In an interview prior to his
planned post-Easter Roadshow to the United States, Minister of Finance Gigaba
stated that he would reaffirm the ANC Government’s commitment to fiscal
prudence, and all the other nice things they have been promising for years, but
consistently failed to deliver. He then went on to explain that the Government
would undertake a drive, spearheaded by him, to use the Government’s annual
spend of R500 billion to promote Black Economic Empowerment, in accordance with
its (new-old) policy, which was designed to deprive White Monopoly Capital of a
part of its lifeblood, in the process assisting the Small and Medium
Enterprises to develop. The theory sounds good, particularly to the voters,
deprived of formal employment by the ANC’s policies over the 23 years it has
been in power, until one starts to examine the facts.
The first thing that should be
taken into account is that the economic strength of South Africa was built by
that Capital, which has now become substantially owned by Black citizens, in
the process creating millions of jobs, which paid over to the citizens a multiple
of the money accruing to the shareholders, and to the fiscus taxes totaling tens
of times the dividends the shareholders received. That strength was built on
the capital, the risk-taking, the management capability and the enterprise of
the shareholders, the lenders and the employees, Black as well as White.
The BBEEE policy provides for an
overcharge of up to 90% of the value of the work done for the Government or
goods supplied to the Government if provided by Black enterprises, who, in any
event, will sub-contract much of the work to qualified Whites and purchase
almost all of the goods supplied from White-owned companies. Apart from the
fact that a substantial part of the surplus cost will flow to corrupt cadres, that
is a huge burden for the Government (read the Taxpayers) to bear, one that no
commercial enterprise could survive, even if it were a financially-strong,
effectively-managed and competitive entity. In the current state it will be
destructive, where the Government is heading towards insolvency, with falling
revenues, debt of over 53% of GDP, increasing loan-carry costs probably biting
off an additional 10% of the revenue stream (even before taking into account
the expected decline in that revenue stream), management at all levels that has
been shown to be hopelessly incompetent and corrupt to a level that is
surprising even in Africa, a rapidly-retreating foreign investment body of
former well-wishers, a new group of Ministers who have, in many cases, already
shown their abysmally poor capability to actually do the job (unless that job
is defined as kowtowing to their corrupt boss), a cadre of Ministers who
consistently refuse to comply with their constitutional obligation to account to
Parliament, and a Parliament, the ultimate oversight body, that has repeatedly
shown that it will support the dishonest President, even at the cost of
breaching their constitutional Oath to represent the citizens of the Republic.
Gigaba confidently states that
the foreign investors will understand that his statement of the plans for ‘inclusive
growth’, even though they specifically exclude the most productive part of the
economy, represent a responsible way of managing the economy. He seems not to
have heard Einstein’s definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and
over and expecting a different result. The present insanity is the same as the
insanity that has systematically brought a vibrant economy to its knees over
the 23 years of ANC misrule. They believe that a policy that states support for
a small part of its voter base will make up for the systematic destruction of
tens of thousands of (previously) sustainable jobs by a corrupt group of ANC
cadres who want to acquire, at practically no cost, viable businesses, and do
so by using the Department of Minerals to cancel the mining licenses of
operating mines that were generating tens of millions of dollars of foreign
exchange each year in the export of processed minerals, by using SARS to impose
bogus tax claims, including penalties, amounting to tens of millions of dollars
on honest companies in order to drive them to the point of accepting nominated
(ANC cadre) shareholders at practically no contribution in cash or in expertise
of any sort (other than the ability to make the tax demands go away. They have
also bled the foreign and local investors dry by failing to provide trains for
transport of export goods as agreed in writing by Spoornet until a huge bribe
had been paid by way of ‘consulting fees’ to ANC hangers-on, by delaying tax
queries until the last day of the six-month response time allowed for decision
on objections by taxpayers against an assessment (using the principle that the
SARS demand be satisfied by payment before an objection could be considered),
and then reimposing the same demand, possibly at a slightly-reduced amount, the
following day, over and over, so dragging out the effective resolution of the
objection for at least several years. They have reinforced this tactic by
appointing the attorney of the taxpayer in question as a ‘collection agent’,
requiring him to pay over to SARS any amount paid to him by the taxpayer, so effectively
depriving the taxpayer of the ability to avail himself of legal advice, by
using the South African Reserve Bank to freeze the taxpayer’s bank accounts, as
well as those of all other companies which shared a director or even an
accounting firm, thereby imposing a form of illegitimate compulsion that goes
well beyond a right to collect any legitimate tax demand, and then, when all of
this fails to achieve the objective, by demanding disclosure of all
documentation held by the taxpayer’s attorney in respect of that taxpayer or
any remotely-possible connected party, totally ignoring the right of the client
to confidentiality in its communications with its legal adviser, and then, when
that fails to beat the taxpayer into submission, to threaten the attorney with
a VAT audit that, in all probability, will suffer from the same level of
illegal conduct that he is protecting his client against.
Gigaba totally ignores the fact
that, under the ANC, business in South Africa has becoming extremely difficult
and expensive, quite apart from the declining economy’s effects on the market,
with dozens of rules and regulations to comply with every month, most of which
have no conceivable use in the management of the company or the economy, nor
that the Government bodies that undertake the controls of every form of
activity are abjectly poor in the performance of their functions. A request to
the Companies Registrar for disclosure of the directorships held by the
requesting party fails to elicit any response. A birth certificate, which was
paid for in advance three years ago, remains outstanding, with the Department
of Home Affairs (the Ministry previously managed(?) by Gigaba and before him by
Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, an aspirant President who managed the Department so
badly that the United Kingdom was forced to impose a visa requirement on South
Africans for the first time ever) promising that they will look into the
matter. An enquiry in writing to the Department of Education that manages the
certification of new SETAs (a registration required before training can be
offered) failed to elicit any response for five months, notwithstanding fortnightly
reminders, leading to the company wishing to offer such training at an advanced
level of professionalism, to refer prospective trainees to a sister organization
established in Germany, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Euros per
year in fee income, as well as the loss of several highly-qualified lecturers.
An offer to provide a subsidized project to establish a minimum of 350 000
sustainable jobs over a period of three years drew an interested response from
the Premier of KwaZulu Natal, whose ‘personal representative’ demanded an
up-front payment of 30% of the total cost of the project (which was to be
subsidized by payment of 60% of the total by a foreign investor), stating that “You
should not be concerned, because the payment includes the Premier and the MEC
for Economic Development”.
The examples set out above have
cost the country in excess of US$254 000 000 investment, an amount
that was already committed, in addition to at least several billion dollars of
investment under consideration. At least 300 Black people lost their jobs as a
result of the dishonesty and corrupt actions of the ANC Government, and many of
those jobs were at junior management level, with plans already in operation to
upgrade their capabilities to a more senior level, and several hundred thousand
prospective jobs were canceled when the investors realized that their main
function in assisting the Rainbow Nation to achieve the aspirations of Nelson
Mandela was simply to be bled dry by the crooks that run the nation.
Mr. Minister, please do not
believe that the foreign investors are stupid, that they have permanent rose-tinted
spectacles when they read your drivel. Please understand that they have seen it
all before, and that your pious protestations, no matter how badly articulated
they might be by you, merely serve to plunge the country deeper into the morass
of disbelief inculcated by your racist, communist President. Your amateurish efforts
to pull the wool over the eyes of the American Division of White Monopoly
Capital, which you court for their money while proclaiming to hate with your
very soul, will be assessed by people who are smart enough to know what the
real truth of South Africa is.
Mr. Gigaba, if you wish to pull
the country out of the hole your Party has dug for it, what you must do is vote
in favor of the Motion of No Confidence against the President, admit to what
you have done wrong, and allow competent and honest politicians, if there are
any left after so many years of your Party demonstrating that the easy way to
wealth is to exploit the sucker citizens, to take over the reins of Government
and start the long and painful process of rooting out the corruption and
incompetence that have become deeply ingrained in every part of the Government
and Civil Service over the past 23 years, so that 52 000 000 people
can say with pride that they are part of the Rainbow Nation.
Stop the lies to foreign
investors, to South Africans and, above all, to yourself.
