If you had
been particularly unlucky when buying currency this week you would have been
charged over R20 and R16 to buy a British pound and a US dollar respectively.
Our runt has lost about 15% of its value since the government started to mutter
loudly that stealing its citizen’s fixed assets made great sense to them. These simple but shocking numbers should be
all any intelligent and aware member of the South African government needs to
see that their efforts at running country are seriously misguided. Sadly, most
of them have a blind spot in this direction, blinkered as they are from all
evidence by communist ideology and a conviction that the nation’s woes are somehow
still the result of a malicious intent of a tiny fraction of the population.
So the Guptas
are itching to tell their side of the story. But only if they can use a TV hook
up from Dubai. They are worried that even the rather somnambulant Hawks and
bumbling National Prosecuting Authority might arrest them if they come back to
SA. Too true. When they first gapped it, the air was full of assurances that
they would be back in a heartbeat if needed.
Now not so much! The puzzling thing about this desire to tell all is
that it surely can’t be their “reputations” that they are wanting to salvage.
Which leads to the thought that there must still be significant sums of money
back here that they believe they can get their hands on.
Stories
abound in this country of agricultural enterprises transferred willingly and
amicably to communities with historical claims to the land. In most cases the
news years down the line is of failure, misery and poverty with farms stripped
of assets and farmland reverting back to bush. The incoming new owners were
usually recipients of government money to help them fund the running of the
farms but what is less well understood is that with the money usually came
government “experts” who, in most cases it seems were merely on hand to loot
and pillage not only the farm but the handout. State capture has been alive and
thriving for decades as the vultures simply followed the money shunting aside
the hope-filled and well-meaning farmers with assurances that “government knows
best”. Obviously, this scenario can’t be responsible for all of the failures,
but it is an interesting part of this awful tragedy that is South Africa today.
One feels a
small pang of sympathy for the University of Limpopo students who stormed out
of a Philosophy of Education test claiming that it was too hard. Indeed. Any
subject with the word philosophy signals the need for seriously hard work,
reading and understanding the opinions and views of generations of learned
people who devoted lifetimes to thinking and writing about the issues. Far
better to choose subjects where the answers are undeniable. Like arithmetic.
The Director General of Telecommunications and
Postal Services has vowed that South Africa will be among the first countries
to deploy next-generation 5G networks. Whatever this might mean for those of us
still waiting for a letter posted weeks ago to be delivered, remember that this
is the same ministry that is now several years late in meeting its
international obligation to migrate all terrestrial TV broadcasting to digital
signals. This is the “set-top box” debacle. It is also the ministry in charge
of the SABC who at the last minute have agreed to settle enough debts so that the
soccer international against Libya will be aired. Last minute stuff and its not clear if the
money has actually been paid or just promised.
Hopefully
Supersport are not in arrears with the rugby and tennis chaps because for some
reason many of us are keen to watch the ‘bokke take on the Wallabies. And there
are the US Open finals too.
James
Greener
Friday 7th
September 2018
