The new cabinet are about to traipse off to a lekgotla. This appears to be an ethnic term for an upmarket “off-site”. It will undoubtedly be a source of screeds of socialist solutions. Now the principal beneficiaries of an off-site are the hospitality, motivational and training industries. I hope that they regularly remember and revere whoever it was that first thought it would be a good idea to take the staff away from the distractions of coping with customers and clients to a restrained yet hopefully decadent location for anything between an hour and a week. Threats of excitements such as team building, brain storming, staff training and break-out sessions (my personal favourite) will be made. Naturally the actual reason that anyone attends these things is the promise of opportunities for feeding, drinking and flirting at someone else’s expense. Attendees of an offsite at best hope to return to the office with no more than a shred of dignity and with luck, juicy gossip about someone else. Any work-related outcomes are swiftly ignored. For all our sakes lets hope this lekgotla will be on form.
Next week the first quarter GDP growth numbers will be published. People who are likely to have had a sneak preview are warning that they will confirm what most of us already feel. “Things ain’t like they used to be.” Commentators will wring their hands and wail. But then just two days later the Reserve Bank will announce their interest rate decision, which seems likely to be a further cut. Cue shouts of joy from same commentators. It is all as hard to keep track of as the IPL tournament.
Pretty well anyone with a view on the market and the economy here on the southern tip seems to believe that the worst is surely over. The All Share index appears to feel comfortable above 22 000. One harbinger of economic recovery that even I can agree with is that the yield curve has recently turned normal and quite steeply so. Can it really be that the decline of the USA as the world’s leading engine of growth will have so little lasting effect on the rest of us? The USD is showing signs of resuming what I believe is an inevitable and long weakening phase.
My fears that the tax consumers would respond to declining incomes by increasing tax rates are coming true. Tariffs are being adjusted upwards everywhere. The electricity supplier has come up with 34% as a nice price increase to be going on with and metropolitan councils are entering into budget season with a warm calculator and the “rich” suburbs in focus. In the meantime, workers, a class of people who are not in line for R1m sports cars as a thank you present for doing their job (correctly and laudably declined by the politician in question – are you watching in Westminster?) are getting restive. They have little interest in letting the new government have a 100 day warm up period. Strikes are becoming common. Lots of things are going to be made ungovernable. The struggle continues.
I think that winter may have reached Port Natal. I saw a fellow wearing a jersey, but on the other hand he was still in shorts. No one down here has yet openly declared any support for the Loftus home side tomorrow. It seems they are all still smarting about last week’s loss. And then a whole lot of comrades are going to take part in the annual ritual of protesting the dire state of intercity transport in KZN by running from one to the other. Once again my invitation to watch the Monaco GP from the poop deck of a gin palace failed to arrive, so on Sunday it will just be a cold Castle in front of the TV. Actually that’s great too.
James Greener
22nd May 2009.
