Donald Trump’s Republicans, Jacob Zuma’s ANC and Pope Francis’ Catholic Church

The people and groups named appear to be a disparate bunch – a renegade Republican President of the United States, a renegade ‘Freedom Fighter turned plunderer of his people and a leader of one of the largest religious organizations. Yet there are many similarities that need to be looked at closely by anyone seeking to understand what is going wrong with our world.

Donald Trump is a president who is proud of his inability to understand details of situations and the nuances that have enabled the world to function effectively until recently. In his world, everything revolves around him. Even truth is what he says it is. He has captured the populist imagination of a group of people very much like him. They see everything in black and white. They do not understand the other sides to each story, and they do not want to understand them. Trump appears to be happy to lead his nation into a bigoted ignorance, maneuvering his way through the facts, blaming others for what is going wrong, ignoring what is clearly failing, in the blind belief in his own incomparable abilities to bluster and blackmail every opponent, including people who would like to help him to achieve the best for his people, into submitting to his will. It is already clear that this President has taken the international standing of his country several large steps backward. He is willing to hand over dominance over, and influence in, the Asia Pacific region to China, by backing out of trade treaties and negotiations which, in his ignorance of the wider context, he describes in his usual exaggerated and uncompromising terms as ‘the worst ever’. He is willing to alienate his country’s closest allies in Europe by his oafish words and his false claims, that ‘they must pay their share of the NATO budget, they must increase expenditure on the military’, disregarding the fact that a large part of expenditure by, for example, Germany, on elements that are not strictly military are designed to avoid the situation that could easily turn those situations into pressing military problems. Roman Herzog, the then-incoming German President, recognized that the way to peace did not necessarily involve artillery and fighter jets when he told the German nation that ‘we must take steps to resolve the problems of Africa in Africa, because, if we do not, they will become European problems.’ Trump, notoriously ignorant in matters of history, does not understand that view. In his eyes, military might is THE way to exercise influence in the world. His background as a student at a military college goes a long way to explain that shortcoming, yet other military men, such as President Jack Kennedy and Senator John McCain, did not suffer from such a defective understanding. They understood that prosperous friends will generally not be willing to sacrifice that prosperity in order to gain a military superiority, a situation which, at best, will be temporary, enduring only until the opponents, fearing the threats contained in a military build-up and working to match that military capability. They knew that a two-times overkill capability, coupled with an active support of friendly countries, and countries that might become friendly, is more than enough to maintain a status in which a potential enemy could recognize that a military adventure would be a sure loss. They knew that diplomacy, not unfounded bombast, was the only way to maintain a peaceful world. They were also able to recognize that courting the association of manifest enemies, to the detriment of proven friends, was to place their country on a slippery slope to global catastrophe.

The fact that the Republican Party has, for so long, tolerated the buffoonish antics of Donald Trump is a question that must raise the suspicions among Party supporters about the leaders of the Party, who are responsible for holding the excesses of the leading Party members in check and forming the opinions of the Party rank and file. It appears that those leaders are not willing to speak out against the most divisive and destructive man in American politics since the McCarthy era.

Strangely enough, the rule of Jacob Zuma in South Africa bears remarkable parallels to the rule of Donald Trump in the United States. Like Trump, he had no hesitation in lying outright to suit his purpose. He had no sense of shame in dividing the nation to achieve his nefarious ends. He had no sense of the damage he was doing to the nation and to those who identified themselves with him, needing only to achieve his personal objectives. Like Trump, Zuma had no understanding of history, or of how the flow of it resulted in the present and will result in the future. Like Trump, he had only the barest understanding of the interrelationship of events, of how pushing here has the potential to bring about a huge distortion there, and he has no feeling of personal responsibility for the outcome of his maneuvering, beyond the desire to achieve something for himself. Like Trump, he relies on native cunning and animal instinct, not on understanding and careful evaluation. Like Trump, he surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men, people who are always reluctant to stand up to the perceived excesses of their chief in the interests of their personal benefit. Like Trump, he was always willing to throw those ‘dear friends and trusted confidants’ under the bus when the time came, and, like Trump, he was unable to comprehend that those people would be just as willing to throw him under the bus when that became expedient in the preservation of their own safety and comfort.

Pope Francis, on the other hand, is an organization man. The Catholic Church continues to hold onto the illusion that it is the representative of God on Earth, that it speaks the words of God and is therefor infallible in its pronunciations. It ignores at every turn the fallacy of this view, disregarding the evidence, or, at best, explaining it as a ‘human failing, excused in each case by a benevolent God. It ignores the long-held Church belief that the Earth was flat, that it was the center of the Universe, that only those baptized by itself were good enough to enter Heaven. It ignores the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition, perpetrated in the name of the Church. It ignores the constant stream of acts of inhumanity perpetrated by the representatives of the Church against children, men and women over many years. It ignores the fact that the Papacy, the very leadership of the Church, acting under the authority of God, was the subject of a competitive tender in the not-so-distant past, that favors of the Church were the subject of payments. The present tour of Ireland by the Pope has shown itself very clearly to be little more than a public relations exercise, planned to boost the flagging membership of the Church in the face of the revulsion against its actions and inactions. The Pope remains unwilling to confess the sins of which it has clearly been guilty, to make public reparation to the thousands, possibly millions of its adherents, for the gross misconduct of members of the Church. The Pope would have the members of the congregation believe that such misconduct was not known to the senior management of the Church. Such a claim is disingenuous in the extreme. At the very least, the supposedly all-knowing God which the Church claims to represent must have made the ‘indiscretions’ of the clergy known to those at the top of the Church, even if it was possible for those responsible for such a well-organized pattern of conduct to have hidden it, in the face of the policy of ‘confession and forgiveness’ exercised by the Church. It is hard to conceive of a situation in which a substantial number of senior clerics, across many countries, could have succeeded in maintaining the lie that had been exposed, over and over, by the people who had suffered at the hands of the Church.

Yet the Pope continues to uphold the fiction that the Catholic Church is the upholder of virtue and spiritual rectitude. He continues to avoid handing over to the criminal prosecution agencies every single priest and bishop suspected of sexual offences against those who entrust their spiritual guidance to the Church. He prays to God for forgiveness for the sins of the Church, yet he fails to pray to the members of the congregation for such forgiveness. Of course, it is easy to pray for forgiveness for such heinous behavior, when you, yourself, claim the right to dispense such forgiveness. If the church were a formal company, the shareholders would long since have sold their shareholding on the basis of being fed such obvious lies and disinformation by the Directors.

What are the grossly obvious similarities between these people and the organizations they represent? Some answers leap out of the facts.

None of the persons in question truly believes that they are responsible for their actions to the people they claim to represent. Every one of them has an ability to interpret the events and their actions solely in relation to themselves, twisting the facts to present a picture that they need to show themselves in the right light. They all have an ability to manipulate the views and beliefs of their constituency to their own ends. They all have enormous power, a power that could as easily be used for good as for the evil that has been their choice, and they all have a hunger for such power, to the extent that they are willing to lie and twist their story to ensure that they are able to hold onto such power, regardless of the views and advice of better people. None of them is prepared to face the world openly, to confess that what they are doing is against the interests of Humanity and of the world. None of them is willing to accept the loss of their leadership role, and the power and wealth (in their terms) that comes with it, in the interests of the greater good.

Worst of all, each of these men and the organizations they represent is willing to continue to inflict on the world the incalculable harm that they have done in the past.

Perhaps the most glaring similarity is that none of these men and their organizations have any discernible set of principles by which to measure their actions and which can truly be said to be devoid of personal interest or benefit. None of them is willing to stand up to wrong if there is any possibility that they will be harmed by such a stand.

In the words of Jo Stevens (‘Connection’ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N1XTDYD): “her dislike for Mr. Jenkins Jr. would not cause her to abandon that principle now. That was what principles were for. If one felt free to abandon them at will, it made no sense to have them at all.”

What is wrong with our world?

It seems that the crisp answer is that the people we allow to represent us do not have principles that are understood and accepted by the majority of us, and, by their example, we allow them to degrade the principles that we as people consider important for civilization to work.

The Vote of No Confidence

The eighth vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma has been rejected by a margin of twenty-one votes. What does the vote show?

Although the numbers show that a number of ANC MPs voted against the President, 198 MPs voted to keep the most corrupt President the country has known in power. They voted against a background of hundreds of thousands of emails, showing that he and his Ministers, and the people they have appointed to manage the State Owned Entities have been involved in a systematic corruption and robbing from the people of South Africa. They knew that the President they supported still faces 783 charges of fraud and corruption, which he has continued to dodge through his manipulation of the justice system. They knew that the Constitutional Court has declared him to have been in breach of his Oath of Office, and of his duties under the Constitution. They knew that the country is in an increasing state of collapse, as a result of the rampant corruption, the incompetence of Government to do anything effectively, unless it offers personal benefits to the chain of command, and the Marxist policies The President and his followers espouse, disregarding the clear proof that these policies continue to drag down every other country that applies them.

And yet they voted to keep him in power.

It would be reasonable to assume that many of the MPs voted to protect their jobs, the large salaries and the many perks they enjoy, which most of them would be incapable of earning in the real world, where capability and competence are required, rather than slavish devotion to a Mafia-style leader. This highlights the limits placed by them on their commitment to serve the people, rather than themselves. The vote is a clear statement that the majority of ANC MPs are willing to let the country bear the depredations of a corrupt and incompetent leader, provided they can hold onto power and receive their salaries.

The speeches by the ANC MPs before the vote were a mixture of outright lies and misleading statements, highlighting the extreme lack of capability of these people who were, presumably, the best that the Party could muster, given the importance of the debate to them. One notable observation that could be made of these speeches is that they all took the form of propaganda, speaking to the emotions and prejudices of the hearers, without any attempt to address facts and come to a conclusion on the basis of those facts. Those facts, if faced honestly, must lead any thinking person to a view that the present situation is a formula for disaster, and needs urgent and comprehensive correction. That applied, to a large extent, to the speech by the Leader of the DA, which was a disappointment to many of the listeners. It was an opportunity to set out in the highest forum a detailed statement of the derelictions of duty by the President and his Party under his leadership. The speech unfortunately turned out to be a sermon, demanding that the listeners believe and act. One might have expected that, given the background of the man. However, one would expect more from the Leader of the Opposition of a country in crisis.

In summary, the vote of no confidence showed clearly that our politicians are not a credit to the people of the country. The inescapable conclusion is that the country is in desperate need of good men and women, of leaders and representatives of the people who are willing to set their own interests aside, and to really understand what has happened to our democracy, to accept that horrific mistakes and acts of criminality have been made under the disguise of tending for the poor, and to take well considered and unselfish steps to correct what is now patently wrong.

It is highly unlikely that this will happen in a country in which the vast majority of the people are willing to be led by the lure of self-benefit, rather than national interest.

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 South African Ratings Downgrade

So it has happened.
The Ratings Agencies have started the downgrade of South African bonds to sub-investment grade, and the trickle that started more than a year ago, with the Nene Gate affair is starting to turn to a torrent. The government-friendly commentators have explained to the gullible public that the downgrade is of no great significance, and is, in any event, the result of a manipulation by White Monopoly Capital and the (unspecified) foreign ‘agencies’ that are working tirelessly to bring about ‘regime change’ in the country, a loathsome thought that is expressed by ANC spokespersons as akin to a ‘counter-revolution’. They completely ignore the fact that the downgrade implies that most of the largest suppliers of funds to the South African Government, and, by implication, any investment entity in South Africa, such as State-Owned Entities, banks and insurance companies, will be obliged to abstain from such lending and investment, cutting off a very significant part of the capital available to the country to support its programs, and also to dispose of any such investment before the next reporting time. The penalty for holding a South African investment is the substantial decrease in the valuation of such investment, in certain cases to zero, forcing the institution to provide additional capital to remain financially solvent. The only exceptions to this rule are the South African banks, insurance companies and pension funds, which have the right to value South African Government securities at 100% of face value. This right does not, however, extend to the valuation of their own securities by foreign investment entities, which will apply the valuation rules as though the investment by the South African entity was made by that body in the Government directly.

The effects of all this will take a short time to work through the economy. The first effect will be on the Rand, which has already started to feel the effect, within minutes of the announcement of the downgrade. The investors are taking into account the helter-skelter disposal of South African investments, almost certainly to South Africans, as there will be practically no other takers. This will be followed by a dramatic drop in the value of such securities as the investors unload them for whatever they can get, leading to a dramatic increase in the yield on the bonds. Practically no new securities will be able to be sold abroad, cutting off the lifeblood of the economy, and the interest payable on borrowings by the Government and others will increase dramatically, first because of the increase in the rate payable and second because the Rand exchange rate will move down, increasing the financial burden of such borrowers in servicing such loans. It is a not-so-slow earthquake of financial disasters for the country and its long-suffering taxpayers. The Government will attempt to compensate for this reduced flow of funding by imposing strict Exchange Controls, trapping the local wealth built up by years of hard work, imposing investment requirements on pension funds and insurance companies and, ultimately printing more money. The rate of inflation will skyrocket, with 25% pa being a desirable target, in contrast with the 3 000 000% of Zimbabwe, and South Africa will have no friendly neighbours to supply electricity without payment,, a factor which has gone a long way to support the Zimbabwe kleptocracy.

Zuma announced very arrogantly during his State of the Nation Address that he was not concerned by what the Ratings Agencies are saying about South Africa, because BRICS is about to establish its own ratings agency, which would support the BRICS nations. How meaningless that would be is apparently not apparent to the economically-illiterate President. A rating by a unit of a body consisting of South Africa (insolvent), Brazil (insolvent), Russia (Insolvent), China (in decline) and India, the sole rising star in this gang of dictators and economic incompetents is unlikely to carry any weight against the verdict of three established and respected Ratings Agencies. However, it suits his playbook of the evil, grasping capitalist nations of the West, and so truth is a secondary consideration, if it is considered at all by the ANC.

After the first effect has taken hold, the Government, still oblivious to the extent of the earthquake their leader has set in motion, will continue to buy votes by upping the social grants, already a subject of contention after the convicted criminal and incompetent, but favoured by Zuma, Minister Dlamini carefully ignored or three years the explicit Order of the Constitutional Court to develop a means of paying the social grants itself (response by Zuma: Crisis? What crisis? only two weeks before the payment system was to implode). The first days of payment in April resulted in many errors, including non-payment and short-payment to indigent recipients, notwithstanding that the payments were made by the same company using the same database as before, leading observers to ask how often that occurred in the past (bearing in mind that a non-payment for a month of ten per cent of the R1 billion per month – R100 million – invested at ten per cent per annum delivers a bonus of R10 million per annum to the paymaster and its associates). It seems unlikely that such errors were ever reported to Parliament or the oversight Committee, and it is close to impossible that the Minister or her crooked boss would have attempted to check on this. A continuation of this practice by these insensitive people is likely to precipitate an uprising by a large number of the now-sensitised recipients, and there are 17,5 million of them. This payoff by the ANC could easily turn into a huge millstone around the neck of a Party struggling to stay afloat. That risk will increase as the flow of funds to the cash-hungry ANC leadership, now desperate to rake off as much as possible before the crunch comes, declines.

At the same time as this problem starts accumulating to alarming proportions, companies – State-owned as well as private – will start to collapse, starved of cash. Jobs will be lost by the thousands, South African Airways will no longer get guarantees of any value from the Government and will default on its existing loans, some R17 billion of them, and defaults on essential maintenance, already in question, will multipy. The same will happen to the SABC, Denel, MossGas, Eskom, PRASA, Sanral, Transnet and all the others that have been playing fast and loose with taxpayer money, paying finder’s fees to the ANC and overpaying for contracts rigged by the dishonest and incompetent ANC cadres. The banking industry, much vaunted as one of the mainstays of the South African economy, although much vilified by the State President and his unthinking lackeys, will contract, selling off foreign subsidiaries to recover the cash value in them before their ownership brings them down, while increasing interest rates – 21% to 25% is not unknown in this country under a similar Government – and so bringing about a further collapse of the building industry, as well as a dramatic escalation in the number of borrower defaults, which will help to add steam to this perfect storm.

Within a year at the most, the South African government will be insolvent, with defaults on the payment of capital – previously easily rolled over – and interest becoming a reality. The hard work of Manuel, Nene and Gordhan in stabilizing the economy, to the limited extent permitted by their communist leanings, will be forgotten in this increasing disaster. The International Monetary Fund will be forced to step in to prevent the spread of the rot infesting first the rest of Africa and then the rest of the world. South Africa will, once again, become a pariah State, the vision and legacy of Mandela drowned under the discovery of the sleaze that was the ANC under Jacob Zuma. Strict austerity rules will be imposed. Everyone will become poorer, and the country will be set back at least twenty years in its economic development, the hopes of 1994, that the country will be a leader in Africa, will be forgotten for another five decades, and along with it, the struggle to keep alive will increase the racist divide that was anathema to Mandela, but was a hallmark of both the Mbeki and Zuma regimes. The spectre of civil war, on tribal and racial grounds will loom, with a high probability that either China or Russia will provide ‘peacekeeping forces’ in the achievement of the goals that Zuma has been pursuing so avidly.

The chance that Jacob Zuma will live to regret his actions is small. The likelihood is that he, in company with at least several of his co-conspirators, will be hanging from lampposts outside his compound at Nkandla. That is the African way.

What is Zuma doing?

What is Zuma doing?

Jacob Zuma, by replacing Pravin Gordhan, the Finance Minister who rescued the South African economy from Zuma’s last attempt to capture control of the Treasury, and so open its doors to him and his co-conspirators, with Milusi Gigaba who has proven his loyalty to Zuma and his incompetence in almost every other field, has gained his dream team, at a cost to the South African people that will certainly be calculated at least in the billions. By this move, Zuma has proven conclusively to the world that he has only his own interests at heart.

The question that must be asked is why any elected President of a modern state, even if it has been brought down to a parlous level, would take this risk, or, better said, enter this new certainty. The answers should be clear to anyone who has even scanned the headlines over the time that Zuma has held the top job.

The first and most obvious reason is that Zuma’s term of office as President is limited to two terms. That means that, in terms of the Constitution, Zuma will be compelled to leave office by about the middle of 2019, when the next national elections are due.

Zuma faces numerous personal problems at present. The Court has ordered that the National Prosecuting Authority reinstate the 783 criminal charges against him that were withdrawn by his friends in that Authority in order to enable Zuma to take the office of President. Zuma managed to delay the investigation of the process by means of which the charges were withdrawn by failing to order the NPA to hand over the tapes of the conversations leading to the decision to withdraw the charges. That failure could, in the hands of an honest government, be construed as a criminal act. When the criminal charges are brought, there is a very high probability that Zuma will face very lengthy jail terms for corruption, fraud and racketeering, and he will be in need of a friendly face as President, either to stop the charges, to grant early parole (as he did for the only man tried and convicted on those charges – his opposite number in the offences) or to grant him or to arrange that he has immunity from prosecution. That will not happen if the national election results bear any resemblance to the local government result, with the election of an honest government. Even if the ANC were to pull off a major miracle and gain a winning vote, with Zuma’s replacement as President, it is unlikely that the new leader of the ANC, and so the State President, would want to be tainted with the reputation that Jacob Zuma has, and that will almost certainly imply that the new President will want to distance himself (or herself) from Zuma as much as possible.

In addition to the outstanding criminal charges, Zuma will, in the coming years, face further charges, such as the criminal act of breaching both the Constitution and his Oath of Office in the Nkandla affair – his ‘apology for the confusion suffered by the public as a result of his willingness to repay the money’ certainly does not meet the requirements of the Constitutional Court or exculpate him from the consequences of that act, the Public Prosecutor Finding that a judicial enquiry be held into the involvement of Zuma and others near to him, itself a damning requirement, showing clearly the distrust of the upright and brave Public Protector in the honesty or integrity of the President. Any such Enquiry, if conducted by an honest Judge, unlike the recent enquiry into the Arms Deal, which carefully ignored container loads of documentary evidence to come to a conclusion that whitewashed the ANC cadres, must come to a recommendation to Parliament that the involved parties be sent to the big house.

There are numerous other criminal acts, even ignoring the economic sabotage that Zuma and his ANC have wreaked on the country. In any civilized society, Zuma would have been thrown out of office years ago, but in the South Africa that exists today, the Constitution and the bodies established in terms of it is no more than a worthless piece of paper, one that slows the actions needed to be taken to rape the country of the last amount of funds.

The second reason why Zuma has made the moves he did is that he has become addicted to the power of his office and the benefits that flow from such power, not least among them the financial benefits. The Nkandla deal alone scored him in excess of R230 000 000, and the prospect of the Russian nuclear deal will add at least ten billion to that. And there are numerous other corrupt activities that will be added to those figures when the final accounting is done. He will not easily relinquish the glory of jetting in to New York, Addis Ababa and such other places to take his place amongst the world leaders, standing alongside such other notables as Robert Mugabe and Omar al Bashir, both of whom owe large favors dispensed by Zuma using South African tax money.

The conclusion is inescapable: Zuma, in his mind, has to stay in power, now and for the rest of his life. The actions Zuma has taken, not only recently, point to his determination to maintain his grip on power.

Jacob Zuma has a personal security force of 7 000, reporting solely to him. Where else in the world, apart from such idyllic places as Zimbabwe, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela, is a State President in need of such an army? Why in South Africa? He reinforces that army with a stranglehold over the Police (the previous Minister of Police admitted in the Constitutional Court that he lied to Parliament to protect Zuma, and he has been replaced now with another worthless person, previously the Minister of Sport and Recreation, who has shown clearly his racial prejudices, probably in order to prevent the previous Minister from the consequences of appointing a judicially-declared liar and untrustworthy person as the Head of the Directorate of Priority Investigations), and over the Defence Force (don’t forget that he illegally activated over 400 soldiers to protect him, and to make a show of force, at his latest State of the Nation Address to Parliament), over the Hawks, and the National Prosecuting authority. His control of virtually any State entity that manages large funds is clearly founded on the desire to avail himself of a significant portion of those funds, leaving only a 10% commission or finder’s fee to the ANC, while applying the levers of power over those bodies to ensure that his friends and associates gain the lion’s share of the pickings to be made from the contracts issued by those bodies. The fact that the Eskom customers are overpaying for their electricity by at least 30% does not seem to come to his attention, nor that a billion Rand tender has been handed to the step-daughter of the present General Manager, who claims that he did not know of it, although they live in the same house, that the passenger trains do not run because his cohorts have stolen between R14 billion and R23 billion from PRASA, that the poor suffer concern whether they will be paid their social grants because his favored Minister Dlamini insists, against a ruling by the Constitutional Court, on retaining the services of Cash Paymaster Services, a company in which a shareholding of 12,5% (a significant profit generator, in light of the R4 billion p.a. fee charged) remains unexplained, that the General Manager of the Petroleum Fund sold some R23 billion worth of strategic oil reserves at a price significantly lower than the lowest market value in the past 30 years, leaving the country without any fuel reserves, that education in the country ranks in the five lowest in the world, despite costing a greater part of the GDP than any other country, leaving nearly a million schoolchildren each year with a standard of education that is substantially lower than the minimum required in a world where technology is increasingly replacing manual labour.

There can be no doubt that Zuma is working to a game plan that will see him remain at the head of the country when the time comes for him to step down. He does not wish to view the world through steel bars. What will happen to prevent that?

The likeliest scenario sees Zuma precipitating a social crisis, and then using his military muscle to step in and declare a State of Emergency, discontinuing the power of Parliament and the Courts to allow him to manage the situation effectively. He has a good example of this in Robert Mugabe, who has ruled as dictator since he acceded to the Presidency. The timing of the Cabinet reshuffle, the night before Parliament goes into the Easter recess, speaks strongly to that move being made within the next weeks. Zuma cannot run the risk of his manouevres being foiled by Parliament, by attempts to bring a Motion of No Confidence in him, by Constitutional Court actions to force Parliament to impeach him or by moves by the strongly-disgruntled ANC National Executive Committee to ‘recall’ him as President.

When that happens, South Africa will enter a steep spiral of decline in every field, not least the economic. The Rand reacted quickly, dropping 5% in less than an hour.

The only way this disaster for South Africa, Africa and the world can be avoided is for all persons of goodwill to take strong and urgent steps to make their disquiet known to the ANC and to Jacob Zuma in unmistakable terms.

 

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.

Cyril Ramaphosa is a Racist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zuma - The Beginning of the End

Jacob Zuma’s legal team, accompanied by similar teams representing the Speaker of the House of Parliament and the Minister of Police, suffered a humiliating defeat in the Constitutional Court today, a defeat that went a long way to confirming to South Africans that Justice is alive and well in the country. 

Just one day after President Zuma appeared on SABC TV in the company of sycophantic ANC supporters, and announced that ‘the people love the ANC, the people love the President’, the legal counsel representing Zuma was forced to beg, in the most humiliating plea ever seen in a Court case involving the President or the ANC Government, that the Constitutional Court should not hand down a judgment that could be used by the Opposition to apply for his impeachment!  Another counsel walked herself into a tangle of contradiction and confusion before being forced to admit that the President had contravened the Constitution when he requested (instructed?) the Minister of Police to deliver to Parliament the most obvious tissue of lies ever constructed for that august body, excluding any possibility that he had breached his oath of office to uphold the Constitution, a fabrication that was swallowed hook, line and sinker by his tied ANC Members, for whom Zuma must be close to a God to behave in the unthinking and undemocratic manner the President and his Party have coerced them to.  The next embarrassment arrived when the third counsel talked himself into an admission that the Minister of Police had delivered that whitewash report on the instruction of the President, knowing full well that the President was in breach of the Constitution and his Oath of Office, excusing the conduct by stating that the Minister had acted under Zuma’s orders!  That lamentable statement, the equivalent of the excuses offered by the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremburg Trials, that they had acted under orders, was pounced upon by a Judge of the Constitutional Court, asking if it was the full truth.  After some stumbling, the counsel retracted the statement, saying that it was not his intention to state that, but the damage was done.  The truth is out – Jacob Zuma has bribed or terrorized his Cabinet into doing precisely what he orders them to do, regardless of the rightness of it, or of their duty under the Constitution, the laws of perjury and even of their personal sense of honor.

Judgment has not yet been handed down, but the writing has clearly been engraved in the concrete of Zuma’s office wall.  He is guilty of a breach of his Oath of Office, of is duties under the Constitution and of his duties to the people he claims to represent.  Zuma has admitted in writing that he is no better than an odious slug, feasting on the carcass of the nation that he was elected to lead, and lying repeatedly about it.  The only question that remains is how long the citizens of the country will tolerate this disease in the highest office?

Population and Climate Change

The recent world conference on climate change has given the South African Government a new stick with which to beat the public.  The Minister of Environmental Affairs used a program on SABC TV to berate the West for their intransigence in resolving to meet the climate crisis that is threatening, praising the ANC for its forward-looking stance, and saying that the Government has plans to achieve the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to one and a half degrees (of course, the Government has plans for everything:  however, apart from the demonstrated ineffectiveness of those plans in meeting the need, the ANC is unable to implement any plans that do not pay off to its senior members).  However, the Minister failed to understand that there is a prime requirement of leadership, the adoption of the wonderful principles by the leaders themselves.  Putting that aspect aside as the subject of a future article, one must consider a major foundation for the threat of climate change that faces the world now.

One of the things that is abundantly clear about the climate change argument is that the more people there are, the greater will be the forces promoting climate change.  Some examples of this are the following:

More people require more food.  This implies that forest land, a major carbon dioxide sink and climate change moderator, is cleared and dedicated to the growing of crops and breeding of cattle for meat and milk.  Once the trees have gone, the absorption of carbon dioxide is decreased, and the factors that promote a healthy climate are reduced.  Consider that a tree could be viewed as solid carbon dioxide, extracted from the atmosphere, to a mass of as much as several tonnes each.  If that tree is not there, the carbon dioxide it represents remains in the atmosphere.

• The trend towards meat.  Cows are major generators of methane, a gas that is twelve times as effective as carbon dioxide in trapping the heat of the sun on earth.  The more beef we eat, the more Big Macs we demand, the greater the number of cows are needed, and the higher the temperature will go.
• The need for more housing, particularly in cities.  People need homes, and the increasing move towards the cities promotes the construction of housing for them, causing more land near the cities to be lost to agriculture, more concrete (a significant producer of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) to be produced to build them, more cars to be used for transport from the new homes to the new factories, and more heat islands to be created and so to modify the local climate.  A house on a farm has a relatively low climate change impact; one in the city has a high and enduring impact.
• The need for more transport.  Where a farmer typically lives on what the local area produces, an expanding city, required by an expanding and urbanizing population, draws in food and a vast variety of other products not usually needed in a rural environment, from an expanding area, requiring ever-more transport to supply the ‘needs’ of the population, and more transport means more burning of fossil fuels for energy.
• The need for more factories, warehouses and distribution outlets, coupled with more packaging.  Where a farmer used to walk over to the neighbor and buy a gallon of milk to take home in his own reusable glass bottle, the same man, displaced to the city, drives to the supermarket where he is sold the same milk, at a price ten times as much, by a supermarket that sourced it from a milk factory, via at least one intermediary warehouse and several tens of kilometers of transport, in single-use plastic bottles made from scarce fossil fuels and destined to form an enduring part of the garbage mountain produced by the city and packed on shrink-wrapped palettes, the lot stored for days in refrigerated conditions, all requiring energy.
• More roads.  The area of land lost to a road, an airport, a dam, a pipeline or a railway line might appear to be negligible, but when all of these are aggregated, the surface area that might have been used for agriculture, or left as virgin forest to absorb carbon dioxide, is staggering.  A road is not just the tarred strip:  it includes the strips alongside, which might be as much as 200 meters wide, the intersections and all the other infrastructure required for the safe use of the road, amounting, perhaps, to as much as 20 square kilometers per hundred kilometers of road.  That is a lot of farmland that is lost to the community, or forest that is lost to the world!  And roads, airports, railway lines and all the other necessities of a modern city infrastructure do not build themselves.  They require huge amounts of energy and materials, not the least being cement, for their construction and ongoing maintenance.
• More energy.  While the Minister talked about reducing the activities that promote climate change, the Government of which she is part is constructing five of the world’s largest coal-fired power stations, each one of which will emit huge quantities of carbon dioxide and other noxious gases.  Eskom, the operator of these power stations, is exempt from the laws and regulations controlling the emissions of dangerous substances into the environment, and any carbon tax, if, indeed, it were to be levied on Eskom, would simply be passed on to the consumers, and amount to no more than another tax on the public.  The Minister used words that suggested that South Africa is a world leader in the use of renewable energy.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The actual amount of renewable energy consumed in South Africa is a miniscule portion of the total.  Although the Government might conceivably be pleased to adopt further clean renewable energy sources, one might suspect that it has not yet found a way to ensure that a ‘finder’s fee’ be payable to the ANC before that can happen.
• More politicians at all levels, each one using an office in a large building, a fancy home, a large gas-guzzling car and a force of bodyguards with a fleet of blue-lighted escort vehicles to protect them from their devoted constituents, all producing hundreds of regulations each year that, in turn, require an ever-growing force of officials, each in a fancy office, with a gas-guzzling car to travel about in on their sterile missions, and a cadre of secretaries, personal assistants, accountants and auditors to hide their corruption.
• More industries to enable the people to hold ‘meaningful’ jobs paying at least a ‘living wage’, so that they can afford all the ‘necessities’ of living in a ‘civilized’ city environment.
• More taxes, to support the huge infrastructure of costs that would not be required by a smaller population, adding a cost factor of at least a third to a half, and probably more if one takes into account the incidental costs imposed by such factors as fees for owning or doing things, like owning a dog or getting approval to build a shed or a toll for driving on the road, all of which adds to the unproductive production requirement of a large population.

Jacob Zuma, the ‘culture-loving’ South African President, has a multiplicity of wives to produce his horde of children, 23 at the last count, if one ignores the illegitimate ones.  He is a prime example of the failure of a ‘leader’ to lead the nation, in thought as well as in deed.  He is not the only one.  The previous Swazi King was reputed to have had 900 wives and 1 800 children!  Of course, all of those wives and children had to be supported, and future means of support provided for them.  It is no surprise that Zuma’s ‘home’ at Nkandla cost about R250 000 000!  It had to be large to accommodate all of those people!  Zuma appears not to understand that, while in the distant past, a family had to be large to provide for labor to work the farm, and to account for the high child mortality rate then prevalent, the availability of modern medical treatment has reduced the mortality rate dramatically, and the evolution of the modern single-family household with its working members engaged in wage-earning employment has changed the need dramatically, but the paradigm remains deeply seated in the developing world, a paradigm that is urging the world towards a climate and resources catastrophe at an increasingly rapid rate.  For as long as a large proportion of the African population follows the examples of Zuma and the Swazi King, it is safe to assume that global warming is here to stay.

 

South African State-Owned Companies are Properly Managed!

It is now official, coming directly from the Deputy State President.  South African State-owned companies are properly managed and so will not need to be privatised.  The glib statement was made by Cyril Ramaphosa during a question and answer television discussion which included a large share of the top brass of the ANC.  The fact that there were no gasps of astonishment from the ANC leadership, no cries of ‘Liar!’ entitles one to believe that those leaders all subscribe to the view of Ramaphosa, supposedly an experienced, competent businessman, that the State-owned companies are in fine fettle.

An item on the news today mentioned that Citibank has withdrawn a R250 million facility previously granted to South African Airways, on the ground that the risk of collapse of that State-owned company and default on the loan was too high.  The suggestion was made that the facility would be reinstated if a Government guarantee were to be made available.  A recent letter of the Legal Advisor of SAA stated unequivocally that the company was de facto insolvent and trading illegally in an insolvent condition.  SAA recently made a spirited attempt to subvert the directions of the Treasury to honour an agreement to lease five Airbus aircraft from Airbus, a deal struck when SAA found that it could not pay for the purchase of ten aircraft, preferring to lease them through a local company.  The proposed lease would have cost SAA significantly more, and it would have provided those involved with a very lucrative source of corrupt funds, and yet the Chair of SAA, rumoured to be a close friend of Jacob Zuma (possibly even to have had a child by him) remains in office, enforcing a lunatic and illegal policy of demanding a 30% share in the companies that do business with the airline.  That policy alone acts to push up the operating costs of SAA dramatically.

Another news item referred to the fact that PetroSA, another ‘well-managed State-owned corporation, was in a similar position after having cost the country (I.e. the taxpayers, not the ANC) about R1,5 billion in the past two years, with more to come.

Recent experience with the South African Post Office, with a registered letter posted from Midrand to Pretoria, a distance of less than 50 kilometres, taking more than five weeks for delivery, while the delivery service to a post-box in the Bryanston Post Office was unaccountably suspended for more than three months, after a year in which postal strikes interrupted service for about eight weeks, all with no notification to the customers.

Spoornet, which provides (?) essential rail services to mines, refineries, forestries and agriculture, undertook to provide a specified number of rail trucks per week to a mine, exporting a valuable bulk, semi-processed mineral to Durban Harbour.  When the first train was called up in accordance with the agreement with Spoornet, it simply failed to arrive, with no explanation.  Many telephone calls were made to track down the reason for the failure, with no result.  Eventually, a Director of the company discussed the matter with his partner and close confidant, a Black advocate, who informed him that the matter could be speedily resolved by payment of a fee to the advocate of R300 000 (approximately four days demurrage on the freighter waiting to be loaded in Durban Harbour.  Payment was made and the train arrived within three hours.  Subsequently, the advocate advised that the delay in service was the result of the mine company not employing a Black company to arrange the delivery of the trains.  Seeing the obvious illegal blackmail, the mine employed such a company, and the trains ran smoothly for a few deliveries, and then stopped again, unaccountably and without notification.  After a day spent walking the corridors of Spoornet Head Office in an attempt to find a responsible Manager to resolve the impasse (one of the people interviewed who referred the two Directors of the mining company to someone else, and they were referred again to him after seven hours of fruitless effort, was asked by one of the Directors what work he did.  The reply?  “I hold down a position.”) the two Directors barged into a meeting of the General Manager of Spoornet with several Heads of Departments and demanded to know the reason for the refusal of service.  The reason was given the following day.  The Black company arranging the service had failed to pay an amount to Spoornet.  After proving that the company had met every obligation to Spoornet and to the Black company, the General Manager was adamant.  The mine had to pay an amount of R260 000 to settle the debt of the Black company to Spoornet.  Payment was made under protest, and the service resumed.  A visit to the Black company to resolve the problem and recover the money revealed that the three Directors of that company had each purchased a new 7 Series BMW.  Numerous companies, employing tens of thousands of workers, have withdrawn from South Africa as a result of the high cost, unreliable service and outright dishonesty they have experienced in their dealings with Spoornet.

Of course, the prime example of a well-managed State-owned corporation is Eskom, which has single-handedly brought about a significant share of the decline in the GPD of the country by its inability to provide a reliable supply of electricity to industry.  The very high cost of that electricity has had effects that are more long-term in character, driving away companies that might have invested in new industrial capacity.  In case there is a statement from the ANC that we don’t really need investors from the USA or Europe (no longer favoured sources of investment, in view of the country’s developing rapprochement with Russia and China), many of those investors are South Africans, who would have liked nothing better than to invest in a way that will benefit their homeland, if only there was a Government they could trust, managed by politicians who they could believe to speak the truth!

If Cyril Ramaphosa can claim that these examples of State-owned corporations are well managed, one must have strong doubts about his ability to manage the country, and one must further take extreme care to check the accuracy and veracity of any statement he must make in the future.  On the evidence of this statement alone, Ramaphosa has disqualified himself from any future position of trust in the Government of South Africa, as much as his boss did when his indiscretions were revealed in their nakedness!

Is Jacob Zuma a Humorist?

Jacob Zuma has proved conclusively that he is the world’s greatest humorist. 

1.    He has opened the World Economic Forum in South Africa.

2.    He has given advice to the world leaders on the development of an economy.

3.    He has stated that the greatest priority of people in Government must be the creation of jobs.

4.    He has said that his Government is fighting corruption at all levels.

5.    He has stated that a good education system is essential for the development of an economy.

6.    He has explained that Africa is enjoying the fastest economic growth of all continents.

7.    He has said, with a laugh, that African Presidents should obey the Constitution of their country.

All of this against a background of:

1.    His refusal to pay back any money on the R246 000 000 State subsidy for his private mansion at Nkandla, a desperately poor area, although the Public Protector has stated unequivocally that he and his family have benefited unjustly from that funding, in contravention of the Constitution.  His refusal comes after a year of squirming, of finding compliant Ministers and State employees to declare that a swimming pool is a security measure, that a costly auditorium is required for the security of visitors to his homestead (ignoring the fact that he has three official residences, the repair of the fencing of one of which cost R30 000 000 last year!), as well as justifying other excesses.  All this for a President who is paid a salary of more than ten times the average salary for a State President!

2.    The payoff of several senior investigative officials amounting to tens of millions of Rands.  These officials were dismissed from top positions after it was found that they were not qualified for the position bestowed on them by Zuma.  One of these was paid a retrenchment of more than ten times his annual salary after he had been in the job of head of the National Prosecuting Authority for less than a year, including many months of suspension on full pay.  It seems that the way to become wealthy is to get a State top job, threaten to tear the lid off Zuma’s activities, and then be dismissed with a huge payoff!

3.    The crashing Rand dropping 2% in one day, with more to come when the ratings agencies publish their downgrade of South Africa from ‘marginal’ to ‘junk’.

4.    The worst growth rate of the economy since 2003.  The annualized GDP growth for the first quarter of 2015 was 1.3%.

5.    The rankling of South Africa as third worst in the world misery index, beaten only by Argentina and Venezuela.

6.    The lowest business confidence index in five years.  Business confidence has never been rosy in South Africa since Zuma became President, but the latest result is a new low.

7.    The announcement that the unemployment rate is now above 26% on the official figures, with the real rate being over 69%.  Youth unemployment now stands at 51%, notwithstanding the Government plan to create five million new jobs by 2019.  If one strips out new Government jobs, employment creation has been negative since Zuma came to power.  Government employs over 49% of all salaried persons.

8.    The denial that South Africans are xenophobic, despite eleven foreign shop-owners being killed, and dozens of their stores being torched.

9.    The trial of a senior Police officer on multiple counts, including one of murdering his girlfriend’s lover.  This Police officer was charged with these crimes after a high-profile arrest, and the charges were then withdrawn after, rumor has it, he threatened to spill the beans on some of Zuma’s activities in using the Crime Intelligence Service to spy on political enemies, including several ANC ‘comrades’ who, in Zuma’s twisted world, were gaining the popularity needed to unseat him.  Uneasy sits the head that wears the crown.

10.  The growing flight of foreign investment capital of the country.  Even the most foolhardy investors are reading the writing on the wall.  South Africa is flying full-speed into the wall.

11.  The publication of a book by a noted foreign financial journalist predicting that the South African economy would crash within two years. (RW Johnson - How Long Can South Africa Survive? (Jonathan Ball Publications))’

12.  The statement by a senior official of FIFA that the South African Government had sanctioned the payment of a ten million dollar bribe to secure the 2010 Soccer World Cup, with denials by the South African Minister of Sport being refuted.  The bribe was paid over, in traditional South African fashion, in the form of bundles of $10 000 each in a briefcase in a Paris hotel.  The first real story about a bribe being paid related to $20 000 000 being transported from Dusseldorf to the Geneva bank account of a top South African politician.  The politician has since dared anyone to provide proof that any corruption took place, carefully avoiding the numerous requests by the German Police for assistance from the South African Police, after they had found a document agreeing the terms of the bribe in the German company’s records.  The South African Police terminated the investigation, claiming that they had insufficient evidence (ignoring the six million pages of documents in their possession) and the fact that they would have to request the cooperation of the German Police (which thy had studiously ignored for the years).

One has to admire his thick skin!