Buyers of financial sector shares on the JSE have for many months now been swamped by those who are keen to get out of their exposure to companies that increasingly seem to appear in the cross hairs of a government rapidly running short of money. National Treasury’s website is full of notices about meetings they have held with The Banking Association and other outfits about “measures to support the economy”. New taxes are inevitable, especially those aimed at the balance sheets of the wealthy. Alarmingly, for the first time in memory, Treasury have not issued their monthly Statement of the National Revenue, Expenditure and Borrowing. Why? On the good side, however, the resources sector indices are clawing back into a measure of respectability. Anything that might benefit from another plunge in the currency caused by gross maladministration of SA is probably a buy.
The talking heads who suffer from the smallest shred of optimism, are sure that President Cyril is on the verge of cleansing the ANC of the rot that infests it. They are excited by the small dribbles of truth and culpability that have been extracted from those who sat in the “chair of forgetfulness” at the various very lengthy and costly “truth seeking” exercises. But now it requires a ruthless, fearless, and efficient National Prosecuting Authority to get the miscreants behind bars. And how long will that take? And by then, even more memories will have dimmed. What we have learned in the past few years is that our leaders are not concerned with banal everyday matters like wedding anniversaries, who paid for the car or the price of a security system. Our previous president couldn’t tell a fire pool from a swimming one and was hazy about the children’s birthdays. Money matters were hard even for his financial adviser, who took to playing golf after being convicted for fraud. What about the cabinet minister who was unaware why his wife made so many lucrative overseas trips? What do these people chat about over the poached egg of a morning? Oh I know! Luxury car and watch catalogues. They are all quite sure that Ramaphosa will never manage to get them into handcuffs.
Giving an airport a different name from the city it serves, is not the smartest idea, especially when there is a desperate need to get tourism going again. It appears that one of the few functioning departments in the particularly impoverished Eastern Cape provincial bureaucracy is the one tasked with renaming stuff. Even Wikipedia is a tad confused about who exactly King Phalo was, but he may have been a Xhosa chief in the eighteenth century. Not a compelling personage to rename the airport in East London after. Especially not when that city may soon be known as KuGompo.
In these times when every little saving helps, President Cyril really must immediately close the Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture and ask the civil servants to offer their talents to the private sector. Hopefully, the trickle-down effect from such a move would squeeze from office those administrators and even some athletes and artists who are using these activities to pursue purely political agendas. Anyone who believes that the apartheid era of this troubled nation ended in the 1990s is wrong. It is sadly still very much alive. Only now mostly reversed, with majority groups discriminating against minorities. The group photo of the current Board of Cricket SA is very short of anyone with Test Match experience. The “diversity” aspect is well covered though, which should terrify our opponents on the field no end.
A team not terrifying anyone except its drivers, is the Ferrari F1 outfit. These cars now allegedly shorn of an engine feature which used to make them the fastest on the 2019 circuits now battle to go anywhere in a hurry. Which begs the question: what was the feature capable of delivering so much boost that without it they severely underperform their usual rivals? And talking about underperformance, even the French have been pressured into abandoning their Ooh La La factor at the Tour de France. One of the usual pair of gorgeous young ladies showcasing Parisienne designs on the winner’s podium each day, has been replaced by a man. A very poor idea.
James Greener
Friday 4th September 2020
