The current ruling party was founded 100 years ago in Bloemfontein of all
places. A fitting centenary celebration party has been planned. Those of us who
declined the invitation to attend or in fact never received one will have to be
content with paying for some of it. Intriguingly, for an organisation with
working class appeal, the opening event this weekend is to be a golf
tournament. Very egalitarian. Thereafter, however, things will tend to
follow the usual program of political gatherings with gales of talk and
prodigious sluicing and browsing. Singing and dancing will certainly occur.
Perhaps even fisticuffs. . Even the railways are attempting to cash in on the
occasion by offering just 84 tickets on a dedicated luxury train from Joburg to
Bloemfontein return for a mere R2020. (Meals and bedding included). That seems
like a bargain. But then who cares about value for money? Not politicians.
As has already been pointed out ad
nauseam, last year the JSE was a really volatile place with not a sign of
any trend taking hold. Even a bearish trend is at least useful since it signals
that somewhere ahead buying opportunities will present themselves. In just the
first four trading days of 2012 there has been more of the same, with daily
moves of far more than 1% in market indices, currencies and commodities. The most interesting story is perhaps the
strength of the US dollar and Wall Street. Presumably we are witnessing demand
for alleged safe haven assets, as it appears that fixing their currency crisis
was not among the European New Year resolutions.
For 14 months there has been
one very solid trend in SA and that has been the price at which the Reserve
Bank claims to lend money to the banks. The repo rate has been unchanged at
5.5% and regular meetings of the brains trust in Pretoria have reached the conclusion that
this price is perfect and needs no adjustment. The policy of letting sleeping
dogs lie is widespread amongst central banks and tweaks to their base rates
have been few and tiny. Unfortunately this has failed to trigger any buying
sprees among their citizenry and debt-fuelled consumption-led economic recovery
remains on the endangered species list.
It is interesting to conjecture that previously financially
illiterate and unaware people are now able to discuss these matters with their
peers via the internet and change their behaviour accordingly. Learning about
the perils and pitfalls of compound interest and the venal practices of the
money lending community from a Facebook Friend might have more impact than any
pamphlet from the bank.
During December those smartly uniformed folk at the immigration
desks processed 3.7m people as they either arrived in or left the country.
Every time these figures are published it surprises me how large they are. 2.5
m of the border crossings were by foreigners and occasionally some talking head
boasts that the country is attracting more than a million tourists each month. Presumably a large proportion of these
visitors have merely popped over from a neighbouring country for a spot of
Christmas shopping. Undoubtedly this is a very important source of customers
for shops close to the various border posts and it would be interesting to
compare their total spending with that of the type of visitors which are more
commonly thought of as tourists. That is the milky-skinned poor souls clad in
creaky fresh khaki shorts and sealed into a rented car piled high with carved
wooden goods, whose eyes grow wider as the elephant ambles even closer.
Cricket in the kingdom is in as big a mess as our national soccer
side The Dolphins are bottom of the log and the Proteas were flummoxed by the
Kingsmead pitch. Fortunately amends were made at Newlands and the series win against
Sri Lanka
is satisfying. Bafana’s international fixtures have been downgraded to
kick-abouts and their hosts in Equatorial
Guinea this week forgot to book them hotel
rooms.
Happy New Year
James Greener
6th January 2012
