TUNNELS LIGHTS AND ORANGE OVERALLS

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana clearly is a funny man. The front cover of the glossy pamphlet publication containing the Medium Term Budget speech he delivered on Wednesday, carries a picture of a young man peering over a precipice into a large canyon probably caused by the unusual rains in KZN 6 months ago. Its message is clear. “Stand Back – The Government is coming to Help”. Citizens who live in nations where there is a risk of this kind of message, wisely put large distances between themselves and the sleek car load of ribbon-cutters who materialised in unsuitable footwear to waft platitudes and wolf down wafers and wine. Filling canyons and repairing pumps have no need for politicians smiling for the cameras.

While ignoring the plight of outfits such as serial losers SAA, the all but defunct Post Office and the Land Bank, the National Treasury gratifyingly these days seems unafraid simply to ignore the plaintive cries for money from the nearly 300 other State Owned Enterprises whose business model once upon a time ludicrously forecast that demand for their products and services would easily cover costs. A claim that almost never turned out to be true.

Trudging through the huge number of newsletters and opinions that the internet serves up every day it is emerging that despite the world’s capital cities being infested with loonies of every stripe, the storemen and women have been quietly getting on with their job of ordering and taking delivery of stores. One significant figure is perhaps that gas supplies for most people in Europe are now standing at very comfortable levels thank you. That’s not the same as saying that the prices are the same as last year  but one is seeing fewer articles about the decision of whether “to eat or “to heat” Whatever the supply chain disruptions threatening to make life unbearable, it appears that the reality is that most people will find what they need and even Thanksgiving and Christmas should be quite festive affairs. The stories about retailers preparation for “Black Friday”, traditionally the first day of the year when merchants take in enough money to clear the debt accumulated all year, are rising in levels of excitement. People, as they say, are making plans!

For a few weeks now the US dollar has been worth pretty much exactly what a euro is worth. That is, one can put the notes of both currencies into the same slot in your wallet or purse and in theory whether  you are in Milwaukee or Milan one should be able to pay for lunch with a mixture of notes, using their face value. This monetary milestone wont yet have made much of an impression on the average waitron so if you are planning a transglobal journey this weekend it’s probably best to have backup in the form of  plastic tokens.!

The scrambling and rustling noises you hear are the sounds of comrades, cadres and chancers erasing all records they used to have of a once mystical but now evil place called Phala Phala, the game farm owned by our much esteemed President Frogboiler. This place which seems to have once been the headquarters of a busy cash laundering business  is everyday receiving more attention from the tax man and the Reserve Bank and we are promised non-luxury transport arrangements from the farm to the prison any day now. The guys with the information are suddenly getting eager and vindictive and just last night a one-time boss man from Eskom plus many of his family members peered at the sky from between bars. Are our wildest wishes coming true and will The Guptas get kicked out of Dubai?

Excitement is growing over the forthcoming coronation of the new Zulu king here in Durban this weekend. Puzzlingly the crowning bit has apparently already happened up in Zululand itself and what happens tomorrow in a local football stadium is the rather anti-climactic hand over of an official certificate in which the king’s status is officially noted by the government. VIP international guests have been invited though whether the new fellow in Downing Street may not attend as he is still working out how to use the appliances.

James Greener

Friday 28^th October 2022

 

HAVE YOU SEEN MY PHONE?

The sole faintly amusing aspect of the utter chaos that is the “Mother of Parliaments” at present is the serious belief that getting Boris Johnson back into Number 10 is a possible solution. Tidemarks’ call is for Larry the Downing Street Cat to take over the leadership of the Conservative party and the country. He sleeps a lot in  warm spots, keeps an official door opener employed and cares nothing for politics. His disdain for the press vultures clustered outside his home is legendry. Perfect.

Amidst everything else that is happening – interest rates in the USA are trucking inexorably upwards. This means that the cost of borrowing money is increasing and depending where abouts on the yield curve you are looking, the increases range from large to massive. This tends to strengthen the US dollar against other currencies as money can flow back to the USA and still earn a decent return. Unkindly, commodity prices on average have this year fallen the most since the covid scourge was discovered. This is building up to be a rather nasty double whammy that will hit many, especially ourselves. Large parts of the globe will find it increasingly difficult to find the holy grail of economic growth and soon even President Biden may be forced to admit this. Indeed, anyone who sits at a desk behind a door that says President, Prime Minister, Chairman, Chief Executive or even Boss, needs to stop politicking and focus on navigating the upcoming tough times. Prancing about saying “Putin did it” is not helpful, for even if this is true, your subjects, employees, customers and dependents crave stability and predictability. Focus and productivity will be required. Incidentally a loyal and smart reader tells me that this actually means “switch off your cell phone” when you are at work. Think about it. So true.

You will be pleased to know that Cabinet has approved the hosting of the 32nd Annual International Railway Safety Council Meeting in Johannesburg from 1 to 6 October 2023 under the theme: “Reshaping railways in an uncertain World”. Our delegation should easily be able to introduce the subject of how the theft of miles of railway track removes uncertainty about whether to take a train or not.

Even the Cabinet were embarrassed by the Cyril’s attempt to slip them each the tax-free benefit of free water and electricity at both their official homes. They have now reversed this amendment to the Ministerial Handbook for 2022. What is the frog-boiler up to?  Is he trying to buy off ministerial curiosity in what is now tagged as #PhalaPhalaFarmGate and just won’t go away? Incidentally note the echo from that decades old Watergate incident in the USA.

Now that we have experienced a complete season of United Rugby Championship and are receiving grudging praise from the European teams for bringing a new dimension to their competition, this year is easier to watch. Not only can we sort of pronounce names like Zebre and Connacht we might, if pushed, find their base towns on a map. It’s interesting to see the number of obviously homesick SA supporters in the stands offshore. Rather gratifyingly there are noises of regret emerging from the antipodes who, it seems, are missing the Saffers from their tournament. Nobody however will miss the apparently inconsistent and puzzling referees calls that we have experienced in this season. (By the way is there even such a thing as a season anymore?)

The organisers bringing a Formula E race to Cape Town in February are brave folk. Hopefully they have consulted the load shedding schedules. Tidemarks saw his first E Car charging point last weekend at the BP garage in Bufflesjagsrivier on the N2. Appropriately the petrol pump-like device was branded Jaguar but showed no sign of use. Presumably its location is approximately a single charge distance from Cape Town. The real reason to stop there, however, is the café turning out warm roosterbrood sandwiches. Excellent.

James Greener

Friday 21^st October 2022

 

ONLY ONE PIECE OF GOOD NEWS. MINE!

 It’s hard to believe but President Frogboiler reportedly opened some more toilets this week. What happens when all these international big cheeses gather in some gilded hall of mirrors and say adult stuff to each other?  Does it go like this? “What did you do this week Joe?” “Blow up some pipelines?” “Good stuff, and you Liz?”  “I told Charles that he can’t go and show off his new job at the climate congregation.” “Well! That was brave.” “Whoops here comes that Cyril the cow fancier. Scatter everyone. I hear he opened some more toilets and he'll drone on about it for hours.”

Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu described of the murder of a German tourist in the area of Kruger Park area as a “glitch” in the statistics. This is off the scale insensitive in every way. This nation suffers on average 500 “glitches” a week and every one of those is a tragedy. Sisulu and her fellow cabinet members are entirely responsible for not doing anything about it. The concurrent news that 10 000 police officers have criminal records and that three times that number of police firearms are lost each year should have the whole disgraceful bunch of complacent clueless politicians out in the desert building their own prisons.

Its puzzling that so many elections -- think US presidential, UK Tory party leadership and now our own  ANC leadership --  take so long, are often challenged and have a wholly unexpected outcome. It turns out that it is difficult to design a voting system that is perfectly fair to all candidates and voters. Firstly, it seems that the party system often gets in the way and it’s difficult to separate whether a voter is selecting a representative or a party. Then there is the ideal that every vote cast should have identical weight in the outcome. You will have noticed in horror the calibre of the pugilists embroiled in the fight to determine the next leader of the ANC and by definition, of the nation. should be. The “step-down” principle boasted about by the ANC as a method for mothballing any particularly careless and care-free miscreants, seems to have been forgotten. But it doesn’t matter much, they are all of them very unappealing leaders. [1]

Professional sports men and women are undoubtedly delighted with the dramatic bursting on to the scene of Arab money determined to enlist the best athletes that money can buy. The old guard custodians of the traditions and customs are grumbling. The youngsters and “sell-outs” are flipping through the yacht catalogues.

There was a time when the plan to have the Soccer World Cap take place in Qatar was a distant foolishness never likely to be real. But now it is upon us and the pre-tournament sport to watch is the soft-shoe shuffling and the sleight of hand going on to deny that soccer fans as a sub-species of humanity are notoriously thirsty, louche and ill-behaved. Few would strike one as the ideal visitor to an Islamic nation. But hey the world is full of surprises. The canny hosts probably have squadrons of windowless cargo-planes hidden behind the hill ready to deport the noisiest and most unruly with a minimum of fuss.

In the meantime, in another flagrant and flamboyant display of what money can achieve, Saudi Arabia, right next door, has been selected to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games in NEOM megacity. That the host city has yet to be built is not as surprising as the news that the Asian nations have their own Winter Games. How long before we hear the whines of a teenage girl pointing out that manufacturing snow and ice in an environment better suited to hosting epic sand-trap and bunker-play golf competitions, is bad for the planet?

Tidemarks is now going “on trail” to a bit of our country most people rarely reach (the Breede River estuary) and will not be writing a letter next week.

James Greener

Friday 7^th October 2022 (apologies for last week’s dating typo)

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[1] Our local guru in matters electoral is Emeritus Professor Pierre du Toit of Stellenbosch.