Sadly the strikes appear to be continuing. The union leaders expressed little interest in the government’s complaint that taxes and borrowing will both need to increase if their demands are to be met. There is obviously a huge problem with the state’s pay scales and staffing policies. The national department of arts and culture – surely together with sport, an area that has no need for government presence – this week advertised five Chief Director posts all offering salaries over R60 000 per month. The successful appointees will direct, in chiefly fashion, departments dedicated to “Investing in Culture” and “Arts and Culture in Social Cohesion”. That these jobs even exist let alone will soon be filled by dark-suited laptop-bag toting airport concourse denizens on their way to meetings and lunch is offensive. The department is also seeking to fill the obviously very lowly but hopefully vital post of Assistant Director: Budget Planning and Expenditure Control with someone skilled, qualified and experienced and who will be content with R16 000 a month. I expect the previous incumbent has joined the skilled, qualified and experienced nurses and teachers on the streets.
However, the KZN department of arts and culture has been busy doing some real work. They have been counting maidens and announced today that at least 26 000 are available to take part in the annual Reed Dance. The Dance is a sort of shop window for the king and his buddies to conduct a stock take of potential marriage partners. President Zuma usually attends. The rest of the world is either amused or aghast. It seems an incredibly large number.
Do politicians never share a meal or sit down with their family and discuss the triumphs and tragedies of the day? Do they really have no interest in what their flesh and blood is up to? Durban’s Mayor Mlaba claimed he had no idea that his daughter’s company was working for the city. You would have thought that a R3m contract might just have been exciting enough to mention to Dad between the soup and the main course. Apparently officials are usually “so busy formulating policy” that they forget to check if any family members are breaking the rules. Believing this makes you as naïve as the bookies who quoted odds against Pakistan bowling no balls to order.
In the meantime Governor Marcus has explained that interest rate decisions are “complex”. This presumably is code for “don’t expect us to cut rates next week”. Actually the decision is difficult not complex. It is merely up, down or nothing. Up will cause so much uproar that the sky will fall down. Leaving rates unchanged will attract scorn and accusations of timidity. So they may as well cut 50 bp. The only sufferers in the short term are a handful of elderly savers who won’t say much, and it is unlikely that anything the Reserve Bank can do at this stage will revive the near moribund lending market.
The All Share index is now exactly where it began the year having excited both bulls and bears in turn. The performance has however, been unevenly distributed with the modest uptrends in financials and industrials offset by a fading resources sector. Now mining was supposed to be the sector that was going to make us rich in 2010 as we pinned our hopes on China’s seemingly insatiable demand for raw materials to build stuff with.
Pretty much anytime the ‘bokke players or coach spot a microphone, they feel compelled to say things that later almost everyone would rather they had not. Apparently coming second in the tri-nations is now regarded as both inevitable and a good thing. Oh dear me no.
James Greener
3rd September 2010
