ZERO BASED BUDGET SCORES ZERO

One thing after another emerged this week to demonstrate that the clowns in the cabinet are mostly all clueless and inept career politicians with zero skill or abilities to run, let alone rescue, the organisation that most of us call home. South Africa is in serious trouble. Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni told us so numerous times during his extraordinary emergency Budget presentation. This presentation, made on line, without any opposition voices to break his flow, rambled on and pretty soon we were awash in numbers and metaphors, all of which were terrifying.  The word million is these days hardly used. One needs quite a few of them to go missing from any decent tender to afford a car worthy of one’s status. There are now almost 18 million citizens dependant on monthly state handouts. The number of state employees who collect an annual salary of more than a million a year from the taxpayers isn’t decreasing, despite the waffle about curbing expenditure.   A billion rand is now the unit of choice and Tito even seemed unembarrassed to select the word trillions (2 of them) to quantify government expenditure in the next year. The nation’s finances suffer from the same public fatigue now being shown over the state’s handling of the pandemic. Both subjects are critically important to our future but understanding what is happening with both but is slipping beyond the grasp of even the alleged experts. An interesting side-line to the budget speech is that a brief interchange between Tito and an aide after the presentation revealed that the  topic of raiding pension fund savings had been dropped at the last moment so that it can be “done properly” at a later date. Ominous.

The extended Zuma clan will be well pleased with the way things are turning out for their campaign of personal advancement. Ex-president Jacob spent almost no time in the cold Pietermaritzburg halls of justice when his case was postponed yet again. His technique of hiring lawyers with the reading speed of a pre-schooler is effective since courts seem to buy the story that they have not had time to peruse the paperwork. Naturally, once the present team are up to speed they will be fired and replaced with yet more poor illiterates. Meanwhile, his ex-wife, who it seems, was probably dumped because her side of the wardrobe held most of the pants in the marriage, is fine tuning her response of “I don’t know and I don’t care” to every question put to her. She is uninterested in whether the State of Disaster legislation is legal or constitutional. It has given her a launch pad for her own agenda and projects, and nothing is going to stop her doing what she wants. One gets the impression that President Cyril appears and speaks at her behest and pleasure and the remaining increasingly contentious remnants of the probably sadly ineffective lockdown will be squeezed, manipulated and milked for just as long as she pleases. And she is not going to tell us why.

Meanwhile one would assume that most of the “reasonable” world are watching the USA in horror as hordes of ignorant, uneducated, self-indulgent young hoodlums run wild, calling for the police to be “defunded”. If this is even a word, astonishingly many big city administrators have replied “Sure. Why not?” Exactly the lawlessness one would expect is now taking place. Including the denial and rejection of interesting and significant things that have happened in the past -- particularly if memorialised by a statue or two which make a satisfying sight when pulled from their plinth. Scrap metal dealers might be about to have a boom.

Despite having months to work on their problems without the tedium of actually having to attend matches and pretend to be interested in the sports rather than the sponsor’s cheque, the administrators of most of our sporting codes are still at war. Meanwhile the pitfalls of hastening back to the fields and courts are being exposed. This virus does not do half-time.

James Greener

Friday 26^th June 2020.

NOT ONE FERRARI

It is slowly dawning on most of us that just about everything we think we know about the Novel Corona Virus is not much more than slightly informed conjecture, loosely based on the interpretations and forecasts of numerous virology laboratories.  Research efforts are still in their infancy and medical understanding of even exactly how the infection spreads and what symptoms it presents is still amazingly hazy. Today’s verities are very vulnerable to next week’s experimental results which in turn are filtered and disseminated by people and organisations, each with a different objective and need. This is partly the reason why our government’s data, models and strategy for dealing with what they tell us is a deadly pandemic sweeping the globe, is so opaque.   

The rest of the reason is of course the opportunity being presented for indulging in some major social engineering to produce a compliant and grateful electorate increasingly dependent on the omniscient central planners. This means continuing with the deliberately complicated and confusingly elaborate layers of lock down laws.  Why can one visit a dentist but not a hair dresser? Increasingly people are choosing to discard and ignore the remaining egregiously silly and economically suicidal lockdown conditions in the quite reasonable assumption that they have minimal effect on their own risk profile.

The sole fact in this tragic mess is that some people will succumb to the infection. But even the precise number of how many have done so to date has considerable uncertainty, dependent on definition and medical protocols. In short though it is still nowhere near as bad as we were led to believe it would be. It may well even be that the Novel Corona Virus alone is responsible for far fewer deaths than are caused by most other common causes in South Africa; including our local speciality of driving under the influence.

Which raises the question of just who had the chutzpah and more importantly the money, to be the buyer of one of the 130 new luxury cars sold in May.  And why were the dealerships open? Very odd. Apparently 118 Porsches, 5 Bentleys, 4 Lamborghinis and 2 Maseratis were driven off showroom floors last month. The temptation to suggest a link between these sales and the undimmed national enthusiasm for using other people’s money is hard to resist. What economic collapse? Has anyone seen the Solidarity Fund collection tin recently?

Also taking advantage of the distraction caused by the lockdowns in this country are the insanely jealous and disappointingly ignorant promotors for banning inheritance and heavily taxing it as a form of redistribution. That last term should be the rallying point for all opposition to this proposal. Compared to self-interested selfish individuals Governments are utterly useless at redistributing anything.  The observation doing the rounds this week that SA Breweries were able in just 3 days to resupply every bottle store in the nation whereas the current government after 26 years hasn’t delivered very much at all, is both amusing and true.

George Floyd seems to have been un unremarkable American two-bit criminal who nevertheless did not deserve to be killed by a policeman for allegedly passing a counterfeit banknote. The incident exploded into protests and riots all over the world, during which George has been all but put forward for immediate beatification. Several inherently race-baiting organisations have taken up his cause and demanded that everyone should frequently drop on to one knee and clasp their forehead as a mark of atonement for deeds of racism they may have done. Or if not themselves, then certainly by their forbears. The eagerness of people to perform this act in as public a place as possible is called virtue signalling, and presumably admits to some type of implausible social guilt. An unintended side effect of these massive gatherings is that they are performing an unrivalled test of the worth of “social distancing” for controlling transmission of the virus.

New Zealand announced two interconnected triumphs this week. First, NZ have begun the Super Rugby Aotearoa tournament and secondly they claim that there is not a single person in the country infected with Covid-19. Well done for both. But now what? When next can the All Blacks expect to play an international?

James Greener

Friday 12^th June 2020

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT HAT?

One of the simplest of daily economic parameters is published by the SA Reserve Bank and reports the sum of actual cash (notes and coins) sloshing about in the pockets, handbags, piggy banks and bank vaults of the nation. Normally this is a metronomic oscillation from a high at month end when people draw cash to pay bills and go shopping and a low about 2 weeks later when the belts begin to be tightened. The highest amount for obvious reasons is always at Christmas time, and this recent holiday peak saw a record R170bn. However, we are currently seeing that level of currency availability again as presumably the state’s cash injection policies are gaining traction. One wonders if the black-market tobacco trading isn’t also showing up in this figure.

As expected, the complicated multi-level structure of the lockdown would appear to be collapsing as common sense, legal pitfalls and citizen desperation each play their part. Nevertheless, government, which appears to be totally ignorant of and immune to these forces have just extended the National Disaster Legislation for a further month. Obviously, this now has nothing to do with further health facilities preparation.  President Cyril himself has implied that the Covid-19 Incident is providing a marvellous opportunity to advance the ANC’s program for the National Democratic Revolution while distracting the many pesky and ungrateful citizens. This week’s program included forming a State Bank, creating a state-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer and resuscitating SAA. That not one of these entities is necessary, affordable and most importantly has any chance at all of surviving to do anything more than enrich the usual suspects, is the simple story.

The utter confusion that has accompanied the government’s plans to reopen the public schools has brought into the open the fears that many of us have. That we will become infected by the virus, and after a lonely undignified period in a hospital ICU ward, die a miserable death without any opportunity to say goodbye. For parents committing their children to schools the concern is that it increases the child’s chance of being infected. But the inevitability that hundreds of thousands of poor souls will in the coming months become infected and, in some cases, not survive COVID-19, is increasingly being accepted. Principally because in fact the risks of oneself being infected are numerically quite low and comparable to many other threats as we live our lives, but more importantly, the economy must start up. We definitely don’t like it, but we have no other choices. The demand by the unions for a guarantee that no one going to school will get infected is impossible to fulfil and it is ingenuous and misleading for them to pursue this line. It is hard to separate this demand from the fact that they have and will remain on full salary while this fight is waged.

Tidemarks has remarked before at the wealth of amusing stupidity that the lockdown created. This week a government minister, incensed by the fact that the 9 week long ban on the sale of tobacco products was manifestly being circumvented, insisted that anyone found smoking would be faced with prosecution unless they could produce the till slip verifying the purchase in the distant (legal) past. This was yet another chance missed by President Cyril to fire an obviously foolish official. Minister Cele (for it is he) should in turn be asked to produce the till slips for his many hats. They too are a health hazard.

Things are stirring in professional sport all over the world. Many organisations are facing financial ruin and when this is all over the structure of both local and international sporting competitions and fixtures will be very different from what we have become used to. The historical SANZAR rivalry at levels below test matches is under review and Super Rugby is unlikely to survive. Important sponsors are quietly saying their goodbyes and the crucial cash flows from selling TV rights are in jeopardy. Although it is worth complaining that our own pay to view sports broadcaster (Supersport), has failed to pass any savings it may have enjoyed from not having anything to broadcast, to its own subscribers!

James Greener

Friday 5^th May 2020