How Easy ir is to Spend Taxpayers' Money

 

How easy it is to spend taxpayers' money! Suspend a 'worker' for 2 to 10 years on full pay, and then give them a golden handshake. Of course, governments, and particularly Ministers and Presidents, know that the supply of funds from taxpayers is inexhaustible. Until it stops! And even then, they continue to dream, funding their insanities with borrowed money - essentially spending the tax in advance - until reality hits, and then they blame everyone, establish commissions to find excuses for what went wrong, and explain to the voters that they have to wait for the reports, three to five years down the road, before they can fix the problem they created, in the full knowledge that they will create new problems to distract the voters when that time comes. And still they continue to dream!
Ramaphosa bewails the fact that South Africa has not overcome racism, 26 years after the ANC instituted its program of neo-racism, and demands that the Whites accept that BEE, Expropriation without Compensation and downgrading of government's capabilities by cadre deployment, be seen as both necessary and good. The real reasons for the woeful economic performance of the economy under Ramaphosa are BEE, which ensures that any White with skills and ambition goes elsewhere, to a country which values contribution without regard to skin color, Expropriation without Compensation, which ensures that no investor will put his or her money into a gamble, hoping that the government will not see the temptation to enrich its members or buy votes with it, and cadre deployment, which ensures that the civil service is both bloated and overpaid, without delivering any value to the people they 'serve'. Add to that, the fact that the President is a dedicated racist (remember that he propounded the theory at the time of negotiating the Constitution that the best way to get rid of the Whites is to subject them to increasing pressure, to heat the water until the frog jumps out?), as well as an incompetent manager, who learned the words but did not understand the theories and practice behind them, while he 'served' as Director of large corporations, who bought him as a reliable link to the ANC to get things done when and how they needed (remember Marikana?) It is glaringly obvious that Ramaphosa is neither an effective leader, never making decisions until he sees which way the NEC will jump, nor an effective manager, allowing his Ministers to run around like headless chickens while he boasts of 'performance agreements', which have no quantified targets, no rationale (remember the insane regulations about buying open-toe shoes, tee-shirts, discouraging the development of e-commerce, which has been an economy-saver in other countries but in South Africa is considered to be unfair to other retailers, and banning the sale of cigarettes because the 'infection is spread by sharing cigarettes', totally ignoring the other pandemics of AIDS - strongly promoted by the ANC under Mbeki, TB and half a dozen others).

Ramaphosa, and whoever replaces him when NDZ and Ace win the fight, should understand that the conflict in South Africa is the direct result of joblessness - easily over 50% and getting worse - and low investment. Poor people look for scapegoats, and the ANC is very good at pointing the finger at the Whites, who founded, funded and operate the vast majority of businesses that provide the few economically-active, i.e. non-government, jobs (because that is what you do when you gain experience by working your way up in the organization, and what you can’t fo when you have ‘earned’ your fortune by holding an overpaid job (gained by the color of your skin and having political connections, while hiring consultants to do the work you are paid for, while not gaining the experience and skills that come from working your way up the organization).

The ANC has ensured that this pool of skills leaves for better pastures, citing ideological reasons. Unfortunately, people cannot eat ideology, as the Communist bloc found to its horror. People need jobs, prospects for improvement that they can achieve by effort and training, and hope for the future. Ramaphosa cannot offer these.

 

Joe Slovo and Economic Predictions

 The extract below from the eBook ‘Marloth’ is a frightening statement of the situation that exists right now in South Africa.

“Shortly after 1994, when the new democracy was instituted, Joe Slovo, the leader of the South African Communist Party, was asked in a television debate with the Chief Editor of a major newspaper why, when almost every other Communist government around the world had collapsed, he thought that Communism would succeed in South Africa. His response was that Communism needed a stock of capital to succeed. South Africa had that. The Editor asked what would happen when that capital stock was exhausted. Slovo replied that they would then move to another system! I know several highly competent economists who believe that the country is heading rapidly towards that point. The South African Government bonds have been downgraded by the ratings agencies, as have the major banks. The exchange rate is heading south, major companies that were proudly South African are relocating their head offices to other countries, and many of the companies that had major investments in the country are pulling out. The best of our university graduates can hardly wait until they graduate to start looking for jobs in more civilized countries. The signs are clear if you care to look for them.”

The book was written and published in 2014, and the prediction made then has become a stark reality in the lives of the average South African. Even without the ravages of Covid-19 and the poor handling of the epidemic by the government, it was clear to any thinking person that the roadmap the government was following was destined to lead to an economic and fiscal cliff. The pandemic has served to speed up the bus in which we are all passengers, all of us relying on the driver to correct his course before we reach that cliff. Several of the smarter passengers saw the facts early, and jumped off the bus, accepting the injuries they would suffer as a small price to avoid the collapse that they saw to be inevitable. The rest sit in the bus, holding on, white-knuckled, as the bus veers erratically but inevitably towards the economic collapse now looking to be not far ahead.

If the citizens of the country are really earnest about saving their country, now is the time for them to act. Now is the time to take Joe Slovo’s advice and find another system of economic management. Now is the time to force the voters to understand that no others will come to our aid, not Russia, not China, not the AU.

South Africans are, in general, good-hearted and hardworking people, willing to do what is needed, if someone shows them the goal and the way to get there. Most of them would rather work at a job to earn their living, rather than relying on ‘gifts from the ANC’, gifts which can only come if there is an economy capable of earning the profits that will be taxed. Most of them are capable of understanding what the economic facts of life are, what needs to be done to dig themselves out of the hole that the Marxist promises of ‘their’ Party have trapped them in. It will be a slow and painful process, much slower and more painful than it could have been if it had started in 2014 or even earlier, but it will have a result that every honest citizen will be able to point to with pride. It will set the country on the road to taking its place amongst the leading countries of the world.

Marloth is available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NAXHGG0

What should the National Prosecuting Authority do?

The NPA in South Africa is as much of a disaster area as the rest of the country. It is incapable of doing the job for which it was established, as is proven by the complete lack of any prosecutions of top-level criminals, never mind its failure to put any of them behind bars, as the country urgently needs. The reasons for this are clear, but the failure of the Director to correct this situation is inexplicable. It may stem from insufficient understanding of the principles of management of an organisation in crisis or, Heaven forbid, from the creep of the infection to the very top levels of this vital body. NPA Director Batohi has complained, several times, that the organisation has been corrupted, to the point where it is incapable of acting effectively. It is known that the virus of corruption has infested every part of government, from the clerk in the Licensing Office in Bedfordview, who takes a bribe of R600 to issue a driving license to a person who cannot pass the sight test, to the (previous) President, but that cannot be a reason to allow it to continue. Surely there are at least a couple of investigators and prosecutors who are both capable and honest left in the NPA, or, if that is not true, somewhere in the country? If there are none in government service who can be trusted, why should private contractors not be used? The argument that the government cannot afford the cost is nonsense – the country cannot afford another four years of the rampant corruption that is now the norm, and that cannot, apparently, be countered by an unwilling government.

What should Batohi do, if she really wants to perform the job for which she is paid?

Let’s analyse the problem.

The problem, as stated by Batohi, is that every case is hijacked, side-lined, confused or simply has vital papers stolen, to make sure that it goes nowhere. There are too many people involved in bringing the case from a report of wrongdoing to the point of successful prosecution. That is not unusual in a business scenario in which the company is highly politicised, with many parties promoting their private agendas. Surely, if  system is not working, the responsible person should either by-pass that system or correct it, by radical means, if necessary. The answer is to do three things simultaneously.

First, follow the evidence. Take a case which is prima facie good, and track who has access to it, who has input and who makes the crucial decisions. Do an evaluation of the correctness of those actions, of where the case goes off the tracks, of what went wrong and why. The Diwani case is an excellent example of a case where, on the facts known to the public, the accused should have been found guilty. He was not, and the public meekly accepted the fact that a man accused of hiring two killers to eliminate his new wife in Cape Town should go free, after the killers had confessed to the crime, and identified the accused, and the SAPS had spent millions on a private jet to fly from the UK, and on psychiatric evaluations which seemed to confirm the public view. The Judge threw the case out for lack of evidence. From a somewhat cynical point of view, there were only three points at which the sure-fire case could have gone wrong: the Police bungled the case so badly that a guilty verdict was impossible; the Prosecutor failed to present a sure-fire case in a professional manner; or the Judge was not competent to understand the facts. The third possibility appears to be very unlikely. The Courts generally have a good reputation for competence, even with the odd blip like Judge Seriti’s apparently purposeful bungling of the Arms Deal investigation. The remaining two elements seem to be more likely, and both are amenable to the oldest form of corruption – buying a person in a critical position. A payment of a few hundred thousand Rands to secure the mismanagement of a prosecution, or of the investigation leading up to it, is cheap in the light of a possible 15 year prison sentence, and the amount of money able to be offered would more than compensate for the lack of promotion or loss of professional esteem. This is even more true in South Africa, where wrongdoing is not seen to be a hindrance to advancement, where it is normal for convicted criminals and those censured by a Judge for dishonesty to be appointed as Ministers of State, while so many either charged with fraud and other dishonesty, even with money laundering and racketeering, have ascended to high office while the charges were hanging.

While the prima facie ‘facts’ are being determined, set up a channel in which the handling of chosen cases can be free of the involvement or influence of those found or suspected to be under suspicion. Feed some carefully selected cases into that channel and monitor them carefully. Fast-track them, so that the process can be watched over an abbreviated timespan, and record carefully who does what, and when, and, most critically, why. Manage the cases on an individual basis. Ensure that every fact that needs to be taken into account is recorded, and document the events of interference, so that the people who have negative influence that is not justified by the facts can be placed in quarantine. Ensure that the facts known to the public are correctly investigated, and question the conclusions.

Third, take the chosen cases to a logical conclusion. By this point, there should be at least three or four important cases that have watertight proof and presentation. Ensure that the people involved at all levels are aware that their performance in these cases will have long-term consequences for each of them personally, either positive or negative. It is not essential that every possible malfeasance of an accused be brought against him or her at this stage – that can be done when they can be interviewed for further charges in orange overalls, when they are less able to buy their way out of trouble. It is only necessary at this time to achieve the first conviction.

By choosing the cases carefully, successful investigations and trials will remove at least several of the corrupt individuals holding levers of power, and reduce the negative influences in future prosecutions, and, most importantly, will restore the belief that the NPA is a body to be feared by criminals. Comparison of effective processes with ineffective ones will provide clues to who is needed in the future, who is capable of development, and who should be discarded, after due investigation of their actions in the past. A separate channel should be established to ensure that the criminal prosecution of those meriting that special distinction is performed effectively, with the effect of cutting the ground from under those working within the system to subvert justice.

The next step is to repeat the process, taking care to ensure that each case enjoys a high probability of success. Each repetition will extend the list of those taken from positions of influence, and will reduce the body of people working against true justice in the country. It is important to understand that even one successful prosecution is a lot better that dozens of prosecutions still in the process, probably for the next few years.

Perhaps Batohi would be well-advised to include an investigation into the actions of her predecessor, who did so much to hollow out the institution she now leads.

While this is going on, Batohi could take a couple of hours to prepare a presentation to Parliament to ask for two new laws.

The first of these will require that the sentence imposed on a person abusing a position of trust be double that of others convicted of that crime. For example, the Chief Accounting Officer of a State Owned Entity who supports, or fails to prevent, a fraud by officers of that entity would be subject to double the prison time for the crime. The law should require that parole cannot be granted until at least the additional time has been served in full. This would prevent the present practice of criminals going free, carried head-high by ANC members to his new position as Head of Political Education in the ANC, after serving only a few months of a five-year sentence for corruption.

The second proposed law will offer indemnity from prosecution to any person who is party to a crime and provides evidence to the SAPS and the NPA which results in the criminal conviction of the counterparties to an act of corruption. This would be coupled with a bar for life against that person doing business with the State, as well as a requirement that he or she reimburses the State for the loss it has suffered. That indemnity will be effective only if the evidence is provided voluntarily and before an action against the person providing it is commenced.

If the NPA continues to bumble along on its present path, without taking any real action against the criminal kingpins who have blighted the South African political scene for so long, if it continues to ignore the exposure by investigative journalists made of criminal acts that have been at the centre of public discourse for years, the citizens will be justified in their belief that the NPA is merely another State body that offers jobs for pals without any expectation that it should perform the tasks for which it exists. It would join the SAPS on the list of those State bodies which have been shown conclusively to be part of the problem in South Africa.

Some basic principles of economics

However much politicians would like the opposite to be true, it is a law of nature that an economy is subject to the rules of economics. If those rules are ignored, subverted, legislated or litigated, the true laws will return to bite in a merciless way. Here are some of those laws for your consideration.

You can set the price, but the market will decide whether to buy. Put simply, if you offer to sell a kilogram of butter or an hour of labor, the market has the freedom to accept your price and buy, or to reject it and not buy. The labor unions demand a high price for what their members are able to offer, and, in the short term, the buyers may be forced to accept that offer, simply to keep in business until they are able to find an alternative, or to find a way to wind down that element of their business without too much loss. The mines in South Africa have been subjected to an unrelenting, government-supported series of wage demands by their workers over many years. The workers’ demand were met by the employers, which then set about finding ways to reduce the dependence on that labor, by automating jobs, by finding more efficient ways to doing the work, or simply closing shafts and investing their money in other countries. The result has been that the number of workers employed in mines in South Africa have reduced to less than a third within one decade! The lucky workers who remain employed may be paid more now than they were before, but a large proportion of those making demands for more wages are now sitting at home, wondering where their source of income has gone. Those who are still employed are, generally, earning more, and being paid more, because they have improved the value of what they supply to their employers. The simple rule is that, if you want to be paid more, you must offer better value for that payment. The higher the price for the same level of value, the lower will be the demand.

The Government can set unreasonable rules, but the market will decide whether to accept them. Governments everywhere have an imperative to legislate on everything. They assume that they have a monopoly on wisdom, and they believe that what they proclaim shall be done, will be done. In reality, the parliamentarians debating wisely and learnedly (?) on the needs of the country are not in the top 5% of smart people in the country. They are almost certainly not in the top 50%. That is clearly demonstrated by listening to what they say. Remember Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, stating in learned tones that “AIDS is a syndrome, and a syndrome doesn’t cause an infection”? Or George W Bush claiming that “the French don’t even have a word for ‘entrepreneurship’”? Or Cyril Ramaphosa defending Jacob Zuma when he stated ““We are saying that the integrity of the President remains intact and that this President has the ability and know-how to lead our Government and South Africa going forward.”? Or Neville Chamberlain claiming that his agreement with Adolph Hitler would ensure ‘Peace in our time”? When a Parliament or Congress or Duma lays down the law, it is a statement of what a few, self-interested and not-very-intelligent people at the top of the Party want to happen. Business then decides whether they can tolerate it. If not, they pull out of that business, or set up a different structure to evade the rule. Then the citizens come into the picture. As always, they might be taken in, for a shorter or longer time, but eventually, they will decide whether the rule is good for them, and comply with it, or not good for them, and take whatever action is required to avoid the undesirable consequences. The National Party legislated a minimum wage for domestic servants, and the result was that more than half of the domestic servants, people doing menial work largely because they had no other skills to offer, became unemployed. A low wage became a no wage. The ANC, faced with a lack of medical skills because they did not pay enough to compete with the earnings in private practice, imposed a rule that all newly-graduated doctors must serve a lengthy period in public service, in places nominated by the Department of Health, before they could go into private Practice, suddenly found that the newly-graduated doctors emigrated to avoid this discriminatory rule, forcing them to import poorly-qualified doctors from Cuba (of course, people will claim that the Cuban doctors are well-qualified – the response from a number of highly-qualified specialists is that they have skills no better than a senior nurse, at best. The other aspect is that the rule was introduced in order to permit the ANC to make good on its terrorist-era promise to pay back the Cubans for their help in coming to power in South Africa without having to use their own ill-gotten funds to do so). What the lawmakers should do in place of throwing mud at each other under the guise of a ‘parliamentary debate’ is to put all of the facts on the table, invite considered opinion from qualified people on what really constitutes a problem and on how to solve it, and then use the skills available in the Public Service, if there are any, to formulate the law to be passed. The simple rule is that you can demand, but the buyer will decide whether you will receive.

Everything is a trade-off. Nothing comes free. TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). Whatever you want has a price. It is a wise man (or more often woman) who recognizes that if you take this, you can’t have that. Life is a series of alternatives. If you want to become a senior executive in a competitive world, you have to pay the price of gain the necessary education and experience. Unfortunately, being in possession of a black skin does not absolve you from that rule. Unfortunately, gaining twenty years’ experience takes twenty years. Pushing unqualified people to the top ranks of an organization is a sure recipe for the failure of that organization, either because they are incompetent, or because they are necessarily crooked to pretend (even to themselves) that they have what it takes. Witness Dudu Myeni and South African Airways, Brian Molefe and Transnet and Eskom, Hlaudi Motsoeneng and SABC, Bathabile Dlamini and SASSA, Jacob Zuma and South Africa, Donald Trump and the USA, Theresa May and the UK Conservative Party, Adolph Hitler and Germany, Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) and Russia, and Vladimir Putin and Russia. The failure of the management objectives of BBEEE has resulted in South Africa declining in importance as an African economy. Unfortunately, the price of a failure to recognize this rule is often paid by the persons who did not make the decisions, but, ultimately, even they can be shown to have been complicit in allowing the nonconforming decisions to be made, even if only as a voter who failed to make the facts known to other voters. Many Americans will be joining their South African counterparts soon, in regretting the decisions, or non-decisions, of which they were culpable in choosing the wrong man. The simple rule is that the ultimate price to be paid for today’s free lunch should be carefully considered before opening that lunch pack.

The final rule for today: Governments are not immune to the rules of economics.

A Cautionary Tale in Planning Race-Based Business Policies

An exam question was asked at the end of last year in a Logics course, with the caution that the question was compulsory. A failure to answer the question would result in failure of the candidate.

“A young Black man goes into a company’s office, clutching a Classified Ad from the ‘Jobs Vacant’ section of the local newspaper. “I want to apply for this job,” he says. “Let’s check your credentials before I tell you more about the job,” replies the man behind the desk. “I gained a B Com degree three years ago, but I haven’t been able to find work since I graduated, so I don’t have any experience.” The young man hands over letters from his teachers and lecturers stating their assessment of his capabilities and character. “That’s promising,” replies the man behind the desk. “We’re looking for a qualified person to do this job. It pays well, but we don’t do any work for the Government or the big companies that require that we comply with the BBEEE requirements. We would love to do some of that, but we don’t think it’s fair to our employees to subject them to arbitrary rules based on their race, so we limit our market to companies that think the way we do. We appoint people on merit, give them the training that they need to perform well, and then promote them according to their ability to do the work. We’re just an ordinary business that doesn’t apply any discriminatory rules based on race, gender or religion. All we’re looking for is someone who wants to build a long-term career on the basis of his or her ability.” The man behind the desk named a salary that was a little above the average for the qualifications required for the job. “Of course, in order to ensure that we keep the best people, we provide full training for the job as well as the next one up on the ladder, so that you can progress as quickly as your capabilities permit, and we’ll offer a participation in the shareholding of the company to people who have been with us for at least three years, and have proven their ability to perform in the jobs they hold by scoring above average on their annual performance appraisal. You can pay for your shareholding, if it’s offered, by deducting 1% of your salary for the purpose, until the agreed cost is paid. The likelihood is that the shares will earn you at least an additional fifty per cent of your salary once they’ve been paid. We don’t believe that anyone is entitled to demand a handout purely on the basis of their race, so your future will depend on you. Are you interested in the job?”

The applicant sat back in the chair and considered what he had been told. He needed the job, because the economy had been declining steadily since before he had commenced his studies, stifled by the economic policies imposed on the country by a Marxist-Leninist Government which appeared to have little understanding of proven economic theory, and he doubted that any of the many promises and job-creation initiatives by the Government would work any better in the future than they had done in the past twenty-three years.

Please respond to this situation as though you were the applicant by ticking one of the boxes below:

 

“Yes, please. I would like the job. I have always wanted to earn what I am worth, and I resent being treated as someone who needs special treatment. I believe that would degrade me personally as well as the knowledge I have worked so hard to obtain. You can count on me as a future shareholder.

 

No, thank you. I know that I do not have the skills, knowledge and capabilities of a White person, and I am not prepared to undertake any form of employment that does not recognise that my parents’ suffering under Apartheid entitles me to be paid for performing at a lower level than a White person with the same level of education. I believe that I am inferior, and I demand special rights to compensate for that.

Please amplify your choice in not more than 1 000 words below.”

*~*

No, this did not happen, but it is a situation that comes up many times each day in South Africa.

The Government places much emphasis on the creation of special entitlements for Black persons, and on the creation of ‘Black entrepreneurs’, apparently believing that a job created by a Black entrepreneur has more value than that created by a White. It does not seem to understand that an employer seeking a new employee will take whichever candidate meets its requirements in terms of education, experience and skills, which implies that the major responsibility of the Government is the provision of an education and training that will ensure that all of the people in the system gain the qualifications to hold they jobs they aspire to. In none of the companies assisted by the Management Consultancy of which I am part was race ever a criterion, except where the employer was forced to accommodate a lower level of capability in order to meet the requirements of the Government’s BBEEE laws, and, in most cases, that resulted in a form of restructuring to ensure that the candidate it was forced to take was supported by other employees with more skill and experience. The Government fails to understand, or perhaps does not wish to understand, that the world of business is focused on profit and effectiveness in a world where both of these are becoming more critical each month. They want to employ people who will enable them to achieve these goals, and do not even notice the race of the person doing the job.

As in so many aspects of Government’s actions, it appears that the insistence on employers choosing the correct racial mix is doing much more to drag down the ability of companies to do the work needed for the economy, than it is doing to advance the interests of the Black population. The declining performance of the economy is stark evidence of that. In the interests of advancing its prospects to be re-elected, the ANC is creating racial division and strife, totally ignoring the fact that the Government is the Government of ALL the people of the country. One must ask why it is good to destroy the ability of White-owned and –managed businesses to succeed and to continue to offer jobs to all races, while providing huge incentives to Black-owned (and probably White-managed) businesses to replace them, (probably at a lower level of effectiveness for many years) introducing a large cost burden on Government and continuity-risk burden on employees (in acknowledgement of the universal fact that the highest fatality rate for business is experienced in the first three to seven year period).

How would you respond to the questions above, if you were in the position of the young Black job-seeker? Do you qualify as a racist, or as an efficient player in the economy?

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.

Patriotism and Realism

Some people are recognizing that the social fabric of the country is crumbling, torn apart by the divisive comments of the State President and the racist statements of members of the ANC and the EFF, all of whom appear to believe in the Apartheid policy of ‘divide and rule’.  Any effort made by thinking people to correct the course of the country is met with a howl of disdain and the accusation that the speaker is racist and anti-revolutionary.  The policies of the ANC Government are increasingly Marxist-Leninist, and the implementation of those policies even more so.  Man of the heads of the State-Owned Enterprises are pursuing their own extremist line of gaining revenge on the Whites, showing a total lack of understanding of the principles and operation of economics, and bringing about huge inefficiencies in those enterprises and in the wider economy.  In the midst of all of this, and at a time of economic crisis in the country while we head into a Local Government election, with all of the extremist propaganda by the Parties and unrealistic promises that either must be kept, at the risk of popular revolts and riots demanding delivery on such promises, or perverted in subtle ways to give the impression that the promises have been met, while retaining some level of affordability, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make the quiet voice of reason heard.  It is perhaps time to consider some real truths.

The Whites are not the enemy of South Africa.  White-owned businesses have grown, as have Black-owned businesses, as a result of hard work, intelligent decision-making and taking of considerable risks, often in the face of attempt by the Trade Unions and Government to ‘redistribute’ the funds they have generated and used to grow or to attract investment by foreigners who have only a reasonable profit in mind.  Foreign investors feel no obligation to support BEE objectives or to do uneconomic things in order to support the growth of Africa.  Their only objective is the recovery of a profit that is at least reasonable, and to do that with a risk exposure that is commensurate with the level of the profit.  If there is antipathy towards the South African Government or the ANC, it is the direct result of those policies and actions that have demonstrated that the South African Government views businesses, particularly White or foreign-owned businesses as a legitimate target.  In many cases, the Government has demonstrated clearly that the best way for such businesses to avoid becoming targets is to pay a bribe, sometimes cash under the table (if there is doubt about this, the author has documented at least five cases of this!) or in more subtle ways, such as handing over a large share of the business (and investment) to persons nominated by the Government, by appointing connected persons to lucrative positions in the company’s Board without them undergoing any evaluation of their capability to do the job required to earn the big pay packet and benefits, or taking in a partner into the business merely to win the contract (e.g. SAA and Eskom suppliers, Shell SA, Mitsubishi).  It may come as a surprise to the Government and the ANC that many of the foreign-owned businesses which would like to do business with South Africa are subject to stringent laws prohibiting such bribery, on risk of very large fines or imprisonment, and any attempt to extort such bribes, however they may be formulated, acts as a powerful deterrent to such foreign companies from doing business in or with South Africa.  Whites, although most of them were fiercely patriotic under Nelson Mandela, have learned that they are the pariahs of the South African economy.  Many of them have got the message clearly (including such stalwarts of South African business as Old Mutual, SA Breweries, Gencor and Anglo American) and moved abroad, where they can develop a business that has only a small part still subject to the whims and machinations of the South African Government and the ANC.  That move continues and will continue for as long as Whites perceive that they are the whipping boys of the politicians, not only of businesses, but of the White business community that is the driving force of the South African economy and the possessors of the largest part of the skills and experience available in the country.  When the move away from the country takes place, it will almost certainly take also the Blacks, Indians and Colored who have earned their way in those companies.  For as long as these conditions persist, the South African economy will continue to slide, the slope of the downward curve increasing as the resources of skills and experience diminish.

Whites are as good as Blacks, and vice versa.  This inalienable truth is well-accepted in the White community, with one important proviso.  The majority of White business persons have undergone a good education, they have gained their skills over many years of working in the companies they now manage, and they come from a background that is conducive to them understanding the requirements of business.  Many, if not most, of the Blacks who have been forced into senior positions in business and Government do not have these.  The Black culture has been very socialistic in character, which limits their ability to understand the basic principles of economics.  Examples of this abound, from Jacob Zuma’s amazingly stupid demonstration of his incapability to understand how the world works when he bemoaned the fact that the price of petrol or bread is set by the ‘capitalists’ without any discussion, by Julius Malema in his demand for ‘expropriation without compensation’ to ensure that ‘Blacks regain their land’ and gain control of all mines and banks, by Cosatu when their spokesman when he stated that ‘wage-earners run a far greater risk than the owners of business’, and by dozens of others.  Even Thabo Mbeki’s assertion that ‘AIDS is a syndrome, and you can’t get a disease from a syndrome’, a statement that was the forerunner of South Africa losing at least three hundred thousand citizens to AIDS and becoming the AIDS capital of the world, can be classified in this category, of an inadequate and untutored understanding of the real world.  The question of culture can be addressed easily, and it will not be a matter of the White culture being imposed on the Blacks.  It will be a matter of Blacks coming to understand the essential truths that dictate how this world works, as the Whites were forced to do over the centuries.  An important element of this is that the problem be addressed honestly, and acceptable solutions found to correct the situation.  The question of a good education has been discussed many times, always without resolution, mainly because the ANC has a position on it that the Party bosses want to impose on the people, without reference to the real requirements of a modern economy.  Thabo Mbeki stated, early in his rule, that South Africans should be providers of services, and he dictated that the education system should be designed to ensure that there are no intellectual elites.  This policy, along with the disastrous sacking of tens of thousands of qualified and experienced teachers and Head Masters, to be replaced by ANC members who would be more inclined to toe the Party line and to revise the history of the country, has created an education system that is totally unable to provide an education that would rank above the lowest five in the world, and that will continue to churn out hundreds of thousands of students with an inferior education that will not permit them to join the ranks of the competent business people that the country so desperately needs.  The truth of this is clearly shown by the fact that practically none of the children of Black politicians or the Black business or Government elite attend Government schools.

An advantage held by Whites is that they have undergone on-the-job training, building on their inherent capabilities, their cultural advantages and their good education to ensure that they become capable to manage large organizations.  There can be no doubt about this requirement:  time is required to learn and hone the skills required in management.  The Government has done a huge disservice to the Black population and to the country by leading them to believe that experience is not required.  The disastrous state of all State-Owned Entities and most Government entities is stark proof of the fact that the fact of Party allegiance is not sufficient to be effective in a management position.  The people who have been placed in those positions have been set up to fail, and their failure has brought not only the failure of the organizations they manage but also the faith of Whites and foreigners in the country.  The continuation of the BEE policies, even in a mutated form, will guarantee the continuing collapse of the country.  It would have been far more effective for the ANC to have understood the realities of the situation and built on the goodwill of the Whites, who would have been delighted to help their countrymen to realize their potential.

In summary, it is true that Whites are realistic.  Most of them are also patriotic, at least to the ideals that Nelson Mandela held out.  Unfortunately, the ANC under Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have shown convincingly that there is no place in South Africa for them, however much they would have wished it otherwise.  That view is not unpatriotic:  It is a realistic acceptance of the truth.  If the Government wishes to save South Africa from the inevitable results of the path it is now on, it must find a way to harness the skills, experience and goodwill of all members of the country, Black, White and others.

The World’s Investors are all Over-Reacting

After the ANC January 8 electioneering and repetitive explanation speech, President Jacob Zuma, went to pains to explain how the thousands of investment bodies that have committed funds to South Africa over the years have over-reacted to his multiple sacking and replacement of the Minister of Finance, leading to them bringing about the crash of South African securities and of the Rand.  He could not understand how his capricious and dictatorial behaviour, still without a credible explanation, could possibly have a bearing on the view by those bodies of the stability of South Africa, explaining multiple times that the Minister of Finance is supported by a trained and experienced staff, implying that the appointment of a total newcomer to the portfolio, a man who has demonstrated his unpopularity by being forced out of office as Mayor of a failing municipality and having his home burnt down by an angry mob, had no bearing on the decisions that will be made by that person in his new office.  His surprise at the world reaction to his actions was a little spoiled by two announcements made during the interim.  The first was the announcement that the Cabinet had approved the proposal to investigate the intention to waste a huge amount – R1.5 billion and rising – on the unaffordable construction of a fleet of nuclear power stations.  This was to be expected from the Zuma-compliant bunch of lackeys in the Cabinet.  After all, they will be the biggest beneficiaries of the finder’s fee that is rumoured to have been negotiated with the Russians, as has, no doubt, been done in numerous other large foreign contracts, starting with the Arms Deal in 1997, which reportedly attracted commissions of about $386 000 000, and will perhaps form the basis of a good end-of-term pay-out for this failed and discredited President (unless, of course, he uses it to support a coup d’état to make the end of term some distant event, as is ever more frequently being rumoured to be Zuma’s intention when his ten years maximum term expires).  This is Africa, after all, and we use African solutions for African problems.

Zuma’s perplexity at the workings of the world financial system was enhanced by Ramaphosa’s explanation to the ill-informed voters that the crash of the Rand is a worldwide phenomenon, that we are all in a market that is subject to a downturn, and our suffering is shared with all other developing markets.  What he failed to mention is that the rest of Africa, with the exception of the leading light for the ANC, Zimbabwe, has grown at a rate a multiple of our own declining GDP growth, that we have repeatedly failed to benefit from opportunities that have been grasped by other developing, and particularly African, economies, and that, in addition to the President’s foot in mouth disease, the ANC Government has developed a remarkable ability to shoot itself in the foot with everything it does. 

The ultimatum to which President Obama was forced, to comply with the US demands by the end of 2015 was missed by the Departments of Agriculture and Trade and Industry, and the triumphant statement by the Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, that we had clinched a ten-day overdue deal with the United States to allow us to enjoy the benefits of the AGOA Act was promptly negated by a further statement by President Obama (a Black President, in case racists start complaining that the United States is acting in a racist way towards South Africa) notified the world that the facility of AGOA will be available to South Africa only if US goods are actually on South African store shelves by March 15, 2016.  Obama has almost certainly lost patience with the prevarication and delays so frequently displayed by the South African Government!  That is not surprising – many South Africans feel the same way.

Ramaphosa’s explanation that the ANC Government has nothing to do with the crash of the Rand was complemented by a TV interview with Mr Kingsley Makhubele, an executive of Brand SA, that the justice system works in South Africa, which is, supposedly, good news for tourists and investors, who should flock to the country in droves, appreciating the good and honest governance of the country.  He gave as an example the case of Oscar Pistorius, completely overlooking the fact that a Judge of the High Court failed to understand the application of a basic principle of law, that a person who intentionally acts in a particular way should be considered responsible for the foreseeable consequences of that act, and so sentenced him to five years for culpable homicide instead of fifteen years for murder.  That is a principle that first-year Law students were required to know (.e. in the past – one cannot be sure of the situation now, given the abjectly poor standard of education in the universities).  He also failed to mention the case of Annie Diwani, who was shot and killed in Cape Town by a contract murderer for the paltry sum of R10 000 – presently less than $600!).  Her husband, accused of masterminding the crime, was brought to trial in Cape Town after years of legal wrangling in the British Courts about his extradition, at a cost running into millions of dollars (his return was in a chartered aircraft, and he was placed in a mental institution for about two months at State expense before coming to trial), and acquitted when the Court found insufficient evidence to convict him of the charge of murder, notwithstanding that the two men found guilty of the actual deed made statements implicating him!  One would be forgiven for wondering who was paid off to present such an amazingly poor case in the glare of the world interest focussed on the case!  He failed to mention the case of the German tourist who was stabbed on the Durban beachfront some years ago.  His wife appealed to the crowd to call an ambulance, to be told by a Black man “Let the White pig die!”  (Durban is the site of the 2022 Olympics.)  The moral of the story is twofold: first, do not take at face value what any President, Deputy President, Minister, politician or State employee tells you about South Africa; and second, if you plan on coming to South Africa on honeymoon, vacation or investment negotiation, hire several (foreign) bodyguards to ensure your safety.

In conclusion, immediately after Jacob Zuma spouted his pathetic plea for improved understanding of the South African situation, the currency tanked again, dropping to R17.99 to the dollar – when the ANC came to power 21 years ago, it stood at R4.30 to the dollar!

Given these lessons in practical economics, tourists and investors would be well-advised to cross South Africa off their list of destinations, at least until the voters understand that the only recovery possibility for the country lies in sweeping the ANC incompetents and kleptocrats from power.  They will join the ranks of thousands of others who believed that the Rainbow Nation of Nelson Mandela still exists, until they learned the hard way.

Pravin Gordhan is to Compensate for Zuma's Blunder

After making a monumental error in firing Nhlanhla Nene as Finance Minister, bringing about a crash of the Rand against all other currencies and a collapse of world business confidence in South Africa, Jacob Zuma has now fired the unknown he put into the top ministerial position in his government and reinstalled Pravin Gordhan.  No doubt he is hoping that Gordhan will restore South Africa to the luster it once held in the eyes of the investment world.

There is some hope that this may work, to a small extent, but it is clear that huge and long-lasting damage has been done.  The world has now had solid evidence that South Africa is run at the whim of a capricious and solely self-interested man.  The only reason for the change back to what might be perceived as competent leadership of the Finance portfolio can be that Zuma was facing a revolt from his multitudinous Cabinet Ministers, all of whom, no doubt, understand that the huge salaries and perks they enjoy were finally on the line.  Zuma’s arrogance in making the announcement of Nene’s firing, and the subsequent comments by Minister Radebe that ‘the President is entitled in his discretion to appoint and replace Ministers’ must have long-term consequences throughout the international investment community, and his hasty back-stepping is almost as weak as his original decision.  Gordhan must have been involved in the discussions (if indeed there have been discussions) regarding the acquisition of the new Presidential aircraft and regarding the ongoing support of the Board of SAA in the face of the continued illegality of the racialist and economically retrogressive policies it is pursuing.  Gordhan was at the helm at the time that Zuma was bleeding the poor of the country dry to fund the monument to his ego that is Nkandla, as well as during the build-up to the undoubtedly corrupt Russian nuclear deal.  He held the portfolio at the time that Eskom was building down to the near-collapse of the electricity supply of the country.  He was instrumental in providing continuing funding to the frequently-insolvent SAA.  He was the head of the South African Revenue Services at a time that it was involved in corrupt and illegal activities.  It would be folly to assume that Gordhan will suddenly see the light and reform his ways to become the sort of honest politician that South Africa deserves.  It is much more likely that Zuma has grasped at the Gordhan straw for two reasons:  Gordhan has gained a reputation for his ability to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the diminishing taxpayer base, and he has some reputation at least for being one of the best of a series of incompetent Ministers of Finance. 

Unfortunately, the ability to squeeze tax out of the public is one of the least desirable qualities needed in the South African Government, particularly at a time of galloping collapse of the economy.  Remember the smirk on Gordhan’s face when he announced that the Budget had, for the first time, exceeded one trillion Rand?  It did not seem to occur to him that the removal of that huge sum of money from economic use, to be applied to buying the votes of the bloated and ineffective Civil Service and undertaking projects that would most easily bleed off funds to the ANC and the Party favorites, would hasten the economic decline that the ANC seems to have been determined to achieve.  Gordhan’s return to the post seems to be a warning to taxpayers that the squeeze will be tightened dramatically, if the questionable solvency of the country is to be retained, at least in the short term, until the miracle occurs that the ANC hopes will pull it back from the brink.  It seems also to be a warning, if such is still needed, to all businesspersons that the downward spiral of the country will continue, increasing in steepness year by year.  The move toward China and Russia will continue, at the cost of worsening relations with the West, from where most of the country’s foreign funding flows (for the present – the future in that regard seems bleak).  The move to favor Blacks in every way, regardless of their ability to contribute effectively to the economy, will continue, regardless of the very clear injunction in the Constitution to treat every South African equally, regardless of race.

The recent days have demonstrated very clearly that Jacob Zuma, and by implication, the ANC, are prepared to sacrifice South Africa, all South Africans, to feather their own nests.  They are willing to pursue their lunatic and discredited economic and social policies, regardless of their patently negative effects.  One can only hope that the investors who, in the past have been willing to overlook the many failings of the country in the interests of gaining an extra 1% on their money, perhaps influenced by the lingering view that the South Africa that Nelson Mandela aspired to still exists, will now see that the country is managed by a kleptocracy.  If those investors wish to support the dream of Mandela, they must understand that their best hope is to withhold investment in the country until economic sanity once again prevails.

 

Whites and Foreigners in South Africa

The recent escalation in attacks on foreigner-owned businesses in many cities in South Africa are a predictable result of several factors, all of them promoted by the ANC and its allies.

The first factor, of course, is the extreme poverty of many people, particularly Black people, which results from the abjectly poor economic policies of the ANC Government, coupled with what seems, more and more, to be a policy to downgrade the mental capabilities of the electorate by providing one of the worst educations in the world.  A very large proportion of the populace is not equipped to participate in a modern economy, even with the forced advantages that the BBEEE policies provide them.  The ANC Government has intentionally removed many of the structures of education and training built up by successive Governments to keep the capabilities of the populace, or, at least, a part of the populace at a level near to that of Europe and the United States.  The Nurse Training College, the trade skills training centres, Medunsa, and many other places and systems of training have been dismantled and are now needing to be built up again, under management that has been shown repeatedly to be lacking in capabilities, skills and experience.  The people whose skills could have been brought to an employment-capable level have been left to fend for themselves, and the economy has gone into a nose-dive as a result, with skilled contractors being imported by virtually every organisation, such as Eskom, at huge cost and at huge dislocation, and, as is clearly evident, under the management of people who are more interested in driving expensive company cars and filling their Swiss bank accounts for as long as they hold the position, rather than promoting the objectives of the organisation or the community.

The second factor is that the Government and its organs have been directly involved in promoting discord between the Blacks and the Whites, as is evidenced by the recent spate of anti-colonialist statue removal demonstrations.  It can be no simple coincidence that these demands arose at about the time of the State Visit of that prime example of the Black destruction of democracy, Robert Mugabe, who spoke of digging up the remains of Cecil Rhodes, while his protégé, Jacob Zuma, sniggered his enjoyment in the background.  It seems to be clear that the present policy of the Government is to stir up hatred between the Black population and the Whites, as is evidenced by a series of television shorts and programs aired by the SABC ‘documenting’ the atrocities committed by Whites throughout Africa, such as the killing of the Hereros in South West Africa in 1908 (!) and the ‘anti-racism’ advertisement, aired several times per day, listing ‘Whites Only’ signs from Apartheid days, with a brief comment at the end of this inflammatory advertisement hat Nelson Mandela said that to hate is learned, and to love can also be learned.  Remarkably, nothing is said of the thousands of Whites who stood against Apartheid at the risk of imprisonment, or of the fact that the National Party was limited to less than a two-thirds majority at every election by White voters.  It is clear that a large proportion of Whites were against Apartheid from the inception.  Even Jan Smuts, a South African Prime Minister and one of the founders of the United Nations, is on record as having warned the National Party in 1948 that their racial policies would be a move that they would regret in years to come.  However, those facts have all been ignored in the rewriting of history to favour the ‘freedom movements’, and the truth has been perverted, just as Robert Mugabe now arrogantly claims that the British and the Whites were responsible for the slaughter of 45 000 members of the opposition tribe, their bodies being dumped down the shafts of mines, when it is a documented fact that those mines were in full operation until more than a year after Mugabe came to power.

The third factor is that one of the organs of Government, the King of the Zulus, made a public statement that foreigners were taking the jobs of locals, urging those foreigners to return to their countries of origin.  The fact that the Leader of the Zulu nation made this statement is noteworthy, particularly against a background of statements by Zuma and his cadres that the ‘problems of South Africa started when Jan Riebeeck came to the Cape’, clearly a statement that the Whites are foreigners, whereas the Black nations are not.  That ignores the fact that the Blacks are just as much immigrants as the Whites, having migrated from the north via an eastern route, to massacre the then-indigenous races of the area.  The statement also ignores the massive advances that the Whites and other ‘foreigners’ brought to the country.  Shaka Zulu, the national hero of the Zulu nation, was a murderous despot living in a Stone Age society when the Whites arrived in the area, yet he is glorified, ignoring totally the thousands of deaths of Zulus at his command.  History has been rewritten, and the credulous population, without the education to allow them to know better, is being exhorted to act against those who are not one of them, regardless of what they have to offer.  South Africa is going down the same road as Uganda did under Idi Amin.  If you have any doubt about that, ask one of the Indians who, as part of the mainstay of the Ugandan economy, were massacred, the survivors being driven from the country at the behest of a lunatic dictator.  Those Indians took their skills and work ethic to other countries, depriving Uganda of them, just as the Whites and other non-Blacks have been, and are being, driven from South Africa.  The economic and developmental results are clear to see in Uganda, as in South Africa.

The lack of public order, taking its example from the leaders of the ANC, who see that it is easier to take than to earn, is a major factor in the current attacks on foreigners.  This lack of effective policing is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the TV cameras arrive at each new looting well in advance of the Police, and by the ineffective Police action at each looting.  Is it really the case that a Policeman is slower than a looter carrying three trays of beer?  One could reasonably expect that at least ten or twenty looters would be arrested at each crime scene, yet the Police seem to be unable to do any better than to arrest a foreign shop owner who shot someone in the process of protecting his property and his life!  Of course, given the example of the extremely expensive arrest and extradition of Shrien Diwani and his subsequent acquittal after preparations of several years for the trial, it is perhaps understandable that the Police are reluctant to take action to arrest and bring to trial a simple looter and arsonist, particularly, probably, when he is doing no more than to give effect to the exhortations of his King.

Certain ANC-biased commentators claim that the attacks are a means for the starving poor to obtain food.  It is remarkable that the film clips of the attacks on foreigner-owned stores show the looters running off with crates of beer, the Police stealing packs of toilet paper!  One of the foreigners asked the obvious question.  ‘If they are stealing to feed themselves, why don’t they break into local-owned stores?  Why are foreigners being targeted?’  It is clear from the fact that the looting is taking place countrywide that the actions are being centrally controlled.  Is it a policy of the ANC, in contradiction to the statement of Thabo Mbeki that ‘South Africa belongs to the Africans’, (a statement that implicitly excluded the Whites), now to remove the non-South Africans, perhaps also excluding the Whites from the permitted group?  It certainly seems to the observers that this is the case.

The dissolution of the rule of law, upheld by well-trained and effective Policing, to the current state of mob rule, of hints given to the racist extremists by the President, of wishy-washy attempts by Government bodies to regain control of the country from the mobs, supported by statements by the President that show his unwillingness or inability to lead a law-abiding country, is an extremely worrying development.  The continuing slide of the country’s economy and the demolition of the excellence that had been built over decades is likely to continue, notwithstanding the statement by Zuma regarding Eskom that ‘We have plans’.  The public is entitled to know what the plans are, if, in fact, such plans do actually exist.  They are entitled to have a full elucidation of such plans in a public forum, such as Parliament, rather than the sniggering statement of omnipotence that Zuma made during his State of the Nation address.  If the Government does not have realistic and effective plans, ones that can stand up to public scrutiny and comment, that is a cause for huge concern.  If the Government does actually have plans, but is unwilling to make them public, that is cause for even greater concern.  Unfortunately, a rational analysis of public statements, evaluated in the light of events, makes one believe that the Government does have plans which have the objective of taking total control of the country, in the way that Stalin did in Russia, but which have no more than political and self-enrichment objectives, and which ignore the plight of the citizens of the country.  It seems more than likely that South Africa will continue to follow the lead of Zimbabwe.

Black Industrial Empowerment

President Zuma has espoused a new project.  He is pushing to invest huge amounts of money to support the move of Black people into the ownership of industries, in a bid to ensure that White will not continue to dominate the ownership of industry.  The objective of supporting Black ownership of industry is good, but Zuma admitted, in a sideways manner, that the plan to support Blacks alone is racist.  He denies that the plan has racist objectives, but, as we have seen, when Zuma denies something, with many small coughs and pushing of his spectacles, the denial is a simple prevarication. 

The simple fact of business is that experience gathered over many years of exposure to the real world is an essential element in the building of a competent businessman or woman.  The experience builds on a good education and a good understanding of how the world works.  Experience can only be gained over time.  It cannot be legislated into existence, and it cannot be replaced by State support, or even by mentoring, which, in any event, can only be based on that same experience.

The urgent problem faced by South Africa is the lack of sustainable jobs.  That problem has been caused by Government in many ways.  The high level of regulation, and the time consumption in complying with the regulations added to the multiplicity of fees is a strong dampener on the creation of jobs.  The duplicity of SARS in its dealings, using its draconian powers, in many cases illicitly to support the objectives of the ANC, including the promotion of the personal wealth of ANC members, has driven many industrialists from the shores, and prevented many potential investors from coming to South Africa.  The imposition of unrealistic and expensive Black Empowerment rules has increased the cost of doing business to the extent that many investors, including numerous companies which were South African icons, to establish themselves abroad.  The rampant corruption has been a major factor in reducing employment opportunities, as well as in increasing the costs of doing business in South Africa.  And, to top it all, the insistence of Government that cadres be handed directorships and senior management positions in all major corporations and bodies has ensured that the management of those bodies remains mediocre or even catastrophic.

Is this racism?  No, it is realism.  One need only look at the bodies managed or supervised by ANC nominees to see how abjectly poor even the best (in ANC terms) cadres are.  Eskom is a continuing disaster, after having been a star performer in its field at a world level under White (for ‘White’, read ‘experienced’) management, SARS used to be a competent and honest organisation and is now an instrument to assist ANC cadres to acquire huge wealth, the SABC has been directed and managed by liars, the NPA is engaged in infighting while its incompetence to conduct an effective prosecution was highlighted to the world in the Diwani case, the SAPS has demonstrated a total lack of competence in controlling and prosecuting crime, the Department of Public Works has admitted to having wasted R38 billion, the Department of Defence wasted over R600 billion on arms that were not required and are now no longer capable of use, SANRAL has lost the fight to maintain the roads, allowing them to degrade to the point where they will have to be rebuilt while concentrating instead on the conversion of public roads to toll roads, and refusing to divulge the details of the contracts (leading to apparently well-founded beliefs that the true beneficiaries are ANC-connected cadres), the Department of Education has demonstrated convincingly that it has no capability to provide the sort of education that will equip young people with the knowledge and skills they will need in life, the liquidation of Aurora is a clear statement of the desire of certain Blacks to enrich themselves at the expense of others, in the same way as the liquidation of Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, a venerable company that had existed for over a century, after less than two years of ownership by a Black ‘entrepreneur’.  One does not need to look far to find convincing examples of how bad the performance is of Black people forced into the top levels of management.  The reason is glaringly obvious:  a black skin is not a good replacement for thirty or forty years of experience, gained at the workface, with gains made slowly and carefully over time as they build on a good education.  This does not mean that Blacks are not capable.  Examples abound of Black people performing adequately or well once they have accumulated the experience required to do the job.  To accumulate that experience, the easiest way is to work in a formal organisation with the required competence, to learn how to do the job, what to watch out for, how to apply intelligence to understand the challenges and to develop ways to overcome them.  The fact is that in South Africa the knowledge and experience resides in the hands of Whites, and the efforts of Government have been directed at displacing those Whites, rather than using what they have to offer in order to support the development of skills and abilities throughout the population.  Those efforts have succeeded to a large extent, with most competent Whites in Government organisations being removed, often with large retrenchment packages in order to make way for the Blacks who do not have any of that experience.  The Government has spurned the willingness of the Whites to help make the country succeed, preferring instead to hand the lucrative jobs to incompetent and inexperienced Black, on purely racist grounds. 

The result is clear to see.  South Africa has slipped from being the leader of industry in Africa to become one of the worst-performing economies on the continent.  It has slipped from being the light of democracy under Mandela to being an Apartheid nation once again, one that is bent on implementing communism, in the face of all the evidence that that system of government has, as its main objective, the exploitation of the people for the benefit of the rulers.

The downgrading of the Eskom bonds on the international financial markets is just the first sign of the world’s judgement of the incompetence of the Black management of the country’s institutions and bodies.  Further downgrading will come, inevitably, pushing the country further down the slope of collapse that the ANC has chosen, rather than the enlightened path that recognises that the development of a non-racial development-oriented society requires the skills and experience of the Whites to help the best of the population, Blacks and Whites, to achieve their potential. 

A job is a job, whether the employer is Black or White.  A Dollar of foreign exchange has the same value, whether it is earned by a Black or a White.  And the way to achieve those jobs and earn those dollars is to encourage the development of industries, not of Black-owned industries, not to intensify the job-destroying, economy-devastating racist policies that have become the foundation of Jacob Zuma’s desperate campaign to cling to power.

  

South Africa in Crisis

 

The state of South Africa has deteriorated substantially in 2014/5.  The riots, road blocks and vehicle stonings in support of demands for delivery of promised municipal services have spread to running street battles between the Police and illegal squatters who have been evicted from the factory buildings in Jeppestown, a suburb only a short distance from the centre of Johannesburg, with the scenes in the city reminiscent of Homs.  Xenophobic violence has erupted again, with foreign shop owners being beaten up and their shops looted then set alight.  Villagers in a mining area have taken vigilante action, capturing several suspects they accused of committing murders which the Police have been unable to solve, or perhaps had no interest in solving.  The prisoners were tied up, tyres placed over their heads and petrol poured over them.  When ‘confessions’ had been extracted under the duress of savage beatings, the prisoners were set alight and immolated in a manner consistent with the necklacings exhorted by Winnie Mandela.  The Police arrived too late to prevent these executions.  A multimillion Rand Waste Management scheme in Johannesburg has failed to operate as planned (surprisingly?), leaving the streets of the economic capital of the country deep in reeking garbage.  The State President, his multitudinous Ministers and members of the Black ‘Royalty’ of the country are accorded special treatment by the Speaker of the House of Parliament, in flagrant disregard of the Constitution and the Rules of Parliament, and armed Police are called into Parliament to eject all members of the Economic Freedom Fighters Party, while Democratic Party spectators of the pomp surrounding the President’s State of the Nation Address were arrested, driven around for several hours before being released without charge.  The Deputy President ‘informs’ Parliament that the Government has ‘plans’ to correct the mobile disaster that is Eskom, without divulging any details of those plans, leading informed observers to conclude that there are no plans, even though four of the top officials of Eskom are summarily suspended from their positions without explanation, other than that it was necessary to facilitate an investigation of the problems of the corporation.

Any scanning of the headlines over the past weeks can lead only to the conclusion that the country is in a crisis that is deepening by the week, a crisis that the ANC has caused by their incompetent and corrupt management of the economy, yet one which they refuse to acknowledge.

A discussion with a large group of informed businessmen over the weekend elicited the view that the destruction of the economy that is presently taking place, and that will continue to take place, is likely to be so severe during the remaining years of the ANC rule that it will take decades, or possibly even generations, to correct.