The USA is hailing its president a genius for coming up with a plan to cancel student debt. Attempts to point out that cancelling debt normally means transferring it to someone else has not elicited a response nor the name of the new debtor. Here, it’s the taxpayer.
There is a particularly annoying insouciance that South Africans have had to put up with from our government for the past 25 years. It is quite stupid to assert and imply that this country and all its institutions and history began only in 1994. Like every nation without recorded histories and allegedly accurate chronicles, we are always going to be ignorant of who did what to whom, when and where. Assuredly though, injustice and cruelty between parties, each trying to maximise their benefits of finding and living in a land so rich in natural resources, has been happening since first we learned to walk on two feet. Tidemarks is currently irked by the snazzy motif being sported by the tax man which boasts that SARS has been at my service for 25 years. Two of those ideas are just plain wrong! Who redefined “service”? And does that mean that those of us who have been paying tax since long before this magic date can now claim some kind of righteous refund?
The decline in education standards continues unabated. What syllabus produces judges who deny that clear and unambiguous slogans enjoining one’s followers to kill specified people constitute “Hate Speech”? To be fair though (why?) this hate speech business does fall under Granny’s advice that “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt ye.” And then there’s the utter nonsense that hoisting a particular flag constitutes Hate Speech.
Is there really any point in sending people to the moon. And back again? Even the prospect that one of the crew in 2025 could be (gasp) a woman, hasn’t really reignited public excitement much. The launch of the iPhone 13 will create a greater buzz. The breath-taking results from the James Webb Space Telescope is evidence that mankind can now examine almost everything interesting anywhere without someone nearby suppressing their innate human desire to push anything that looks like a button. Nations looking for brownie points and national prestige would do far better advised to strive for universal literacy and minimal numbers of public servants. How terrifying would it be to try and outcompete a country where most citizens could read and write in several languages, do calculus and understand both physics and basic human biology.
Our president seems to bumble along spending his days in a total fog of ignorance, surprise and congeniality. Everything that happens in this land seems to reach the Frogboiler’s desk and then his brain only days after the event. This week, Igor Sechin, boss man of Russia’s largest oil company, the state-owned Rosneft, popped into SA on holiday. During a refuelling stop at Lanseria, Igor reportedly left by car in “the direction of Pretoria”. True to form, much later, our man Cyril said he had no idea Igor was in town. Really? Haven’t we recently been cosying up to Moscow looking for cheap oil? It would have been a such great opportunity for our leading proponent of the use of the couch as a banking device to get some roubles to plump up the cushions in the study.
The trouble with away rugby test matches in the Antipodes is that my local watering hole and sports bar is offering Bacon and Egg rolls with Coffee as an enticement to watch the game there at 7:30am. Although I suspect that the keys to the bar will be located well before halftime, especially if the bokke are leading by a hefty margin (or even if not). One of the throttle points for economic activity in KZN has to be the section of the N3 Freeway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Even the old road is always very busy and the Comrades Marathon event on Sunday will snarl things up even more. As the meme doing the rounds boasts, however, this year marks the 50th year straight when I have not attempted to run this event and I owe a word of thanks to my sponsors and mentors.
James Greener
Friday 26th August 2022
