears originally raised, that the jamming had been done at the instance of Parliamentary Security.

When the DA raised the matter at the outset of the Sitting, the Speaker evaded the question, saying repeatedly that the Secretary would see to the matter.  Only on the third attempt to assert the rights of the Members of Parliament did she grudgingly agree to have the device turned off.  At no time did she give any indication that she was aware of the use of the device.  This can certainly be deemed to be tantamount to a lie to the Members of Parliament, a serious offence, as well as a breach of a duty she has undertaken on behalf of the nation.

Now, at a Court Hearing in the matter, the admission has been made that the National Intelligence Agency planted the device, and the Speaker admitted at a pre-debate conference that she knew of the illegal activity and, by implication, that she and the Chairperson of the NCOP condoned this illegal conduct.

The NIA has absolutely no right to be active in the affairs of Parliament.  That alone would be cause for a Judicial Enquiry into the matter.  However, it also raises the question that has cropped up in the past.  What exactly is the National Intelligence Agency doing against the citizens of South Africa?  There have been numerous rumours over the years that the NIA is more active in protecting the interests of the ANC than caring for the safety of the public, and this matter gives considerable credence to that.  It is certainly a matter of vital public concern that the activities of the NIA now be subjected to an in-depth scrutiny by an independent body.  On the basis of the ANC’s steamrolling of the Get-free, do not go to Jail ticket to Zuma in respect of his illegal conduct in the Nkandla affair, it would most certainly not be acceptable to have this conducted by a Parliamentary Committee, unless the Committee were to have a non-ANC majority.

The next question concerns Zuma’s knowledge of the planting of the illegal device, and whether he either condoned or instructed it.  Of course, Zuma, who has raised the excuse that he did not notice that R246 million was being spent on his private residence (!), will repeat the exercise.  However, even if he was not directly involved, it falls within his area of responsibility and, in any law-abiding democracy, he would be forced to resign.  However, the events at the beginning of the State of the Nation Address have demonstrated convincingly that South Africa is not a law-abiding democracy.

This matter, coupled with the forceful ejection of all Members of the EFF from the Chamber, in complete breach of their rights as Members of Parliament, by armed Policemen, also in complete breach of the laws of Parliament and of the Constitution, promises to offer many reasons for Zuma to step down from the position of trust that he holds.  Unfortunately, South Africans have little hope that right will prevail, unless the Constitutional Court is brought into the matter.  The harm done by Zuma and Mbete, and all of their cronies, to the country is inestimable.  It is a clear indication that the Rainbow Nation that was the hope of the world when Nelson Mandela was President, has slid down the slippery slope of dishonesty and corruption, to a point where it is now almost impossible to describe the nation as a democracy, and where many investors now view it as just another failed African basket-case economy.