The only mystery is why anyone would think the ANC would give a damn about "failing the key test of democracy".
ANC 'power grab' after poll defeat
Telegraph
30/09/2006
South Africa's ruling party has been accused of "failing the key test of a democracy" by trying to reverse its first major election defeat. Helen Zille, from the opposition Democratic Alliance, became mayor of Cape Town after her party won 91 seats in council elections in March, compared with 81 for the African National Congress (ANC).
For the first time since apartheid's demise 12 years ago, an ANC mayor was ousted. Mrs Zille now governs the city in coalition with six small parties but the ANC has responded to defeat by trying to strip her of all her powers. Since the election, Mrs Zille, 55, has governed Cape Town as an executive mayor, with overall responsibility for 22,000 employees and a budget exceeding £1 billion.
But the ANC-controlled government of Western Cape province has proposed reducing her to a powerless symbol with ceremonial duties only. It favours abolishing Mrs Zille's job and running Cape Town with an executive committee. The ANC and its allies would have six of the committee's 10 members. This plan would, in effect, cripple the mayor and return the ANC to power in Cape Town in defiance of the election result.
"It raises the question of whether South Africa is a genuine democracy," said Mrs Zille. "You can't have a democracy when the ruling party only accepts the outcome of the elections it wins. They're failing the key test of a democracy, which is accepting the election result when you lose."
The ANC created the post of executive mayor four years ago. For as long as the party won every election and the mayor was an ANC member, it was happy to run Cape Town in this way. Mrs Zille pointed out that the decision to downgrade her job was only taken after the opposition won the city council election. At present, the ANC runs every other major city. Only in Cape Town is the party proposing to do away with the executive mayor.
... Even if the mayor defeats this bid to oust her, Mrs Zille expects the ANC to try again. "It's like the waves of the sea," she said. "When one goes, you wait for another to gain momentum. They keep coming at you. And then they blame us for causing instability."
14 comments:
Million whites leave SA - study
One million white South Africans - almost a fifth - have left the country in the past ten years. This figure was released last week in a report from the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). Frans Cronjé, who compiled the report, said it was especially crime and affirmative action which had driven a fifth of South Africa's white population out of the country.
Train Surfing in Soweto. (thanks SL).
Rian Malan on the 'End of South Africa'
Spectator
25 Oct 2006
Riaan Malan's memoir of growing up in the apartheid, My Traitor's Heart, coming as it did from a family member of DF Malan, the first National Prime Minister in 1948, was particularly traitorous, and only two years ago, he was hailing the first country as a veritable "paradise".
But in the latest edition of Britain's The Spectator magazine, Malan concluded the country was now sliding towards decay. When the winter rains closed in on Cape Town I thought, bugger this, I'm selling up and moving somewhere sunny. To this end, I asked the char, Mrs Primrose Gwayana, to come in and help spruce up the house. We were scrubbing and painting and what have you when Primrose's broom bumped the dining table, and crack - a leg snapped off, its innards hollowed out by wood-borers. I thought, uh-oh, here's an omen. Something awful is going to happen. And it has. Nine months ago South Africa seemed to be muddling through in a happy-go-lucky fashion. The economy was growing, albeit slowly. Trains ran, if not exactly on time. If you called the police, they eventually came.
We thought our table was fairly solid, and that we would sit at it indefinitely, quaffing that old Rainbow Nation ambrosia. Now, almost overnight, we have come to the dismaying realisation that much around us is rotten. Nearly half our provinces and municipalities are said to be on the verge of collapse. A murderous succession dispute has broken out in the ruling African National Congress. Our Auditor-General reportedly has sleepless nights on account of the billions that cannot be properly accounted for. Whites have been moaning about such things for years, but you know you're in serious trouble when President Thabo Mbeki admits the 'naked truth' that his government has been infiltrated by chancers seeking to 'plunder the people's resources'.
I knew in my bones that it would come to this, but somewhere along the line I got tired of stinking up my surroundings with predictions of doom, so I shut up and went with the flow. Ergo, I cannot say I told you so. But I have a pretty good idea why things went wrong, and it all began with 'transformation', a euphemism for ridding the Civil Service of whites, especially white males. Under apartheid, those chaps ran everything. Clearly this had to change, but white males carried the institutional memory in their brains, and the blacks who replaced them tended to flounder.
This led to what we call 'capacity problems', a euphemism for blacks who couldn't or wouldn't carry out the jobs for which they were paid. Capacity problems in turn led to crises in electricity supply, refuse removal, road maintenance, healthcare, law enforcement and so on. Again, white malcontents have complained about such things for years, but you know you're in trouble when an eminent black journalist like Justice Malala dismisses the Mbeki administration as an 'outrage', characterised by 'a shocking lack of leadership' on the part of a Cabinet riddled with 'incompetent, inept and arrogant' buffoons. In short, we're in crisis. Everyone acknowledges it, but somehow we never see firm corrective action. Previously we were told it was awkward for a black liberation movement to purge black appointees, even if they were useless. This year a new excuse emerged.
Back in April, around the time of the ominous table-leg incident, the actress Janet Suzman and I dined with a bossy American woman who bit my head off when I opined that our recently deposed deputy president, Jacob Zuma, would one day step into Nelson Mandela's shoes. For a foreign feminist, it was unthinkable that a man with four years of schooling and rape and corruption charges pending should become president of anything. My explanations to the contrary were dismissed as racist rubbish, but let me air them anyway. Zuma is a Zulu, and when he became a target for criminal investigation, many fellow tribesmen suspected he was being stitched up by President Mbeki, who was reputedly keen to eliminate him as a potential successor.
Conspiracists noted that Mbeki was a Xhosa, and that various members of what we call the 'Xhosa nostra' had become billionaires as a result of their political connections, whereas Zuma's allegedly improper payments were limited to a trifling £100,000. They found it even more fishy that the sad and desperate young woman who invited herself to spend a night in Zuma's home, only to accuse him of rape in the aftermath, was acquainted with the minister of intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, a KGB-trained master of the dark arts of espionage, presumably including honey traps. Zulus are a warlike bunch, as we know, and the Zuma affair got their blood up. Thousands turned out to cheer their homeboy at his rape trial, and to denounce his accuser as a harlot bribed to bear false witness. Zuma's acquittal sparked riotous celebrations, and when his corruption trial started last month the crowds were even larger. '100% Zulu Boy' T-shirts were still evident, but now there were red flags too, because radicals had started rallying to the Zuma cause. First to join were the young lions of the ANC Youth League. They were followed by the Young Communists, then by large sectors of the trade union movement and the Communist party proper. All that remained was for Winnie Mandela to take sides, and lo: when the judge dismissed Zuma's corruption charges in late September, she materialised among the jubilant masses, praising the Lord for answering her prayers.
These developments confounded naive left-liberals, who had repeatedly assured us that Zuma was politically dead. Feminists recalled the dalliance with Ms Lewinsky that almost destroyed Bill Clinton. Aids activists were scandalised by Zuma's failure to use a condom during the rape-case escapade, even though the woman involved was HIV-infected. Moralists contended that even though criminal charges had proved unsustainable, there were enough facts on the table to show that Zuma was sorely lacking in probity. For such people, it was unhinging to see Zuma become the leading contender for South Africa's presidency, greeted at every turn by adoring supporters who informed reporters that the Ten Commandments were an alien invention that didn't apply to African males. Their campaign song was even more unnerving: 'Bring me my machine gun.' A Serbian journalist living here took one look at this and wrote a piece headlined, 'Time to Panic'.
Hmm. My friend Steve, a capitalist who golfs with the black elite, says this is nonsense. 'Zuma is charming,' he says. 'If he actually gets the job, things will settle down and it'll be business as usual.' Maybe so, but the next general election is three years away, and meanwhile government is incapable of acting against the borers in our woodwork. Let's look at law enforcement, one smallish aspect of the growing problem. After years of slow decline, crime surged earlier this year, with insurance companies reporting a 20 per cent rise in claims. Some blamed a strike by security guards, who took to looting shops they had previously guarded and throwing scabs off trains.
Others pointed the finger at feral refugees from Zimbabwe. 'Capacity problems' in the police were certainly a factor, too. In the middle of all this, a convoy of expensive cars carrying senior ANC dignitaries rolled up at a prison outside Cape Town. Uniformed warders swarmed out of the gates, and the gathering turned into a revolutionary song-and-dance extravaganza in honour of Tony Yengeni, a popular ex-MP about to start serving four years for fraud. Is this not bizarre? A politician accepts a discounted Mercedes from an arms contractor, lies about it, gets nailed - and several of the ruling party's most prominent leaders hail him as a hero, a staggering insult to their own criminal justice apparatus. In her eagerness to charm the rabble, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete went so far as to claim that Yengeni had never committed fraud, even though he pleaded guilty to same.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), termed her behaviour 'disgraceful', but there was no retribution. Why? Because a crackdown by Mbeki might cause figures like Mbete to defect to Zuma, who is not particularly punctilious about whom he accepts as allies. Don Mkhwanazi, for instance, got into hot water after hiring a 'well-known crook' to assist him in his duties as boss of the Central Energy Fund. Mkhwanazi claimed racists were defaming him, but fell silent when it emerged that his bent chum (who earned £300,000 a year) was channelling money into a bank account that paid Mkhwanazi's mortgage in a posh Jo'burg suburb. Mkhwanazi resigned in disgrace. Today he is a trustee of Zuma's unofficial election campaign.
My pal Steve says one shouldn't take such things too seriously, noting that respectable people have also cast their lot with Zuma. Maybe so, but Zuma's core supporters are scary. The other day they put on a spectacular display at a conclave of Cosatu, South Africa's mighty Congress of Trade Unions. Whenever an incumbent cabinet member appeared, delegates rose to their feet, waving red flags and chanting, 'Tell us, what has Zuma done?' One minister was jeered off the podium. The deputy state president was 'humiliated and degraded' by hecklers, who went on to sing, 'It is better for us to take over this country, we will go with the Communists.'
President Mbeki wisely kept his distance, but they had a song for him too: 'We will kill this big ugly dog for Zuma.' Alas, poor Thabo. I'm no great fan of our remote and autocratic president, but the charges emanating from the red brigade - 'betraying the poor' and 'tolerating inequality' - are asinine. A former communist, Mbeki saw the light in the late 1980s and cajoled his comrades into a historic compromise with capitalism. His saturnine manipulation of business and labour led to a massively increased tax harvest, which in turn financed the creation of a welfare state, with 11 million poor now receiving subsistence grants of one sort or another. This is amazing. A welfare state in Africa!
Unfortunately, such goodies are the fruits of gradualism, and I can't see us staying the course. Jacob Zuma wants the big job, so he promised to resurrect the ANC's revolutionary tradition, whereupon the movement's most dedicated activists immediately rallied to his standard. As I see it, the only way for Mbeki loyalists to block Zuma is by promising even more loot to the masses, and once they do that, Zuma will surely move even further leftward. Nobody (save DA leader Tony Leon, who is white and therefore irrelevant) is going to stand up and say, 'Sorry, folks, this isn't the answer, we have to work harder, exercise self-discipline and bring white technocrats back into government so as to make things work again.' And besides, if by some miracle Mr Leon started swaying the electorate, would our rulers put up with it?
The ANC dominates almost everything else, but it has never won an election here in Cape Town. This enrages the city's black power faction, which has prevailed upon the ANC to oust DA Mayor Helen Zille and impose a multi-party government. The stated reason for this initiative, launched two weeks ago, is that Zille's coalition is weak and unstable. Maybe so, but we all know it's really a power grab, inspired at least in part by fears that Africa's last white- and Creole-controlled city will continue to prosper while all else hurtles into a black hole of dysfunctionality.
What can we do?
Some in the ruling party have a peculiar view of democracy. They see it as a system designed to put themselves in power. If voters fail to understand this, their mistakes must be corrected by fiat. No, there won't be civil war. Whites are finished. According to a recent study, one in six of us has left since the ANC took over, and those who remain know their place. For apartheid-era law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, this turned out to be on his knees, washing the feet of those he sinned against during the struggle. Truly! He carried a briefcase and a basin into various government buildings and performed acts of abject contrition in public. No doubt Mr Vlok's bones were warning him to repent before the end came. Ah well. Let's look on the bright side. Osama bin Laden has no beef with us, we are not sinking into a Mesopotamian quagmire and the weather is wonderful in summer.
Anyone want a house here?
Fast condoms on sale in S Africa
BBC News
6 November 2006
Large condoms for S African men
BBC News
16 August 2005
The particular irony here is that in the past couple of weeks there have been 3/4 shootings in South London, not far from Brixton (are you South Africans quaking in fear yet?), and all our news channels, including the BBC, are engaging in a soul-searching moan-fest about our crime-ridden societies.
A further irony is that nothing that I have read, other than Rod Liddle's column in the Sunday Times last weekend, has dared to focus on the racial nature of these London crimes. As Liddle puts it: The brave politician would point out that African Caribbean men constitute 1% of our population and commit almost 90% of our gun crime and almost 25% of robberies; there is a profound cultural problem there that needs to be sorted, and fast.
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BBC and John Simpson are racist, say ANC
Telegraph
20/02/2007
South Africa's ruling party yesterday likened the BBC to "the most die-hard racists in our country" after a television report exposed the escalating crime problem.
The African National Congress responded to John Simpson, the BBC World Affairs Editor, who painted a damning picture of a country struggling to tackle violent crime.
Simpson went to Johannesburg's crime-ridden suburbs, where many of the 50 murders committed each day in South Africa occur.
The ANC statement said the SABC, South Africa's equivalent of the BBC, "would have absolutely no difficulty in focusing on particular areas of London, such as Brixton, to communicate the message that the UK is sinking under the weight of crime."
Jane Wynyard, a spokesman for BBC World, said: "We're aware of the allegations made by the ANC, but as the commercial news channel of the BBC we pride ourselves on impartial and unbiased reporting."
Mbeki builds $6m security wall around his own house.
Nelson’s got his statue, now for Fidel and Gadaffi
Rod Liddle
The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
I boycotted last week’s unveiling of the Nelson Mandela statue in Trafalgar Square because, inexplicably, there was no room on the plinth for Nelson’s lovely ex-wife Winnie, carrying one of her famous burning necklaces.
So often, in history, the role of the supportive wife has been overlooked. That, as the feminists will tell you, is why it’s called HIStory.
There was no room, either, for those black race traitors whom Nelson’s organisation Spear of the Nation, which he once led, subjected to “torture and staggering brutality” in Angolan concentration camps. They could have been depicted looking contrite and repentant under Nelson’s beatific smile.
I had hoped, too, that there might be room for two of Nelson’s close friends, those implacable democrats Colonel Gadaffi and Fidel Castro: but no.
Perhaps the problem is that Trafalgar Square isn’t big enough to contain all of our modern, progressive, political heroes. We should open a theme park, like they have in the former Soviet Union and old East Germany.
There people could wander around and gaze in awe upon the likes of Nels and Winnie, Muammar and Fidel, Abu Nidal, the pizza-faced despot General Manuel Noriega of Panama, Hugo Chavez holding out buckets of free oil to a fawning Ken Livingstone, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, stoically resisting Yankee aggression, his finger poised coquettishly over a red button.
Personally, I blame the whites.
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12 Die In S. Africa Immigration Attacks
CBS
May 19, 2008
Emmerson Ziso fled hunger and repression in neighboring Zimbabwe, but now he wants to go back. Even his violent, chaotic homeland seems a haven compared with Johannesburg, where weekend attacks on foreigners left at least 12 dead. "Most of the Zimbabweans want to leave. It is better at home than here," said the former teacher who was chased out of his home by a mob early Sunday. "It's spreading like wildfire and the police and the army can't control it," Ziso said, as he tried to help register about 500 people who sought refuge at the police station in Johannesburg's Cleveland area.
It was a scene repeated in other poor suburbs around the city. Angry residents accused foreigners - many of them Zimbabweans who had fled their own country's economic collapse - of taking scarce jobs and housing.
President Thabo Mbeki said Sunday that he would set up a panel of experts to investigate. African National Congress President Jacob Zuma, who is likely to succeed Mbeki next year, condemned the attacks. "We cannot allow South Africa to be famous for xenophobia," Zuma told a conference in Pretoria.
The weekend attacks came as the government tries to change South Africa's violent image ahead of the 2010 World Cup. South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, recording an average of 50 murders each day. Many in the ANC government took refuge in neighboring countries during apartheid and are deeply embarrassed by the current violence, which has targeted immigrants who came to South Africa from other nations in the region.
Police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said 12 people were killed. He said 200 people had been arrested on charges ranging from rape to robbery and public violence. The Red Cross said at least 3,000 people were left destitute.
Police said the worst violence erupted after midnight Saturday in Cleveland and other run-down inner city areas that are home to many immigrants. Two of the victims were burned and three others beaten to death. More than 50 were taken to hospitals with gunshot and stab wounds.
I'm brack and I'm ploud.
Chinese South Africans now black
BBC News
18 June 08
The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people. It made the order so that ethnic Chinese could benefit from affirmative action policies, aimed at improving living standards for black people.
Peter Hitchens on Nelson Mandela:
"Saint Nelson? Or not?
I have always resisted the cult of Nelson Mandela. There's no doubt that he endured a great deal in prison, and that his personal forgiveness and generosity were outstanding and helped avoid bad trouble in South Africa when apartheid eventually collapsed. This is creditable and deserves praise - but surely not the almost religious adulation accorded to this man. Why was no similar status given to heroes of the fight against socialist tyranny, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakaharov, Vaclav Havel, Anatoly Koryagin, Robert Havemann, or Lech Walesa? These people fought despotism and injustice, equally bravely, some of them suffered just as much as Mandela, or more, but their names are not much honoured now, and in some cases they are not even known.
The story of South Africa isn't over yet. Some fear that the violence which Mandela is credited with preventing may have been postponed rather than avoided altogether. . And Mr Mandela has to take some responsibility for the rather poor government he presided over, and also for the fact that he was succeeded by the deeply uninspiring Thabo Mbeki. If Mr Mandela had put his foot down, the far superior Cyril Ramaphosa might have taken over, which could have changed the future not only of South Africa but of Zimbabwe too. .
Mr Mandela has also been far too indulgent towards horrible tyrants such as Fidel Castro. He says he's grateful for their support, but that really shouldn't blind him to the fact that Castro put people in dungeons for disagreeing with him. Then again, there's the question of Robert Mugabe. Why won't Mr Mandela, or Mr Mbeki, help the legitimate opposition to Mr Mugabe? Imagine the difference it would have made if Mr Mandela had led thousands of South African observers across the border to watch over the now-ruined elections. Those who go into a swoon over the Rainbow Nation really do need to consider these things.
Better late than never...
Mandela condemns Mugabe 'failure'
Incidentally, Hitchens' comment lead me to try and imagine Alexander Solzhenitsyn hanging out with the Spice Girls and attending rock concerts in his honour... I'm not sure it fits so well with the rest of his bio. (Usual wiki disclaimer on the link.)
A moving article sent me by a South African friend, indicative of what is happening in that country.
Tribute to the late Michael Magcaleka Jwambi
The Free Market Foundation of South Africa
Dec 08
In 1997, the Free Market Foundation recognised the achievements of an exceptional entrepreneur. As the year comes to an end, it is fitting that we honour him and acknowledge his courage and clarity of vision. A tribute prepared by Cape Town director, Temba Nolutshungu, follows:
Michael Jwambi was no ordinary mortal. I knew him well, but in giving this account of his life, I have made a conscious effort to be as objective as possible so that who he was, what he meant to the people and how he dealt with the trials and tribulations of his life can serve to inspire and encourage those among us who feel in need of moral guidance in difficult times.
On 12 November 2008 Michael, who was 55 years old, was gunned down at point blank range by an unknown gunman/marksman at his funeral parlour in Khayelitsha. It is important to tell his story so that we can begin to fathom the meaning of his death and the magnitude of the act that ended his life so suddenly and so brutally.
Michael arrived in Cape Town in 1972. He worked first as a cleaner and then as a farm labourer. While on the farm he taught himself to drive and that enabled him to be employed as a bus driver. In 1981 he lost his leg in a bus accident (though he was not driving the bus at the time). When he recovered, despite a severe and awkward limp, he did vehicle maintenance and administration for various bus companies, including Elite Bus Services. His workplace experiences convinced him that he should explore business opportunities for himself and never work for anyone ever again.
In 1985 with R500 stock and a reserve of R200, Michael embarked on his first private venture – a spaza shop in a shack in Khayelitsha. He and his wife named the shop “Lingelethu” (our striving). He started out with a humble daily profit of R4, but his turnover soon exceeded R200 per day. When he realised there was potential for the business to do far better, he dismantled the shack and built a solid double storey corrugated iron and timber structure which comprised a supermarket below and living quarters above, where the family retired at the end of the day. The supermarket was renamed “Sivuyile” (we are happy) and soon it employed eight people, then ten, and then twelve.
Around this time Michael helped set up the Khayelitsha Business Association with Victor Mbauli as chairman. The association comprised pioneering entrepreneurs, the likes of which we may never see in the townships again. They were fiercely independent and worked long and dangerous hours. They were targeted by ruthless and murderous criminals at a time when assault rifles were ubiquitous and often in the wrong hands and the police were perceived as impotent in dealing with crime.
Spurred on by the success of his first business, in 1990 Michael expanded his activities into milk delivery. This business grew to employ twenty people and boasted a fleet of ten trucks, which delivered fresh produce to Khayelitsha, Langa, Gugulethu and Crossroads.
On 21 January 1993 Michael suffered a great personal tragedy. His supermarket in Khayelitsha was attacked by gunmen firing R4 and AK47 rifles. Not satisfied with shooting at the occupants, the attackers set the building alight using paraffin and gas tanks from the shop. When the explosions were over and the relentless shooting ended, Michael was the only one to emerge alive. His wife, son, daughter, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, niece and his youngest child, aged just nine months, perished in the fire. Michael always talked about his late wife Siziwe in superlative terms. She was hard-working with an entrepreneurial zeal that was second to none. Some time later Michael rebuilt his primary business amongst the ashes, on exactly the spot where the tragedy had occurred. I named him the Phoenix. Soon he established another supermarket in Mfuleni, as well as a fishery and a gas retail outlet. He employed a total of twenty-seven people.
Another tragedy befell him when he temporarily lost the use of his left arm as a result of an armed robbery. Michael told me that the gunmen had held him up at his business and demanded that he open the safe. Michael refused to open his own safe for robbers. He handed them the keys. They demanded again that he open it himself. He refused so they shot him in the arm in an attempt to terrorise him into submission. Michael told them that they could finish him off, but he was not going to open it. They left afterwards after opening it themselves.
In 1997 Michael was awarded the coveted Free Market Award by the Free Market Foundation. Later, his entrepreneurial achievements and fortitude in the face of adversity were recognised by the award of other prizes.
With his second wife, Alice, a graduate of the University of the Western Cape, Michael established the first funeral parlour in the Western Cape to be located within a black township. He then played a crucial role in the establishment of the Unicity Funeral Directors’ Association in 2001. In the midst of this excitement, Michael’s younger brother Zukisa was gunned down in 2003 in a robbery at the very shop that Michael had helped him set up. As if that was not enough, his wife Alice succumbed to breast cancer in 2007.
I recall a visit to his funeral parlour in 2005, in the company of colleagues. As he related some of the major highlights of his life, I saw him shed a tear for the first time as he wondered aloud why all these things had happened to him. We both broke down. How does one account for such cruelty and loss?
However Michael did not indulge in self-pity. He was a deeply religious man and he gave practical effect to his faith. He belonged to the Church of the Assembly of God. After the death of his younger brother he established a gospel-singing group called Youth in Action, which went on to release five CDs. He seemed to remain serene in the face of unspeakable loss.
A self-made man, his is the classic rags to riches story. Michael’s business achievements were anchored in the principles of personal responsibility and integrity, in an unshakeable belief that people can rise above their socio-economic circumstances, that they only need space or be allowed to create space. Despite having been on the receiving end of the harsh apartheid laws Michael believed in himself and that self-confidence and faith resided in every person. It is for me a real wonder that a man who had experienced so much hardship and pain still had the capacity to forgive and could find the energy and fortitude to start all over again. It is unacceptable that he should meet his end in this manner. His life is indeed a story of the triumph of the human soul against all odds.
It is fitting that he be saluted in this extract from the immortal poem of William E Henley:
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed...
It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul
Michael is survived by his eight children and broader family. His funeral was held at Willowvale in the Eastern Cape on 22 November.
South Africa's ruling ANC is trying to force through its National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, the pet project of the South African Communist Party (SACP).
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South Africa: The ANC'S Health Lesson for Obama
R. W. JOHNSON
Standpoint September 2009
…
The NHI committee knew only one statistic, which was that R56 billion a year (£4.1bn) was spent on the eight million people covered by private medical insurance while the state spent the same sum on the remaining 41 million of the population. This is a pretty average situation for a middle-income developing country like South Africa. But the ANC has already shown that it aspires to Scandinavian standards of welfare: it has created Africa's only welfare state, in which 27 per cent of the population receive welfare grants and only 11 per cent pay income tax. Accordingly the committee recommends that the whole population should be able to use public or private facilities quite indifferently, that anyone earning less than £4,000 a year should make no contribution and that the rich should pay for everybody — a sum equivalent to an extra R100 billion (£7.5bn) in tax. The SACP leader, Blade Nzimande, has been promising large crowds of the unemployed that they will soon be receiving care in private hospitals and that the Party will "wage war" on anyone who resists NHI.
Alex van der Heever, the only public finance specialist on the committee, was horrified, believing the scheme to be wholly unaffordable and "without any rational connection to South Africa".
…
The biggest problem is the collapsing state of the public-health sector. The ANC has made many of its political cronies hospital managers, with disastrous results… The reason why 8 million people are willing to pay top dollar for private health, paying taxes to sustain the public health sector, is that many are frankly scared of going to a public hospital. The public hospitals are, inevitably, flooded with Aids victims, at least 1,000 of whom die every week.
Even many NHI advocates admit that an NHI is unlikely to work unless public hospitals can be brought up to private hospital standard — but research shows that this would take at least 15 years with regular real increases in their budgets. They would also need an extra 170,000 nurses — who do not exist.
…
Apparently the proponents of NHI believe that the huge extra tax levies needed to make their plan a reality will come by way of a payroll tax, but quite apart from the craziness of taxing employment in a society with 40 per cent unemployment, the overall tax burden could be so heavy as to cause more middle-class emigration, further shrinking the tax base.
…
The more vocal communists clearly want to abolish private health altogether and would legislate to compel doctors and nurses to join the NHI, however unconstitutional that may be. The basic assumptions are that the white minority must be made to pay, by wholesale expropriation if need be, and that white capacity to pay is bottomless. In fact, whites now constitute only 9.6 per cent of the population, a proportion which continues to shrink, and they are already quite heavily taxed. But anyone who shows that no amount of redistribution from the top 10 per cent can make the bottom 90 per cent much better off is immediately dismissed as a counter-revolutionary.
The NHI … would cause further large-scale medical emigration but many of the 8 million who currently enjoy private health would be likely to emigrate too. The tax base on which this whole superstructure of Scandinavian welfare rests would crumble, along with the public health sector and what was left of the private sector after its forced merger. The resultant shambles would make the term "train smash" seem very mild indeed.
Not that I care for Dutchmen Nazis, but these days the echoes of SA's early steps down the Zimbabwe path are more frightening.
Statement on the ramifications of the killing of Eugène Terre'Blanche
South African Institute of Race Relations
06/04/10
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