Advice to the President of South Africa

South Africa is in a crisis. It has been in a crisis for two decades, with most of the indicators of a healthy economy falling, with the country losing its status as the most advanced and the largest economy on the continent, with a flight of experienced and effective management heading off to more congenial pastures, with the State Owned Entities heading ever more deeply into financial and operational collapse. The government has ignored this, as well it might. The ANC-led government has been responsible for the mismanagement of the economy since it has been in power, using its position to derive corrupt profits and simple corrupt diversion of funds from the State. It has constantly asserted that it plans to stop corruption, a statement in every State of the Nation Address by the President since 2010, but no action has been taken to put meaning to those fine words. The people, the businesspeople and the international investment community have taken note of the empty promises, and are no longer willing to give any credence to such empty words. They want action, and they want it NOW. The same disbelief applies to all of the multitudinous plans announced by the Presidents – all of them- and the government they represent. And the same demand for action NOW is present in the thinking of those businesspeople and investors when they consider what they can do to pull the country out of its multi-faceted crises, and, indeed, whether they wish to.

A small piece of advice has been offered in a book published early this year – “Multiverse” – which analyses the cause of the many problems discernible in the worked through the medium of quasi-science fiction. The book has been read by many leaders of business and politics around the world, and the advice might well be taken to heart by the President of South Africa.

“It is well known that your country has many plans, but that no-one ever does anything to implement them. Part of the reason for that is that the people who should be responsible for implementing them did not really commit themselves to drawing them up, and so have no real reason to do the hard work of implementing them, and the other part of the reason is that those plans were pie in the sky. They represent a wish list, but no fairy godmother has arrived with a magic wand to make them real. You need to call in the best experts in the country, no matter their political affiliation, to make a realistic evaluation of the state of the country, and then to formulate plans that will bring it to where it should be. There must be no reliance on the past as an excuse not to achieve the future. That past has happened, and you can’t manage it now. You have to accept what is and go on from there. There must equally be no reliance on reasons that you certainly know to be little more than political posturing, and equally no commitment to a set of policies and ideologies that no longer have a place in a real-world country. Nothing can be written in stone, and nothing can be off the table. You need to evaluate each element of your plan and take it to a logical conclusion, using only assumptions that can be shown to be valid now.”

I have told you this because I believe that there should be absolute clarity on our stance. Your government in the past has imposed laws and regulations on your people and the companies on the basis that they have the power to do so, without most people having the ability to avoid becoming subject to such unfair laws. I know that the Ministers have blamed the dire economic situation in the country on numerous factors, such as global warming, the China-American trade war, White Monopoly Capital, and other similar reasons. The real truth is simple. Investors avoid the country because they choose not to donate a half of their shareholding to people nominated by the ruling Party. They would rather go to another country where they can rely on the electrical utility not doubling the cost of energy every three years while they allow the lights to go out, simply because the political appointees are robbing the State-Owned Entities blind while they employ twice as many people as are needed. simply to keep the unions sweet. The businesspeople go to other countries and planets because they can, and because they have not received a fair deal here. If you want to create the millions of jobs that you need, you must offer the investors the sort of deal that they will get elsewhere, from any honest government. You, as voters, must insist that the people you elect, comply with the norms and standards that you would want for yourselves. You must punish the Members of Parliament who fail to hold the Executive to account, when it is clear to any thinking, fair person that what they are doing is not right. You must make them believe that they represent you [the voters] in every decision that they make. You have suffered long enough at the hands of evil, greedy men and women. You will have one opportunity, at the next election, to set the path for your country. If you make the right decisions, you will enjoy the full support of the Integra Corporation and many other similar companies throughout seventeen universes. Your country will boom as it never has before. If you make the wrong decisions. you will condemn South Africa to the group of failed States, the countries that are willing to accept the excuses that their politicians offer them, rather than demanding that they perform their duties to the high standard required by their salaries.”

In a discussion of the reasons for the state of the nation, an analysis of the President was made:

“We don’t think that he [the President] is an inherently bad man but sometimes the job is more than he can cope with. His response to such a situation is first to spend a lot of time hesitating and then, when we push him for action, to turn to the people he knows, the people in his Party, who are more than willing to give him the advice that best suits their desires, or simply to defer the matter, to delay making a decision or to pass the responsibility for it to a group of so-called ‘experts’, who are, more often than not, people who have sold him on their supposed capabilities and who are, almost by definition, people he has come to know as a result of their Party connections. Of course, they earn big fees for doing the work, and their interests are best served by inflating the problem far more than is really required. They produce a report at the end of weeks or months, with seven hundred pages of waffle and recommendations that are in line with Party thinking, when what he really needed was a one-page summary of the facts, and another page setting out three or four possible ways to go, each with a ‘why’ and a ‘why not’.”

The book contains many items of wisdom and insight, and should be made required reading by every politician and businessperson, possibly every High School student.

Where are They?

Fermi asked the question, referring to the lack of contact from other, inter-galactic civilizations. He asked “If there are intelligent people out there, where are they? Why have they not made contact with us?”

Of course, the question ignores numerous factors, such as the time it would require to travel to us, if that is what he expected them to do. A spacecraft, traveling at 20% of the speed of light, a speed well in excess of what we, as a supposedly advanced civilization, could hope to achieve with our present state of knowledge, would require more than six hundred years from a star system only 120 light years away, given the time required to accelerate to that speed and then to slow down on arrival. And that would imply that such a civilization would have a valid reason to visit us, a civilization that only managed to start using radio more than 450 years after they would have had to leave home!

Perhaps the answer lies in some simple calculations.

Assume that humans on Earth have been able to send and receive radio messages for about 120 years. That’s not long, considering our 2 000 000 year development as sentient beings, the Earth’s 3 600 000 000 year existence, and the 13 600 000 000 year life of the Universe. Assume that other civilizations have followed more or less the same path. That seems to be not unreasonable.

Now consider that radio waves travel at about the speed of light. That means that a radio message, a flashing light signal or other similar form of communication that was sent by a civilization somewhere in the Universe, let’s say 120 light years from Earth, on the day they first developed radio communication 120 years ago, would reach Earth today. To receive that message, we would have to aim a large radio antenna (large, in order to collect the faint signal sent by an early-stage technology) at exactly that point in the heavens that the transmitter would have occupied, adjusted for their movement and ours (because all celestial objects are in relative motion, at high speeds, so an antenna aimed at a star system we see in the sky today would miss the actual point it now is by many millions of miles if we were to reply immediately) in order to receive the signal. If our aim were even one degree off, there is a high probability that we would not receive the message. And, to top it all, we would have to be ready to receive the message at exactly the time it passed us. One minute too early or too late, and we would miss the signal, because it comes, not as a long beam, but as a single block.

If our radio antenna is able to scan an area of one degree by one degree at a distance of 120 light years, it would have to scan 42 253 such areas! If such a scan requires one day each, to be meaningful at the lowest level, about 365 blocks per year, the scan would require about 190 years! Alternatively, we would need about two hundred antennae continuously working for a full year to receive the signal from our celestial neighbors, to allow us to have a reasonable chance to receive the signal.

Of course, that neighbor might be further than 120 light years away, say 200 light years, in which case we would have to wait another eighty years to receive that message. They might have developed earlier, or more quickly, than we did. If so, two hundred years ago, they might have tried to make contact with us by radio, perhaps for fifty years, and then given up hope that there were other sentient beings out there, and reverted to other methods of communication, such as using the opportunities offered by quantum entanglement. The radio signals would have zipped on by us, leaving us ignorant of our neighbors. On the other hand, their development might have lagged ours, leaving us to wait another hundred years, or a thousand, to hear from them. A thousand years is an insignificant fraction of the period of existence of sentient life on Earth.

It is an enormous arrogance on our part to base our belief that there are no other sentient beings in the Universe entirely on our own example. We are, in effect, demanding that life on another planet developed in the same timescale as it did on ours! The factors that might influence when we receive a radio signal from another civilization are legion – their distance, the date of origin of the other civilizations, their rate of development to create radio signals, our ability and preparedness to receive a radio signal as it zips past our location at the speed of light, even the question of whether they use radio as a means of communication. While looking for such signals is a whole lot better than doing nothing, it is very far short of a valid test for the non-existence of sentient beings out in the Universe. Asking that another civilization should have developed both long-distance spaceflight capability, and then decided to look for intelligent life in our isolated nook of the Universe, at all and long enough ago to have reached us within the tiny portion of our existence when we would have the scientific development and religious permission to receive and understand such a visit is even more preposterous.

On any basis of science and logic, the answer to Fermi’s question, “Where are they?” is “Wait and see.”

Let us Make America Stupid Again

Donald Trump has a wonderful platform to spread a message, no matter how uninformed, how incredible, how amazingly stupid it may be.

During his normally rambling and disconnected monologue to the Party faithful in Tulsa on June 20, he managed to pull off one of his most staggeringly stupid statements, apparently without any response from the audience. He stated, in unequivocal terms, without any possibility of a future claim that ‘he was joking’, that the coronavirus numbers continued to rise, a fact that he attributed to the increased testing of people. His recommendation, which he said he had given the people responsible for this unacceptable state of affairs, was to reduce the amount of testing!

This seems to be a statement of GOP policy, insane as that seems to be. This is borne out by the GOP Senators, who, during the impeachment proceedings, refused to hear evidence, positive or negative, on the conduct of their leader. By remaining ignorant in the face of well-publicized and well-proven facts, they can deny the truth.

Just as the continuation of the abjectly aberrant behavior of the current President places footprints in the history of the country, and of the Republican Party, in the way it has destroyed America’s status in the world and the cohesion of American society, his faulty and absent decisions have resulted in the needless deaths of over a hundred thousand innocent citizens. No amount of mindless ranting at the media for their ‘fake news’ or at the scientists and medical experts who have given advice tat has purposefully and maliciously been ignored by the President and, at his behest, by his administration, can take away the many graves of those who have died as a result of his stupidity, his incompetence and, as many around the world say, his insanity. Those graves will remain, written large in the history of a country that once enjoyed the respect and admiration of most of the world. They will remain as mute testimony to the ability of one man to corrupt the moral values of a venerable political Party, in much the same way as the graves of six million innocent people mark the history of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Party. Neither of those men, nor their political supporters and mindless hangers-on will ever be able to deny their complicity in the deaths of many of their citizens or the destruction of their countries.

If one statement will go down in history as the defining description of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it will be that they managed to MAKE ANERICA STUPID AGAIN.

It is Time to Go Back to Fundamentals

South Africa is in a crisis. It has been in a crisis for several years, with successive administrations chasing their unproven or disproven ideologies, conducting experiments designed to prove that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and structuring the State to facilitate fraud on a large scale. Even before the Coronavid-19 crisis struck, the country was in a parlous state, with unemployment at record levels and increasing steadily, school performance among the worst in the advanced world, the country’s ranking for economic performance among its peers in the developing world at record lows and declining, the finances of the country in the worst state for decades, and no reprieve in sight. The pandemic struck a country that was in the worst possible condition.

In a way, the pandemic, although hugely destructive in many ways, may present South Africa an opportunity to hit the Reset button, and grab at an opportunity to retake the place it held in the civilized world before lunatic policies and governing Party-institutionalised corruption dealt it such devastating blows. Tito Mboweni has recognised the need, stating that the Treasury should develop a Budget based on a zero-base process. He is fully aware that tweaking the existing Budget will not correct the many problems he, and the country, face. This would be an exercise in futility, a repositioning of the deck chairs on the ship of State as it sails at full power into the iceberg.

The first step in correcting any problem situation is to recognise what the real problems are, and where the country would like to be. A roadmap is useless until you know where you are on it, and where you want to go. This should be done in a dispassionate, non-accusatory way, so that the participants in the exercise are not compelled to defend their territory. The process of coming to a statement of where we are now must include theoretical and practical economists, businesspersons from large, medium and small businesses and people who are affected by the conditions, such as housewives, teachers, students and taxpayers, both active and retired. It is vitally important to have a balance of views. Nothing could be more destructive to the process than to have a preponderance of radical views, as is almost always the case when a committee of politicians and political advisors is convened. If you need to be convinced of the truth of this, look at the state of the South African economy! One cannot imagine that the ANC would be so delusional as to believe that it could benefit from the imposition of policies that would be certain to destroy the economy.

Once we know, realistically, where we are, we need to define where we want to go. At this point it will be almost impossible to avoid the political rhetoric and electioneering slogans, but a factual statement of the basics may help to define our desires. We could, for example, say that we desire to reach a state of 3% unemployment within ten years. The question then arises: employment in what? Let us say that we want the economy, in terms of GDP representation, to be 5% mining, 20% agriculture, 30% services and 45% industry. We can then break these desires down in terms of categories, and from these derive the growth needs to reach the targets. These, in turn, will generate the requirements, the absolute necessities, in terms of investment, education and training, infrastructure, labour conditions and so on. It will be a complex exercise, made more so by the need to avoid expressing the desires in terms of political aspirations and existing policies, but the exercise will be a valuable one, highlighting the actual needs, as opposed to what preconceived and often wish-list policies dictate.

When this work is complete, and not before, we can start formulating the wish-list, the configurations of the economy that we would like to have in the desired state, in accordance with the Constitution, and disregarding any other existing policy and legal imperatives and structures. We could, for example, desire an open economy, attractive to foreign investment, with equal opportunity to all its citizens and as much of the work as possible being done by private enterprise. It will be essential at this stage to ignore the past policies, because many people will see these as the only possible way, while others will view them as anathema. This wish-list will then be applied to the desired state and an assessment be made of how feasible it will be to achieve both the desired outcome and the desired form. Revisions and re-evaluations will ensue, until the majority accept that the statement is both comprehensive and realistic in terms of the South African scene and the world economy.

We will now be in a position to formulate plans to achieve the desired state. A combination of the desired shape of the GDP with the gap in number of qualified potential employees will result in an education outcome, and from that we can formulate the plans for a change in the education and training system. Similar changes will result in practically every area of economic activity. This must be done ruthlessly. Changes will bring pain to the participants in the existing structures, but this must be viewed as inevitable if we are to achieve the desired state. Some pain results from every change, but changes are essential if we are to move forward. The pain that we identify can be mitigated by plans to retrain and redeploy those affected. For example, it is clear that the civil service is overstaffed, underqualified and inefficient. When we know the necessary minimum configuration of the civil service, a performance evaluation can be performed to determine who is both capable of doing a meaningful job in their position and is actually doing it at an acceptable level. Those identified as being good in their present jobs will be retained or transferred to a similar job elsewhere, where a need is shown. Those who do not perform adequately can be put on a ‘B List’, while those who perform acceptably but whose jobs are no longer required, will be put on an ‘A List’. The A List can be offered a total retrenchment package, for example, of a value equal to their retrenchment packages plus, say, 12% plus benefits for a year, which can be drawn down as the interest on a loan to be advanced by the government plus a monthly salary, and they can be given leave of absence for three months to put together a business before the arrangement comes into effect. They will be supported in their efforts by a team of qualified experts in their chosen field and provided with retraining they may need. In this way, they will be given an opportunity to establish a business that, for example, is able to tender for the activities that they previously undertook as employees, or any other business. Of course, any attempt at illegally influencing the granting of tenders would disqualify them from the scheme. In this way, a large number of small businesses will be able to be established. Those on the B List will simply be retrenched on the normal terms, although they could be introduced to the business establishment support teams, or to retraining programs.

The restructure of the economy will require considerable changes to existing laws, probably including the BEE laws, the labour laws restricting the employment of workers, the generalization of Union settlements to non-participating employers and the setting of minimum wages, the laws entrenching tribal kings and chiefs in a position of almost unfettered power over their ‘subjects’ at high cost to the fiscus and the economy, the laws establishing numerous inefficient and economically non-productive bodies, and many others, as well as the passing of new laws to ensure that the civil service does its designated work honestly, efficiently and at lowest cost. Included in the latter could be laws that increase the penalties for dishonesty by 50% in the case of a person in a position of trust, such as a Mayor taking a bribe to allocate a contract illegally, or a bank director defrauding the depositors. This would underline the need for adherence to the doctrine of trust, particularly in elected officials. Other similar laws would penalise attorneys who persist in defending unfairly any person known to them to have committed the criminal act, on the basis that attorneys are officers of the Court, and should be expected to uphold the law, to the extent that they may act only to ensure that the client is given a fair trial. In this context, ‘fair’ should be applied to the client as well as to the prosecutor and the Court.

It is fair to say that a majority of thinking people are dissatisfied with the status quo. This is reflected in condemnation of an unfair, ineffective and unduly slow legal system, by citizens advising foreigners and foreign-based fellow citizens not to return to the country and not to invest in it, in racial bias between groups which previously strived to achieve the miracle that Nelson Mandela stood up for. It is shown by the near-insane call by the EFF to allow White businesses to die, echoed by the ANC Mayor of Ekhureleni, at a time when the country needs every job it can manage, and every cent of tax revenue. It is proven by a de facto real unemployment rate of 50%, when 5% would be considered by any thinking politician as a disaster, by the fact that South Africa has dropped in the ranks of economically-successful nations every year for the past decade, and has not achieved anything near its potential in the past 25 years. The need for a major overhaul of the economy is highlighted by the flight of major mining and industrial companies, such as Anglo American and Gencor, to foreign fields, by the continuing withdrawal of foreign investment capital from what should be the major developing economy in the world, as well as by the dismal financial reports regarding the performance of the economy. South Africa cannot afford to wait the months or years that seem to be normal in ‘urgent’ actions by the government, such as can be seen in the lengthy inactivity in combatting gender-based violence and the prosecution of those whose criminal actions have been extensively documented in reports by investigative journalists and the Zondo Commission.

The time for action is now, before the situation as deteriorated so much further that no rescue plan will achieve a result within less than twenty years. A naïve expectation that the ANC government will take the necessary steps in time to prevent the disaster becoming a catastrophe, an expectation that Cyril Ramaphosa would do that shortly after his accession to power, and then again shortly after his election more than a year ago, has been shown to be an illusion born of hope, not a realistic extrapolation of past conduct, and will inevitably lead to the collapse that seems, in any realistic view, to be imminent.

Is Donald Trump Mentally-Disordered?

 

To accuse a sitting American President of being mentally disordered is a serious matter, to the nation and to the world. To have a man who does not meet the normal description of ‘sane’ in control of the most powerful nation on Earth is frightening indeed.

Donald Trump is in control of a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, as well as military might that has the potential to upend world stability and destroy the fragile peace that has reigned since the end of the Second World War. Yet Donald Trump has taunted two countries, widely suspected to be on the verge of having intercontinental nuclear weapons, also in control of men whose sanity is not above suspicion, threatening annihilation of them, not once in a fit of anger, but several times. On the evidence before the world, there is no good reason to believe that Donald Trump, a man seemingly obsessed with military power and a believer in striking first and hard, will not succumb to his wilder impulses and, rather than simply tweeting his inane thoughts, convert those impulses into destruction, releasing a nuclear holocaust that the world will most likely not recover from for centuries.

Donald Trump has been shown to be a habitual liar, from his statement that he is a ‘self-made man, building a fortune of billions’ (the amount of that fortune has still to be conclusively shown, as is the means by which he built it, with oppression of small suppliers and allegations of money-laundering being rife) from a ‘small’ loan of only one million dollars now being alleged to be a start-up boost of at least twelve million, and probably more, to allegations that the crowd at his inauguration was ‘the biggest in history’ (correctly stated to be amongst the smallest of any President in the last four decades), to his continuing boast that his relations with the Chinese Premier are ‘the best enjoyed by any American President with a Chinese leader ever’ (when it is obvious to see that the Chinese leader holds the American in disdain), to his boast that he had resolved the North Korean problem (when ninety-five per cent of the rapprochement has been achieved by the South Korean leaders, working to defuse the continuing crises that Trump precipitates), to his arrogant demand that the NATO partners ‘pay their cost of the Military build-up’ (when Germany spends considerably more on preventing the development of threats by peaceful, economic means, so avoiding the huge waste of economic resources caused by the purchase of munitions, which would have been far better applied to developing the world economy), to his most recent claim that ‘we have made a lot of money, a lot’ from the imposition of tariffs on imports from China (totally ignoring the fact that the American consumers paid those tariffs, not the Chinese, and that they pay those costs several times over in the form of increased cost of those products when bought from American suppliers, who increase their prices to match the imported price). It is tempting to believe that some of the claims made by Trump result from his ignorance of economics, accounting and common sense, a belief that is possibly as frightening as that the President has lost his marbles, but the overwhelming number of Trump’s outright lies argues against such a charitable view. His tendency to exaggerate, and over-exaggerate, to the extent of total untruth, is shown by the fact that Trump is always prone to the use of superlatives. He cannot see something as ‘bad’ or ‘unacceptable’: it is always ‘the worst ever’. Nothing is ‘good’ or ‘better’: it is always ‘the greatest on record’ or ‘fantastic’.

The stand-off between Trump and Congress in passing Bills to enable the operation of government is another example of Trump’s failure to understand the workings of democracy. The simple argument goes that the majority of Members of Congress are elected to represent the majority of voters. That is what democracy, at the lowest level, means. However, Donald Trump is willing to engineer and permit and sustain a standoff between the majority vote in Congress in order to win his argument that a huge Chinese-Wall style barrier be built on the Mexican border, a wall that, in his election speeches, he assured his gullible voters would be paid for by Mexico, a factor now conveniently ignored, in the form of another lie of significant size. Trump also conveniently ignores the fact that the greatest number of illegal immigration offences by far are caught at the formal border crossings or by apprehension of people who have overstayed their visas. Neither of those causes is capable of being prevented by a $5.6 billion wall. However, Trump is willing to put the lives of eight hundred of American citizens at risk, in order to win a battle with Congress that should never have arisen, and would never have arisen had Trump not viewed his own desires as more important than those of the American voters.

There seems to be little doubt that, if Donald Trump had been the Chairman of a listed company, the shareholders would have been justified in unseating him for the simple reason that he is mentally and morally unsuited to managing the affairs of the corporation. More happened to Elon Musk for less cause. They would not permit the impulsive, often irrational, decisions to be made, often carrying huge risks for the corporation (country) and its environs, without consultation with a range of knowledgeable and qualified persons, nor would they permit the bullying tactics that have alienated so many allies to the extent that the corporation (country) has been abandoned as a reliable partner. How long will it take for the Republican Party to come to the same conclusion, and take action to protect themselves and their country from the continuing depredations of this man?

There can be little doubt that the actions and statements of Donald Trump are not those one would expect from a reasonable man, a test required by the Courts, but are they sufficiently divergent fron those reasonable man actions and statements to constitute a form of mental disorder? The test should certainly be more strict in the case of a man with the inordinate and uncontrolled power of the President of the United States. His incoherent tweets and statements, quite apart from his actions, his wild exaggerations and distortions of the truth, his seeming inability to command the support even of men and women whose beliefs are close to his own and his subsequent vicious turnarounds in his views of those people, would seem to argue at least for a form of mental instability.

To answer the question whether Donald Trump is mentally disordered, the American public, the Republican Party and the representatives of the people and the guardians of their government need to take a serious look at the claims and statements of the President, evaluate them in the light of the facts and the actions of a reasonable man, and ask themselves “Would we put this man in charge of the upbringing of our children”.

Why is a new Referendum on Brexit a Betrayal of Democracy?

Theresa May has repeatedly stated that there will be no referral of the Brexit question to the people. She has stated that a mandate was given two years ago, and it is her duty to perform exactly in accordance with that mandate, even though the ‘facts’ that were known then, or, more realistically, that were stated to the people at that time in the interests of achieving a relaxation of the controls imposed on the British government by the EU, a much larger and, presumably, more democratic democracy, were wildly wrong. The decision was made and we must jump off the cliff into a dark unknown that becomes more frightening with every step we take closer to the edge of the cliff.

Why is May so determined to lead her people to a mass suicide attempt, when it is abundantly clear, or it should be, even to her, that the agreement she has negotiated does not carry the support of her own Party, far less the support of the majority of MPs? Is the Prime Minister so pig-headed that she cannot see that there are alternatives to her agreement or a no-deal Brexit? Is she simply stupid, as the Labour Party leader has said? Is she so committed to remaining in power in the Conservative Party that she is willing to lead her Party to destruction, rather than face the real facts?

One is tempted to compare Mrs. May’s stance with that of Adolph Hitler in the dying days of the Third Reich, when he refused to accept that he had led his country to catastrophe, insisting on fighting to the last man to support an ideology that was abhorrent to the vast mass of Germans. One can only hope that she, or, more likely, some of the more democratically-inclined members of her Party will come to understand that the decision made two years ago to leave the European Union was a decision made on the basis of incomplete information and a world situation that was vastly different to the one that prevails today, and that the decision now needs to be reevaluated by those citizens in the light of the facts and projections by experts available today.

Even the best case scenario of a Brexit with an agreement shows no significant advantages to Britain, and it discloses risks that would make any thinking voter uneasy. It is unlikely that such a best case scenario will be realized, and much more likely that the worst case scenario will be closer to the truth. In this case, the economy of the United Kingdom will fall by around ten per cent, the jobs market for those who voted for Brexit in the first case will collapse, the cost of food, health care, travel and many other elements of the life of the average Briton will be adversely affected, possibly to a greater extent than was caused by the 2008 financial meltdown, and Britain will revert to the status of a struggling island nation, trying to find its place in the world. It is sure that Britain will be isolated in a hostile world, with Russia and China ascendant and the USA in decline under an equally pig-headed and economically illiterate President, with a damaged European Union standing by as it watches the illness develop in its near neighbor. The EU will then be disinclined to assist Britain to any greater extent than it sees necessary to protect its own interests, and it may, probably will, be more inclined to exacerbate Britain’s suffering, even at its own cost, in order to demonstrate the evil effects of such an EU exit attempt by its remaining members. Certain Brexiteers have claimed that the EU cannot afford to have Brexit fail. Of course, what they do not say is that Britain represents only one sixth of the European population, and that the suffering of the average Brit will be at least four times that of the average German or French citizen. That would be a small price to pay to make a point that will reach the minds of even the most obtuse EU citizens.

On the question of whether to ask the people to reconsider the question of whether they wish to leave the EU, one must ask what is the function of the government. Surely, at is basis is the imperative to give reasoned effect to the will of the people. In the case where the politicians, always willing to pursue their own agenda unless the threat of a withdrawal of the support of the voters is dominant in their minds, can come to no clear consensus on what to do, the democratic imperative, the only democratic imperative, is to refer the question to the people, this time with clear facts and reasoned arguments. No longer will it be possible to argue that a Brexit will save £28 billion – that amount and more has already been wasted in the period of futile negotiations with the EU. No longer will it be possible to argue that it will be possible to reserve British jobs for Britons – for every EU citizen who comes to Britain for work, there is a British employer who needs that employee and is unable to find a Briton who is willing to do that work. Those jobs will be filled by immigrants from other nations, not by the non-existent Brits who don’t really want those jobs. British industry is already complaining that it will be starved of workers when the EU supply dries up. And, most of all, those EU workers pay tax in Britain, add to the economic activity, and push the economy forward. No longer will it be possible to claim that the EU needs British industry. It does need those industries, but it can attract them just as easily by offering concessions to the industries to relocate to the EU. It will not need those industries in Britain.

One of the factors that seems to be ignored is the Russian interest in breaking up an economic and military power that has the capability to stand in the way of Russia’s dreams of regaining its empire. The extensive involvement of Russia in influencing the 2016 American elections has been well documented, as has its continuing interventions in American politics since then. Is there any reason to doubt that Russia was at least partly involved in spreading fake news and ‘false facts’ during the Brexit campaign? Listening to the views of some leading Brexiteers in recent months, one can hardly suppress a suspicion that the whole Brexit issue was instigated and directed from Moscow. Think of it. Russia does not need a single unified economic and military power on its borders. It would much rather have a disputatious and disparate group of countries to oppose its ambitions. It has already, to a large extent, achieved that by buying the American President and spreading extensive misinformation throughout the only remaining power capable of opposing it. Brexit and the rise of the extremist political Parties in several European countries are logical next steps in the plan.

The European Union was a glorious plan, a plan designed to uplift the frequently-warring countries of Europe together. It has gone wrong, as most democracies do, because the citizens left too much power in the hands of anonymous bureaucrats, whose interests lie strongly in the extension of that power. However, a democratic institution is subject to the will of its people, even though those standing between the people and the implementation of that will often use obstructive and divisive tactics to maintain and extend their power. Surely Britain’s efforts would be better applied to reforming those aspects of the EU that it does not like, than to walk away from it all at a possibly ruinous cost? Any responsible leader of the people should put in the effort to convince the people who voted for Brexit that their decision, based on incomplete and improperly presented propaganda needs to be reevaluated in the light of new and updated facts and responsible projections. It is surely time for the British Government to come to the understanding that a re-referral of a possibly wrong decision to the people is not a denial of democracy, but a reaffirmation of it.

The Department of Home Affairs

A close associate told a story recently about his experience of dealing with the Department of Home Affairs in South Africa. At the time, the Government had recently announced that it would revise the system of issuing visas to foreign visitors, a system which has cost the tourism industry in the country many millions, due to potential tourists from abroad losing interest in the face of unrealistic demands and, probably, surly behavior by visa officials. The Minister had, over two years, refused to listen to reasonable information supplied by the many citizens who are both less arrogant and more attuned to the needs of the world outside the comfortable Parliamentary offices and the close friendship of their Cabinet colleagues, all of whom have applied their expertise to the destruction of the South African economy while extracting huge personal wealth from it. The story he told was typical of the experience of many citizens in their dealings with Government, so I requested that he write it for me. This is his story.

Recently, I visited the local office of the Department of Home Affairs to apply for a renewal of my passport. The last time I did this was in London, at the South African embassy, where the process took about two weeks after the obligatory wait on the telephone, at a fee of £1 per minute for a 45 minute wait to make the appointment. This time, believing the message of a ‘war on queues’ posted prominently outside the office, I went in.

The process to discover the system was lengthy, with the apparent security man at the front desk referring me to the woman sitting next to him, after a wait of about five minutes. The woman was both surly and uncooperative, but, eventually, she instructed me to ‘sit over there’. There was no apparent method of determine what my position was in the queue, but, after a wait of about half an hour, I was instructed by one of the four women at the desk to take a seat. I gave up my identity document and provided the information requested, including my Identity Number and my date of birth. Apparently, the Department of Home Affairs is not aware of the fact that the Identity Number starts with the date of birth!

When the information had been entered into the computer, I was instructed to press my left thumb on the electronic reader, and then the right thumb. This had to be repeated eight times, as the computer was apparently incapable of registering my thumb prints. Once the computer declared itself to be satisfied, I was directed to a small booth for the electronic photograph to be taken. That was done, and then I was instructed to repeat the exercise with the thumb prints and the photograph another five times, before a satisfactory result was obtained.

At last, I was directed to sit in another queue, to await the pleasure of yet another woman attendant who demanded the same set of details again, with yet further thumb prints (only four attempts this time!), before I was informed that the process had not worked. Back to the thumb prints and photograph lady! This time, it needed only three attempts to get the photograph right, then back to the documents lady, who referred me to the Cashier window. That was easy to find, being next to the large poster that proclaimed proudly that ‘We are accepting credit card payments’ (sic). It came as no great surprise that the credit card payment system was not working, but, fortunately, I had sufficient cash, an unusual event in this time of the cashless society.

After the Cashier had handed me a receipt, I was directed to sit again, to await the documents lady. The wait was no more than ten minutes this time, and I was instructed to give my thumb prints again! After the sixth attempt, the computer apparently decided that I was me, and allowed the formal application to be made, and then permitted the documents lady to release me into the open air again. The process had taken about two hours on a not-very-busy day.

Twelve days later, I received an SMS from the Department of Home Affairs to inform me that my new passport was available for collection from the local office.

The next day, I drove the 25 kilometers to the office in great excitement. I could collect m passport!

The excitement was doused when I arrived there, to see about fifty people sitting and standing outside the office. I managed to make my way through the crowd to the reception desk, where I went through the same process again of waiting for the uniformed man to demand my Identity Document. He did this three times before he heard me informing him that I was there to collect a renewed passport, when he felt that it was safe to refer me to his companion, the same surly lady as before, sitting next to him. The wait was somewhat longer this time, until the woman listened to my explanation, after demanding to see my Identity Document. She then informed me that ‘the system is down’. I asked when it would be up again, and she shrugged her shoulders before saying that it would probably be no sooner than late in the afternoon. I decided to come back the next time I was in the town, on Friday, two days later.

I did that, repeating the whole exercise of making my way through the crowd, giving m Identity Document twice and receiving the same answer. When I asked when the system was likely to be up, the response was a shrug of the shoulders.

I repeated the exercise on the following Friday, arriving shortly after midday, and, lo and behold, the system was up. After my details were entered in a register, I was directed to sit outside, where I would be called. I asked how long it would take, as I have health problems that do not lend themselves to lengthy immobility, and was told ‘about an hour’. I waited outside for an hour and a half before I saw a man standing at the other end of the crowd of about fifty people, holding a sheaf of papers and passports. It was impossible to hear him above the sound of the passing cars, so I approached and tried to hear if I were being called. No luck! After listening to him for a further ten minutes, my name had still not been called, and the man returned to the airconditioned interior of the office. I followed him and made my way directly to the surly woman at the reception desk. She apparently was offended that I had not made my approach through the uniformed man who would refer me to her, but, after I explained several times that I desired to know how long the further wait would be, she told me that I had to register to be able to have any hope of collecting my passport. I informed her that I had done so, nearly two hours ago. She demanded to see my Identity Document, and satisfied herself that I had, in fact, registered one page of the register earlier. She then informed me that they were very busy (I had noticed that the waiting area was full, with at least another forty people sitting outside, and used my failing mental capability to deduce that they were actually busy!) I asked, politely, what the system was, so that I could make an assessment of whether it was worth waiting any longer. She replied angrily that I must wait my turn. I replied that I had no objection to taking my place in the queue, provided that I knew where that place was. She replied angrily that I could not expect preferential treatment. Sensing that the discussion would not provide the information I was seeking, I asked to see the Manager. The angry lady refused to tell me where I could find the Manager, but, after I demanded another two times to see the Manager, informing her that I had a right to proper treatment, she referred me to the lady at Counter 3. When I asked who that person might be, I was informed that she was the Supervisor.

Now confident that I might be able to obtain information on how a waiting time of ‘about one hour’ could have morphed into more than two hours without hope of resolution, I waited politely at Counter 3 for the person being served to finish her business, and then asked what the system was to collect my renewed passport.

The Supervisor clearly did not like my looks (I am White, male and 75 years old) or the question, and she told me to take a seat and wait my turn. I informed her that I had no desire to be treated in a preferential way, but requested again to be told what the system was, so that I could understand what the likely waiting time would be. The Supervisor then demanded to see my number. I informed her that I had not been given a number, commenting that the lack of a number might explain why my presence was being ignored. The Supervisor then instructed me to return to the reception desk to register. I informed her, again, that I had done so, two hours earlier. She then told me in a very officious tone that she could not give me any preference. I gathered that she either could not explain the system to me, or did not wish to do so, and I requested that I be referred to the Manager. The Supervisor informed me some ten minutes later that the Manager was not there. I asked her to provide his name, and she referred me to the poster outside the office for a national complaints number. I told her that I had no interest in what the poster said, as I had already experienced twice the inaccuracy of the Home Affairs posters (‘war on queues’ and ‘we are accepting credit cards’), and demanded that I be given the name of the Manager, noting that, as a taxpayer, I was entitled to correct and complete information. She mumbled a name in a barely audible tone, and I requested that she write the name and the telephone number on a piece of paper. She replied that she did not have any paper! By now, my powers of patience and credulity were stretched to breaking point, but I managed to find some paper and asked for a pen. I was told that the Supervisor did not have a pen. I asked her what the object was that she held in her hand. (I suspected that it was a pen, as she had been using it to write only a few minutes earlier!) Fortunately, another person handed me a pen, and I managed to obtain the information needed and to write it down.

I then informed the Supervisor that I would take my place in the queue, wherever that might be, and await my turn to collect my renewed passport.

To cut a long story short, I was finally called to collect my new passport at 16h19 (four hours and twelve minutes after I joined the first queue that day, and sixteen days after I had been informed that I could collect it). The process at the counter required only three attempts at thumb prints before I was free o go with my new passport. I noticed that I was the last but two to be called to collect my passport, even though I had seen that I was at least a full page before the last entry in the register!

As an aside. I noticed during the long wait that a large bag had been left unattended in the waiting area for more than an hour before I was able to attract the attention of an official to inform him of the obvious risk it posed. (I had seen in airports and official offices throughout Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States that officials are particularly sensitive to the potential bomb threat posed by unattended large bags in public areas.) Apparently, the Department of Home Affairs does not consider itself to be vulnerable to such a threat, or that there is no violent criminality in the country. (Many foreigners who have been subjected to xenophobic attacks, residents of poorly-serviced areas, women and children might dispute that belief.)

What are the conclusions that I, as a Management Consultant with 27 years experience in fifteen countries in the diagnosis and correction of problems in organizations of all classes draw from this experience? The following points seem to be relevant:

• The Department of Home Affairs has inadequate systems to handle the work it is required to do, in terms of:
• Computer systems
• Staff training
• Operational systems
• The staff, at least at the Komatipoort office, is:
• Poorly trained
• Unresponsive to the reasonable needs of the public it supposedly serves
• Inadequate to meet the needs of the large number of ‘customers’ witnessed at the office on many occasions
• Not willing to provide service to the ‘customers’
• Petty and obstructive in their treatment of any ‘customer’ they perceive to be unwilling to take their surly instructions to sit quietly and wait their turn (whenever that might be), by pushing them to the back of the queue, and making them wait until the last possible moment for the service for which they have paid.

After my experience at the Department of Home Affairs, I have gained a much better understanding of the sentiments of citizens who burn schools and stone passing cars in order to gain the attention to their needs and rights. If there had been a school nearby, I might even have been tempted to set fire to it.