One thing
after another emerged this week to demonstrate that the clowns in the cabinet
are mostly all clueless and inept career politicians with zero skill or
abilities to run, let alone rescue, the organisation that most of us call home.
South Africa is in serious trouble. Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni told us
so numerous times during his extraordinary emergency Budget presentation. This
presentation, made on line, without any opposition voices to break his flow, rambled
on and pretty soon we were awash in numbers and metaphors, all of which were
terrifying. The word million is these
days hardly used. One needs quite a few of them to go missing from any decent
tender to afford a car worthy of one’s status. There are now almost 18 million
citizens dependant on monthly state handouts. The number of state employees who
collect an annual salary of more than a million a year from the taxpayers isn’t
decreasing, despite the waffle about curbing expenditure. A billion
rand is now the unit of choice and Tito even seemed unembarrassed to select the
word trillions (2 of them) to quantify government expenditure in the next year.
The nation’s finances suffer from the same public fatigue now being shown over
the state’s handling of the pandemic. Both subjects are critically important to
our future but understanding what is happening with both but is slipping beyond
the grasp of even the alleged experts. An interesting side-line to the budget speech
is that a brief interchange between Tito and an aide after the presentation revealed
that the topic of raiding pension fund
savings had been dropped at the last moment so that it can be “done properly” at
a later date. Ominous.
The extended
Zuma clan will be well pleased with the way things are turning out for their
campaign of personal advancement. Ex-president Jacob spent almost no time in
the cold Pietermaritzburg halls of justice when his case was postponed yet
again. His technique of hiring lawyers with the reading speed of a pre-schooler
is effective since courts seem to buy the story that they have not had time to peruse
the paperwork. Naturally, once the present team are up to speed they will be
fired and replaced with yet more poor illiterates. Meanwhile, his ex-wife, who
it seems, was probably dumped because her side of the wardrobe held most of the
pants in the marriage, is fine tuning her response of “I don’t know and I don’t
care” to every question put to her. She is uninterested in whether the State of
Disaster legislation is legal or constitutional. It has given her a launch pad
for her own agenda and projects, and nothing is going to stop her doing what
she wants. One gets the impression that President Cyril appears and speaks at
her behest and pleasure and the remaining increasingly contentious remnants of
the probably sadly ineffective lockdown will be squeezed, manipulated and
milked for just as long as she pleases. And she is not going to tell us why.
Meanwhile one
would assume that most of the “reasonable” world are watching the USA in horror
as hordes of ignorant, uneducated, self-indulgent young hoodlums run wild,
calling for the police to be “defunded”. If this is even a word, astonishingly
many big city administrators have replied “Sure. Why not?” Exactly the lawlessness
one would expect is now taking place. Including the denial and rejection of interesting
and significant things that have happened in the past -- particularly if memorialised
by a statue or two which make a satisfying sight when pulled from their plinth.
Scrap metal dealers might be about to have a boom.
Despite
having months to work on their problems without the tedium of actually having
to attend matches and pretend to be interested in the sports rather than the
sponsor’s cheque, the administrators of most of our sporting codes are still at
war. Meanwhile the pitfalls of hastening back to the fields and courts are being
exposed. This virus does not do half-time.
James Greener
Friday 26th June 2020.
