Our wee runt
is stronger against most major currencies that at any other time in the past
six months. Could it be that the whispers about selling off SAA, breaking up
Eskom and having a new Head Public Prosecutor has sparked a small fire of
optimism that honesty, integrity and understanding are starting to roam the corridors
of power?
In December,
our government spent R143 billion rand. This is a mere R1bn more than in
December 2017 and might be taken as a sign of expenditure control. During calendar
2018, however, our leaders whistled through almost R1500 billion, which is R200bn
more than SARS managed to collect from the battered taxpayers. To fill this
shortfall National Treasury needs to borrow and amazingly they are managing to convince
the lenders (most of whom are also the aforementioned taxpayers) to pay ever
increasing prices for government bonds. This optimism thing may be stronger
than we thought.
In just over
a fortnight the Finance Minister Mboweni will present the national Budget and
it has to be a racing certainty that he won’t reduce a single tax. There is
still scant evidence that anyone except avowed hard-line socialists with ever
more punitive and misguided ideas about redistributing wealth has any input
into budget policy.
It was not difficult
for South Africans to imagine just what it was like in the USA when the
government there “shut-down”. It sounded rather like “business as usual” for anyone
here trying to obtain the documents and services that our government requires
us to have. We are well familiar with snail’s pace inattention and being told by
the clerk that one is talking with the wrong person and anyway the forms the
other official issued are the wrong ones and anyway this office is now
shutting. Come back on Thursday. Reportedly some Americans began to realise
that one could live quite well without bureaucrats. What it all meant
politically in Washington only the bravest and unhealthily inquisitive could
guess.
Those of us
who from time to time believe we have discovered or invented something that will
make our lives easier (like using a pair of braai tongs to reach from the
driver’s seat for the newspaper lying in the drive) have no idea just how
valuable our intellectual property might be. The fellow who claims to have told
Vodacom, his employer at the time, about a useful idea he had, now has a crowd
of supporters bouncing in the streets demanding that he be paid R70bn. It’s
doubtful that this was the value of the idea to Vodacom but undoubtedly in
return for their noisy support of the claimant, the mob expect a kick back and
so life goes on in South Africa. It has not been discussed if the expectant
protestors have noted that faced with an unexpected expense like that, Vodacom
will likely increase their prices.
A far more
modest amount of only R32m has also not yet been paid. This time by the ANC
whose main defence for not settling this bill with the business that was managing
their website and digital membership list is that they are 107 years old and have
a proud legacy. Unfortunately, the teenage geeks who run the internet are
uninterested in legacies.
The banks
themselves were very professional in not refuting the claim by SABC that they all
simultaneously suffered identical “glitches” and failed to pay the broadcaster’s
January salaries. Those with inside knowledge, however, were adamant that the glitch
was simply that there was no money to do so. Presumably National Treasury had
to call their bank to make an instant EFT payment courtesy of the tax payers. Allegedly many other state-owned enterprises
will also soon have to explain to staff that the cash box is empty. Emptied by
lax controls and clueless budgeting practices.
Not only is
it World Read Aloud Day but the Six Nations rugby begins, it’s the Sydney
Sevens and if you like that sort of thing the poor Pakistani cricketers are
still hanging around and have to play the T20series against the Proteas.
James Greener
Friday 1st February 2019
