Nhlanhla
Nene has twice in his career abruptly disappeared from view. The first was the
occasion when as mere deputy minister of finance his studio chair collapsed
during a TV interview. The other was this week.
There
are many appalling developments that will follow from the president’s decision
to replace a finance minister who has been trying to tell him the facts. But the
saddest and most alarming is that Number One appears to believe that a cabinet
reshuffle will conjure up the money that Nene insisted was not available. The
sheer crass stupidity of this is desperately bad news for the country and its
few remaining friends. Having a president who is financially clueless and
innumerate is no longer amusing and now he is surrounding himself with acolytes
equally as ignorant and uninformed. Or perhaps they are all wilfully and an uncaringly
determined to loot and pillage for sole personal gain. Public service has
ceased to exist.
South
Africa is not exceptional in having an electorate which objects strongly to
paying tax yet welcomes any and all hand-outs of government money. Hand-outs of
course include salaries, grants and spending on infrastructure. However, for most
folk, the fact that the two flows are inseparably linked is poorly appreciated.
They feel lost and unwelcome in what they imagine is a maze of corridors and
hallways filled with loathsome and rapacious capitalist bankers bustling
between the national treasury, the central bank and the mint. In their minds few
of the decisions and initiatives emanating from those faceless buildings are
helpful to the poor. This perception is also widespread amongst the leaders and
the civil servants. Even the employees of parliament went on strike the other
day.
The
impact of this totally calamitous cabinet reshuffle has been that the share
price of the country has plunged. That is, the exchange rate between the rand
and other currencies has dropped severely. In Britain one can buy a rand for
less than four and a half pence. In the USA its price is only slightly more
than a nickel. The sycophants have gushed that this is a terribly good thing
for increasing demand for our exports without noting that for many reasons and
despite the weakening rand, SA does not appear to export much more of anything
very valuable these days. Simply making it cheaper may not help a great deal. That
there is pretty much a global slowdown happening is also inconvenient.
Assuredly the new man, David van Rooyen, has
already been told to find the keys to the strong box and to start dishing out
cash to everyone on JZ's Christmas present list. And when they find just moths
and old crumpled IOUs in that box, history tells us that the bandits will turn their
attention to the money in the state pension fund and the national reserve fund.
The paths are well worn. It is highly unlikely that Des, as reportedly he is
known to his comrades, will turn out to be a success. In his first speech as
minister he said that he wanted “the Treasury to become well known to people
living in rural areas.” What exactly this means is unclear but maybe it has
something to do with buying votes for JZ.
Share
prices on the JSE of companies that collect a sizable chunk of their earning in
other currencies have risen. There is a desperate scramble to play the rand
hedge game. One notable winner is the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), called DB X USA
which tracks the US stock market indices. Also the imported liquor shelves at
the local bottle store were being rapidly emptied yesterday. The dividends from
this investment are of course quite different. Feliz Navidad.
The
local rugby stars who secured overseas contracts will be among the few South
African sportsmen to be pleased with the way the year is ending. The unhappiest
must be the EP Kings players who haven’t been paid for months and are becoming
the poster children for the poor state of sport administration in SA where
politics has insinuated itself to a
totally unacceptable extent.
James
Greener
Friday
11th December 2015
