President
Trump is in peak unpredictable and disruptive form, visiting places and meeting
people that offend his detractors. His thick-skinned approach had more effect
on the markets than even the fairly severe earthquake that rattled California
this week. To show how much we as a nation disapprove of the man, President
Cyril has taken China’s side in the so-called trade war with the USA.
Presumably this will result in even more mega container ships arriving at Durban
to unload uncountable tons of Chinese goods for which we have a near insatiable
demand.
Unfortunately,
much of it will be packed in the dreadfully polluting single-use plastics,
campaigns against which are sadly not getting much traction in a nation that
seems to survive on takeaway food-like items also encased in this material.
Of course,
the real reason we are best of friends with the Chinese is that they are
lavishing actual cash on us. Well not lavishing. The word they use is
investing. The latest one-billion-dollar transfer from wealthy Chinese
investors will be used to start an oddly named Belt and Road Africa Fund. The significant
local personage in this venture is Dr Iqbal Surve, a fellow whose principal
strengths would appear to be self-belief and self-promotion. Where and how this
money is put to work will be interesting to see.
Unfortunately,
notwithstanding the attractions of Bunny Chow and Lake St Lucia, KZN may not
see much of it. In a 2017 survey, out of the half a million Chinese tourists
who visited South Africa just 6225 fancied this part of the world.
One of the
many commissions of inquiry trying to piece together the nation’s recent past
has reached the point in their deliberations where they are learning about the
notorious Gupta family’s contempt of South African sovereignty. The incident
where they landed a chartered private plane full of wedding guests from India
at a military airport is being discussed. The buck for allowing this to happen was
at the time passed very swiftly along a line of assorted scapegoats and now
senior officers are stuttering their way through variants of the “It was not
me, I was not there” excuse. Apart from
pride and protocol it seems that nothing else was compromised or stolen except
for confirmation that politicians and officials have zero skills in selecting
friends or advisors.
When it
discovered that medical aid schemes didn’t bother to record either the skin
colour or gender of the 35 000 or so doctors on their lists, the SA Human
Rights Commission expressed shock and disappointment. The Commission feels that
it’s their duty to know the demographic of the medical personnel who service
the substantial number of people who can afford private health insurance. Undoubtedly, they want to interfere and
regulate all the transactions that take place in that space so that those which
do not fit some outdated model of oppression and victimhood can in future be oppressed
and victimised.
It is
alarming how frequently the assertion of “poisoning” is offered to explain a
range of symptoms including death among office bearers and officials in our
land. For most of us this is an expertise that went out with Agatha Christie,
but apparently in SA today even sealed and unopened water bottles can be laced
with potions capable of causing the most dreadful symptoms. We ignore the
impact and presence of the Sangomas at our peril.
For obvious
reasons Tidemarks has deliberately avoided mentioning sports events in which
our national teams have been involved. There is nothing that can be said.
However, we do have a team at the Sheep and Wool Handling World Champs being
held in Paris at the moment, and in the absence of any knowledge of what is
involved (except for naked sheep) or of the team’s form and record we can but
wish them well and crisp clipping. Clip clopping takes place tomorrow at the
Durban July for which as usual I offer my usual dead cert forecast that the race
will be won by a horse.
James
Greener
Friday 5th
July 2019
