REF! THE BALL CALLED ME A CHEAT!

Once again, the two allegedly “professional’s” indicators: bond yields and FX rates, reveal that the bull is alive and well when it comes to the nation. Whatever the news about the ideas and foolishness or otherwise of our fearless leaders, “the smart money” is not worried. Last April a US dollar cost you R19. Today a mere R13.50 will score you a green back. Alternatively, you could lend those rand to the National treasury for 10 years at around 7.25%pa. But those dreaded Ratings Agencies are all of the opinion that its not so certain if you will get them back. Government policies like the one below, are really worrying. How exactly do those who go out to sell our story, explain to potential investors that when they come to disinvest, our government has rules about to whom they may sell. These rules revisit race and other classification criteria that outsiders might reasonably assume disappeared in 1994. What is certain is that the effective price will be lower than it would be without those restrictions. And the buyers could quite easily expect the seller to lend them the money to do the deal! South Africa is not for sissies. It was a week in which Stats SA published its numbers about how many people are at work. The short answer is around 15 million, which is at least 2m fewer than the last pre-pandemic data release. The long answer, which arranges the data according to age, finds that 70% of the nation’s young are unemployed! The overall figures provide a rough guide to the economic catastrophe caused by the lockdown method for controlling the spread of the Covid-19 infection. Meanwhile the head count of citizens collecting one of the half-dozen types of state grants grows inexorably and may now be above 18 m. A rumour suggests that the government had accepted the inevitable and is about to announce a basic minimum income grant for everyone aged 19 to 59. Sadly, maths and listening to people who know a bit about how governments are funded, are not skills common among our decision makers and painful disillusionment awaits most of the nation. The taxman, who we all know is desperately scratching around for revenue, is convinced that many of the crypto cowboys are not being totally honest about their trading profits. And since our government has declared that we must all share any good fortune we have with the state, the men from SARS are on the hunt. Or as they put it, “conducting a risk assessment exercise on residents”! As exercises go this could be rather exhausting for those who keep appearing on the internet boasting of the uncountable billions their guesswork has delivered. Tidemarks long ago learned to treat stories of uncountable trading profits with suspicion and this coupled with the flakiness of the product and its deliberately obscured paper trail might leave the National Treasury empty handed. Those who point to the vaccine rollout program as an example of government success do have a point. Albeit one that is unrolling rather slowly. The much-admired Health Minister Zweli Mkhize must be rather distracted these days. Any business calling itself “Digital Vibes” deserves a quick audit to find out exactly what it does before government sends it any of our money and the good doctor may not have done the necessary homework. Digital Vibes is a very low rent outfit providing “communication services”. All Mkhize may have scored is a second hand bakkie for his son. But plenty of folk say they can scent blood in the water. News is coming through that Gilbert, the manufacturer of rugby balls, have managed to insert some robust electronics inside the ball and so rugby players will soon encounter something on the field that is way cleverer than they are. Just for a start, the ball knows where it is. Then it can tell who handled and kicked it last, and my personal favourite, it issues an alert if it feels it has been passed forward. Every fan has a view about this specific infringement and a lot of beer is often needed to cool down opinions about the ref’s eyesight. Slowly slowly, the crowds are being allowed back into the stadia. The Olympics are not yet a certainty though are they? James Greener Friday 4th June 2021