CAPITALISTS - ANC's COMRADES OF CONVENIENCE

A number of South Africa's parastatals are at death's door.  The Post Office and SAA immediately come to mind, with others seemingly not far behind.

The ANC government is faced with two choices: dust off casket carrying horse drawn carriages for state sponsored parastatal funerals, or as last resort, turn to capitalists to effect critical life support measures to resurrect and restore parastatal economic viability, after more than two decades of destructive maladministration.

The first to enter the parastatal lion's den is Mark Barnes, a prominent business executive with a proven track record.  He will head the Post Office. Interestingly enough he offered his services with government's blessing.  Time will tell whether it was an act of brilliance or stupidity.   Hopefully the former, even though the odds are stacked against him. One merely has to reflect on the miserable failures of Meyer Kahn and Bobby Godsell whose efforts to turn around the police and Eskom were undermined and subsequently defeated by political interference.

When the chips are down, the ANC government unhesitatingly welcomes the business acumen of capItalists who are willing to step up to the plate.  The welcome mat extended to Mark Barnes is a far cry from Jacob Zumas's recent address to Cosatu, where he characterised capitalism as a dictatorship and capitalists as the enemy.  Why then accept the services of a capitalist?  Multiple reasons, but in a nutshell - hypocrisy.

I have never been an admirer of Nietsche, but what he said in the context of Zuma's address to Cosatu is tellingly apposite:  "Learning from one's enemies is the best way to love them; for it makes us grateful to them."

It is not too late for Zuma and his party to learn, love and express gratitude to capitalist Mark Barnes, and other capitalists who follow his patriotic example.

ENDLESS GOVERNMENT WASTE & MORE . . .

The Auditor-General's report on the financial condition of provincial and national government departments was again symptomatic of a bloated government bureaucracy gormandising at the trough.

The report highlights the loss of R26 billion of public funds through irregular expenditures.   In addition, of the 468 entities audited, 355 received an unqualified audit.  According to the report, the Auditor-General had to make 'corrections' to 131 entities to reflect a better outcome. Obviously 'corrections' do not equate with the euphemism known as creative accounting.  Nonetheless, clarification on the nature of the corrections must be forthcoming.

In response to the report, a spokesman for the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa recommended the creation of an integrity commission as a chapter nine institution.  The role of the integrity commission would serve to prevent  and combat corruption and maladministration. Not so, as it will suffer the same fate as other well-intentioned commissions - consignment to the dust-heap.

For too long provincial and national government departments have engendered a mentality of entitlement devoid of accountability. In doing so, a culture of corruption without consequences pervades South Africa's landscape. This will end when laws, already in place, are enforced and long prison sentences imposed as a deterrent to others.  The solution lies with the police and the prosecuting authority. They have yet to earn their pay cheques.

COSATU - SOMETHING IS ROTTEN

Cosatu's elective congress commenced this week.  Thus far, no earth shattering developments, besides the usual factional infighting, and calls for unity.  But, to paraphrase a character in Hamlet, something is rotten in Cosatu.

Cosatu's is in the throes of an upheaval, and  in the words of its president Sudomo Dlamini, the federation "is eating itself".  The federation is no longer relevant to thousands of workers. Moreover, the new generation of skilled workers have no need for a labour union. Their skills allow them to independently negotiate favourable terms of employment.

Cosatu's leaders know the federation is in crisis, but only offer bald allegations of foreign governments, particularly the US, attempting  to destroy Cosatu. In his address, Dlamini commented that "People are pumping money to destroy Cosatu.  After showing America proof they were funding . . . they admitted it."  I suspect, during the course of Dlamini's career as a trade unionist,  he attended The School of Scapegoating, where he learnt, that when all else fails, blame the US.  A nonsensical and plainly stupid ploy.

Public-sector unions are Cosatu's lifeline. It remains to be seen if the line will be severed due to future wage demands.  In the meantime,  Cosatu is the ANC's convenient vote canvasser for retention of political power.

Cosatu's relevance has been reduced to serving the needs of the ANC, and the personal ambitions of its leaders.

LIES & REWARDS

I previously commented on the ANC government's predilection to "reward" ambassadorial appointments to those indelibly tainted by scandal, incompetence and wrongdoing.  I predicted the next ambassadorial appointment would be Riah Phiyega.  As it turns out, I was wrong, as the next in line for a top foreign post is former crime intelligence boss major-general Chris Ngcobo.

The former intelligence boss was caught lying about having a matriculation certificate.  When confronted, Ngcobo brazenly maintained he mistakenly confused "Grade 10 and Standard 10".  Rather than wait the outcome of a disciplinary hearing. Ngcobo resigned from the police in July, 2015, and with the blessing of  Luthuli House commenced classes at the diplomatic academy in Pretoria.  It has been reported that his likely assignment is Mali - a poor decision for one who has no prior diplomatic experience, fluency in French, let alone experience with a country fighting terrorism.

Based on past appointments to foreign posts, Ngcobo will join a select group of miscreants, disgraced ANC comrades, appointed as ambassadors, notwithstanding acts of moral turpitude committed by them.

In good governance countries,  ambassadors are appointed primarily from the ranks of career foreign officers with a spattering of patronage appointments to far and away humdrum places. Nonetheless, both appointments share requisite common characteristics: integrity, intellect, experience and above all honesty.  That cannot be said for Ngcobo and his predecessors, the likes of Carl Niehaus  and Mohau Pheko, who also lied about their qualifications.

It is distressing to witness the disintegration of the ANC government's moral imperative  - an imperative that past icons of the movement fought and died to preserve.  Fortunately they are not with us to also witness the rot.

ZUMA AND THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

President Jacob Zuma has belatedly attempted to extricate himself from comments he made that the ANC took precedence over the country.  What he meant to say,  according to the President, was that the ANC still comes first, but his obligations to the country do not come second.

The President's clarification, despite floundering in semantics, does not pass the smell test.

Our Head of State is not a complicated man. He wears his heart on his sleeve, when speaking extemporaneously to an audience. He meant what he said - the ANC and the country are conjoined twins.

ANC leadership has routinely extolled the virtues of democratic principles and the constitution - the bedrock of the country.  In a "New York minute" the President opened the door to his and the ANC's proclivity to the very anthesis of constitutionalism - authoritarian rule.

The President has done the country a good turn in speaking the truth, and in doing so, has politically set the country free.

SOUTH AFRICA'S DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS - NO BANG FOR THE BUCK

In response to a parliamentary question, the ANC government confirmed that the country spends R3.2 billion annually on diplomatic missions around the world. It is difficult to visualize how many rand there are in R3.2 billion, and more difficult for politicians who are spending fortunes in taxpayer money. To put it in better perspective, some billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive, and some billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. So, with this in mind, do we really want to to be saddled with the exorbitant cost of maintaining 126 embassies - the highest number after the US. The answer, in economic terms, is a simple one - the country cannot afford it, and must cut its cloth accordingly. The money saved by reducing diplomatic missions can be directed to ever-increasing problems facing the country - housing, unemployment, poverty, crime, infrastructure, and a host of other chronic ills. There are those in government who argue that diplomatic missions serve as conduits for trade that result in benefits to South Africa, and therefore outweigh the cost of maintaining such missions. One has yet to see hard evidence in support thereof. Until then, the assertion has the apocryphal equivalent of a belief in the tooth fairy. Solutions for South Africa's problems are not to be found abroad, and certainly not within the plush interiors of diplomatic missions. From the ANC government's perspective there is a purpose in having an obscene number of diplomatic missions. They serve as depositories for appointed ambassadors who are "rewarded" for incompetence, scandal and wrongdoing. One suspects it will not be long before the next ambassadorial appointment is announced. Can you say, Riah Phiyega?

A MAN DEFINED BY ARROGANCE

Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula and his department were prominently featured, at taxpayers expense, in a full page advertisement in the Cape Times (15/10/15), and presumably in other newspapers of daily circulation. The department was featured because it received a clean audit award from the Auditor-General. Knowing the minister's penchant for unrestrained exuberance and self-aggrandisement, it would not be surprising if he tweeted this achievement to the sounds of "seventy-six trombones and a hundred and ten cornets". One can understand the minister's delight in the department receiving a clean audit - a rarity indeed amongst government departments where waste, incompetence , corruption, and a host of other ills plentifully abound. Truth be told, however, a clean audit should be the norm and not the exception. The fact that the minister deemed it necessary to incur, at presumably great cost, full page newspaper ads to assert that he and his department, are not a "bunch of losers", is simply grandstanding. Moreover, it evokes a deep sense of sadness in that a rare clean audit somehow prevents South Africa's moral barometer from plunging further. Aristotle aptly summed it up: "One swallow does not a summer make". The minister in the ad stated that he and his department "treat public money with the utmost care". Not so, spending taxpayer money on a self-congratulatory message is not only wasteful, but pompous and careless. In the future one hopes the minister will deliberate long and hard before spending taxpayer money on self-promotional newspaper ads. Instead he should earmark said funds to improving dilapidated sports facilities in the townships. I, for one, will then desist from taking umbrage to his use of less costly tweets, even if laced with hubris.