PUBLIC HOLIDAY PATTER

The idea that the state can allocate resources better than the market has been a very important contributor towards preventing this country from growing as fast as it needs to. Not only is it a very bad idea but also its implementation has some diabolical twists which have prolonged the agony. The state sets benchmarks which are racist, unfair to most parties and open ended. Recently the courts ruled that mining enterprises which had attained the required race composition amongst its owners could keep that box ticked even if at a later stage the ratio changed in the “wrong” direction. This “Once Empowered Always Empowered” judgement appeared to be accepted by government but now minister of mines Gwede Mantashe has decided to challenge the court decision. The industry is plunged back into a state of uncertainty and taxpayers will be handed yet another lawyer’s bill for legal action against themselves! It’s a dreadful situation that will once again delay our return to becoming a competitive and significant player in the minerals markets.

The new president and his rejigged cabinet are not as tough as we hoped. They are about to send SAA another bail-out cheque for R5bn when what they really need to do is put the airline on an internet auction site and insist on a cash payment from the successful bidder. The problem is that the finances are in such a mess that no one has much of a clue what the thing is worth and a bid of even R1 might be overpaying. SAA’s recent history of having the president’s girlfriend in charge and a cabinet minister who described airline pilots as glorified taxi drivers were just the latest in a series of very poor choices of people to run the thing. The live maps on the internet that display the location and route of virtually every civilian plane currently in the air clearly illustrate what a competitive industry this is. Governments have no aptitude for being in this kind of business.

Reporters who write about these things got very excited with some data that came out which showed that SA consumers were more confident about the future than at any other time in the past. This is indeed a newsworthy though puzzling result which doesn’t really feel right. Are consumers really unconcerned by the hike in the VAT rate and other new and increased taxes.  Is no one unhappy that we now pay more for fuel than ever before? What about the declarations of no-go zones in parts of our country following dreadful outbreaks of violence and civil insurrection? Sadly, in common with other hitherto mostly reliable data like company financial results, many statistics appear to be “massaged” before publication and are probably misleading.

Now that auditors and accountants have joined lawyers at the foot of the “Most Trusted Profession” league table, Noel Coward’s advice to Mrs Worthington not to put her daughter on the stage may no longer be correct. Treading the boards as a thespian or chanteuse at least attracts honest if not always pleasant reviews. And no one moves away from you at parties when you tell them what you do.

So, after my comment last week, the rugby became entertaining again. However, the other big problem this year has to do with colour. Of the jerseys that is. And the referee’s kit. My aging eyes increasingly find it hard to distinguish the teams and there are clearly occasions when the pass goes to the opposition, so the players are also bamboozled. At the very least one side should be in different coloured shorts. And who at the Bulls game, when the two sides were in hues of blue, thought that putting the ref in mauve was sensible?  That Azerbaijan street circuit for this weekend’s Grand Prix is strangely sterile and lifeless. Why won’t the FIA schedule one for Kyalami again? We could have minibus taxi races for the curtain raiser. No need for the Safety Car. They’ll pass him on the inside.

James Greener

Freedom Day (but not the country’s birthday) 2018

A CUCKOO CLOCK MADE IN SWAZILAND?

One indicator that is frantically waving at us from the wings is a commodity index which shows that the dollar prices of stuff like minerals, food and energy products are mostly quite a lot higher than they were a year ago. This is not bad news for the producers and sellers of these items (like we ought to be) but perhaps is the reason for forecasts that the economic boom elsewhere is coming to an end. In fact on a coarse scale the price of gold has, over the past two years, outpaced the average price of shares both in Johannesburg and New York . It would not be hard to work up an argument for explaining why hard assets might be more attractive than ones whose possible values rely on reports prepared by the currently rather embarrassingly error-prone tribes of accountants, auditors, executives and board members.

President CR has come home from the Commonwealth meeting early, presumably to put out the actual and figurative fires that have broken out around the nation. Some of the most severe conflagrations are the result of dire local and provincial leadership. Instead of renaming airports, government needs seriously to curtail provincial and “traditional” power structures. These are costly anachronisms unsuited to a modern state, providing cover for incompetent paper shufflers and disguise for large scale larceny. Halving the public service wage bill will trigger social upheavals registering at least 10 on the Richter Scale. But it will allow for massive reductions in tax rates, which in turn will encourage entrepreneurship and self-help capacity.

And on the subject of renaming, the king of Swaziland is so sick of his country being mistaken for Switzerland, that henceforth our neighbour is to be known as eSwatini. It’s hard to see where the confusion arises though.

In yet another but just the latest revelation of corruption involving government officials taking sweeteners from suppliers, it has emerged that our police force has a Technology Management Service headed by a Lieutenant-General. That’s a pretty senior rank for a computer geek. People like that rarely reach such giddy heights and are normally kept out of sight ferreting around in the cables and boxes under the desk. Of course, the emerging story of who was giving and who was receiving gets long and complicated with an especial horror being that one of the freebies consisted of tickets to a Manchester United home game. Hopefully when the conviction and sentencing of both sides of this dirty dealing takes place, the judge will take into account the time served at Old Trafford and reduce jail time by a day or so.

About a week after the Easter long weekend finished, transport minister Blade Nzimande held a press conference to announce that his department’s preliminary statistics showed that 510 people (61 more than in 2017) had died on South African roads during that period. There are many responses to this bleak formal announcement not least of which is what is he going to do about it? Presumably the claim that 18 900 law-enforcement officers were deployed countrywide over that long weekend was expected to be seen as a start. But this number suggests that absent comfort breaks, at peak periods there should have been around 3 cops per km on the main roads connecting the country’s bigger cities. Really? Where were they? The 5-yearly driving licence renewal program with the risible and easily circumvented eye-test is clearly having no effect on reducing accidents. And plenty of drivers are unlicensed anyway. Unroadworthy and grievously overloaded public transport operators also seem to have found a way around the law. Keeping true to all the zero-tolerance waffle is long overdue. Reportedly, in some nations, non-compliant drivers stopped at a roadblock are invited to witness the crushing of their vehicle there and then. In the interests of humanity though they may get out of the car first.

One has great sympathy for the sports journalists who earn a living trying to write about the state of rugby in this nation. The thesaurus function on their laptops must be weary of looking up words like bad, shocking, terrible and disappointing. And since I don’t have to, I won’t.

James Greener

4/20 cannabis culture day

READY OR NOT – HERE WE COME

The two “share prices” of the country which are the exchange rate of the rand and the yield of the long-dated government bond both showed some weakness this month. Perhaps because the excitement of having a new president who can both read and count is wearing off a bit. The realisation dawns that despite these skills, the problems caused by his predecessor are now buried deep in the fabric of the nation. The livelihoods which have been fashioned in the top echelons of the state and its agencies are more numerous and lucrative than most of us know. Now that honesty and competence are hopefully returning as job-keeping requirements, the fight-back by those who need to be fired is becoming violent and litigious. This week an ex-chairman gate-crashed a board meeting of which he is no longer a member. He denied that his term of office has ended. And there’s the wrangle happening among the spooks and spies who operate our supposed security apparatus. Just what they do is deliberately “secret” but there seems to be far too many of them, when what we really need is plenty of trained constables able to recognise lawlessness and act accordingly. Oh, and not sell or “lose” their firearm.

Sagarmatha is such a pretty name and sits well on the planet’s highest mountain. To use it for a South African company which, we are assured, will be the continent’s largest Multi-Sided Platform (MSP to the cognoscenti) shows confidence if nothing else. The hype and puffery for this new company which was scheduled to be listed today has been extraordinary, as too has been the fancy financial footwork used in the aggregation of a number of existing enterprises into Sagarmatha Technologies. Despite some ballyhoo in its balance sheet it is claimed that it will be large enough to be termed a Unicorn. All this baffling jargon has been used by commentators and journalists many of whom have their salary cheques signed by the man behind the deal, one Dr Iqbal Survé.   This perhaps does raise some queries about the claims that the new company will make its shareholders and backers wildly wealthy.  The fly in the ointment however was the last-minute discovery by the JSE that Sagarmatha Technologies might not be compliant with some requirements of the Companies Act and consequently cancelled the listing. Dr Survé could now ask A2X, the competing stock exchange, if they will list his company. Perhaps they are less fussy with rules.

 A Unicorn, by the way, is not only a mythical beast but is also a “technology start-up worth more than a billion dollars”. Great stuff for a bunch of small business who have yet to demonstrate that their products attract enough customers and earnings to be worthy of that valuation in rands let alone dollars. And that MSP thing? Well, apparently Google and Amazon are fine examples!

Our tax collecting agency SARS, has warned taxpayers that any profits they make from trading bitcoins and other so-called cryptocurrencies must be declared. There’s not much chance of that happening. Not only are the deals unreported to any authority and therefore probably invisible, but also it is doubtful that many locals have actually banked any true profits. Rather, the taxman could be swamped with losses used to offset profits made in other more conventional securities. Interestingly, the massive price spike working its way through the Bitcoin market at present has spawned a number of far more sanguine analyses about the drawbacks and illusionary benefits of the fascinating and novel block-chain structure on which the “crypto assets” depend. The number of participants who truly understand how they work and how they might be valued remains very small. Caveat Emptor.

While athletes in the green and gold have been collecting a wonderful haul of medals at the Commonwealth Games, no nation can equal the record set by the chaps from Cameroon who have swept the board in the unscheduled Hide and Seek event. Eight of them disappeared several days ago and so far, no one in Australia has found them. I doubt they’ll come back for the medal ceremony though.

James Greener

Friday 13^th April 2018