PRACTICE OF DUPLICITY

The last time the rand was this strong against the US dollar was just before we went into lockdown. There were moments this week when one could buy a dollar for less than R15.50! The price of gold is falling, and the traditional signals of fear are leaking away. President Cyril renewed the state of disaster for another month, but one could see his heart was not in it. He threw open our borders and bottle stores but did grumble a bit about people’s propensity to party in the face of a pandemic that isn’t going away. In fact, it seems it may never go away totally and most of us have now come to terms with that and have each adopted our own strategy for coping. These include schools, many of which are now gearing up to offer a wholly online remote teaching experience. This is very sad but obviously the demand is there and its not as if we could have a very much worse state education system than we have at present. The smorgasbord of opinions, recommendations and undoubted facts about this wee bug grows larger every day and this week there was a flurry of information about vaccines. The one was a notice about the hurried termination of trial of a potion – presumably because it was proving harmful. The second was a very excited claim by Pfizer, a major pharmaceutical house, that their vaccine was ready. This good news was somewhat tainted by the story that the CEO of the company had simultaneously sold a large portion of his shareholdings in the business. Not the greatest of timing there. The cold hard truth is that chemical control of this virus is likely to be a long way off and it is still difficult to separate facts from things we would like to be true. Official responses to alarming “second waves” of infection have become increasingly erratic and inexplicable and one wonders if governments are not competing for some sort of award for managing to inconvenience and terrify their populace the most. Only three South African bars made it into a list of the globe’s top 100 such establishments: They are called: Sin + Tax (69th place), Cause Effect Cocktail Kitchen (75th place) and Art of Duplicity (88th place). None of these are in Durban and with names like these it seems unlikely that they specialise in serving bitterly cold Castle Lite in Zulu Dumpy bottles. Readers must not therefore expect any reviews from Tidemarks. Nevertheless, it’s nice to report yet another sign of our pre-virus old hedonistic lifestyles returning. Also, it feels as if more of the tunnels have real lights at the end of them. One of the nation’s head honchos, Ace Magashule, who is the secretary-general of the ANC ruling party, will soon appear in court on corruption charges related to a R255-million contract that he signed while he was premier of Free Sate province. The details are tedious and grubby but as always relate to money moving in unusual directions. Reportedly Ace is riffling through his pack of “get out of jail free” cards and so far, has played the conspiracy one. Nameless forces are out to get him it seems. The race card is sure to follow. Should these proceedings end in jail time for Ace – and provided the case does not drag on for years – others will begin to get uneasy. And why can’t we get the extradition agreement with Dubai ratified and haul in a few Guptas? Augusta National golf course in the northern hemisphere autumn is a sight normally available only to members. But because of COVID-19, this year’s Masters tournament had to be postponed from its usual spring timing and is only now being played. The lack of azalea blossom along the course is causing even more commentary than the competitors, but it still looks like a very special place. Even non-golfers are interested to watch the new generation of muscle men who can drive a golf ball 400 yards. Tidemarks is going on holiday and I am really looking forward to getting back to the Kruger National Park after a two-year break. The next letter should be offered on 11th December, by which time who knows what 2020 will have served up. James Greener Friday 13th November 2020

VOTE EARLY AND OFTEN

In general, the share markets seem happy with the lack of a clear winner in the USA election and prices are rising. It’s probably just relief that the pollsters and pundits will be put on ice for four more years. Its very comforting to read that the head tax collector has embarked on a three-stage turnaround that will “Exit Out” (staff members) who are believed to compromise the organisation. Just so long as he also “Enters In” sufficient replacements to reduce the queue for telephonic help from the current “you are number one – one – seven – four in the queue and the wait rime is approximately one hour and forty seven minutes”! That last S, standing for Service in the SARS acronym, has always been a worry. Man, but this democracy stuff is hard hey? Firstly, you have to create a list of the names of people eligible to vote and then you have to tick them off when they do. Then you have to count the ballots. Stories emerging from the USA at election times always indicate that the nation that put a man on the moon still can’t do these simple three things. So far, the greatest surprise is that in many cases the number of people who voted exceeds the number of names on the lists. Surely that means that some people voted more than once, so should not that invalidate the election? Apparently not. Then it turns out that very large batches of sequentially counted votes are all for the same candidate which statistically is highly unlikely and suggests ballot rigging which also might be a case for invalidating the election. And then there is the collegial system which attempts to make all individual votes have approximately the same weight. Inevitably this final process drives the losers nuts! Sadly, the USA is slowly but inevitably losing its claim to be the moral and intellectual leader of the worlds “western” democracies. By the way, does anyone remember if we stopped counting the votes in our 1994 election? Meanwhile the Zondo Commission of Enquiry has unearthed some real beauties. Their attitude and responses to the questions have been hilarious but tragic. Ms Yakhe Kwinana who chaired the board of SAA Technical as well as sitting on the main SAA board has been exposed as having scant skills to offer in either of those posts except for scoring enormous kickbacks from any company trying to win contracts with the national airline. Her “boss”, Ms Dudu Myeni, erstwhile chair of the main board has become very edgy about incriminating herself and has declined to say much of anything except “I won’t answer that question”. The witnesses are fortunate to be present on screen only for that surely prevents either Judge Zondo himself or evidence leader advocate Kate Hofmeyr from walking over and delivering an attitude-adjusting klap. The astonishing thing to emerge from these proceedings is that none of the witnesses seem to keep any sort of diary or journal. They are always very hazy on who, where and when. This includes things like wedding anniversaries! President Cyril is going to address us next week. He has declared that he is worried that people seem to have given up caring very much about Covid-19. Given the really extreme measure being re-imposed in some nations overseas, he may decide to follow suit. The fact is that citizens have simply lost faith and interest in any government plan “to save thousands of lives” involving lockdowns. Most of the livelihood-destroying measures attempted since March have caused more pain than the pandemic. And the medical profession has sown confusion and dismay by continually issuing authoritative declarations that contradict the previous one. By now, we each have formed our own strategies about masks, sanitising (or is it Satanizing?) and social distancing. And we reject the notion that there are such things as non-essential businesses. So will government please now step away and go and do something useful like replacing the broken and stolen infrastructure that is having a far greater impact on our lives that this virus, which is doing its own thing, oblivious to just about anything we try. The new Supersport TV line up does have some nice features. Like screening sports where there are real live fans like baseball and American football. James Greener Friday 6th November 2020