This week I went fishing in the depths of Mapumalanga. All should have been peaceful and calm with only the twittering of the birds and the splash of the lazy rising trout. However, immediately upon our arrival at the picturesque cottage nestled alongside the sparkling stream in the lush and lovely Spekboom valley, we were alarmed by the sight of a rapidly growing pall of smoke on the hill above. All thoughts of unpacking, rigging up and wading the waters were banished, as the enormous bushfire raged down the slope. Huge flames crackled and roared as the fire leapt firebreaks and caused its own windstorm. Miraculously, the wooden cottage that was to be home for the trip was left virtually unscathed, but the fire moved on to devastate the entire valley for miles in all directions. That day more smoke than beer was inhaled and after establishing that no one had been injured, the next concern was that the trout were now all lightly poached. Indeed they were quite spooked and proved more than usually difficult to catch in the days that followed. All the water’s edge vegetation had been destroyed and it was difficult to surprise them. They certainly showed no interest in any black flies, seeing as how their habitat had been inundated with rather bad-tasting flecks of similar coloured ash and soot.
As you may gather, this event became the focus of the visit. With the satellite TV dish cooked beyond recognition, we were gloriously ignorant of the outside world. We endlessly repeated our war stories about how we had survived even when the fire interrupted the cottage’s water and power supply and we faced the threat of warm beer. In the meantime, of course, out here, the rand was taking another beating and the all share index was setting a new high, well north of 22 500. The inflation numbers were published and in particular the producer price index is growing alarmingly quickly and is not far below double figures – a level it last saw in 2003. The US market has also been behaving as if fleeing from a bush fire as the bond yields in that country plummet. Scenario planning is more becoming as fictitious as a Dan Brown novel.
Who imagined that that the best performing economic groups this month would have been the telecoms (thanks entirely to MTN) and Consumer Goods (understandably boosted by Richemont, the rand hedge star)? The weaker rand, however, failed to help the mining shares as commodity dollar prices softened a lot. It looks as if the overall market will post a very reasonable 2.5% return for September, but I suspect that few portfolios will emulate this number.
Can anyone tell me what the Gauteng provincial government is seeking with its call for tenders to provide a “Bodyshop for the office of the Chief Executive Officer…” Is it a gym for him to work off all those extra kilos gained while selflessly attending all the meetings, receptions, launches and conferences necessary to ensure that the citizens of the province receive only the best government that money can buy? And talking of buying, why does Gautrain need a half-page, full-colour ad in today’s papers? It can’t be just for the factually dubious boast that the train will proudly take Gauteng further. Are we being softened-up for a new cost estimate, now that the rand has crunched into near oblivion?
James Greener
29th September 2006
