Gerald Potash,

Hello again,

SONA was a disaster for Cyril.

Most of the press this week had full ‘goes’ at Ramaphosa for a pathetically weak State of the Nation address last Thursday evening which was more like a boring ANC campaign message. A long one. Ramaphosa tried to show the strides made under the ANC government since 1994 and referred to an imaginary young lady born in that year, whom he called ‘Tintswalo’ who had electricity at home supplied by the new government, went to school and then varsity and graduated—all because of the (ANC) government.  Well, the press let him know in no uncertain terms that there are far, far more Tintswalos who are not that lucky. They grew up in a shack that didn’t have electricity, went to school for no more than a year or two and certainly didn’t graduate. In fact they are part of the 62.1%  of the kids aged between 15-24 who are unemployed and who today stand at the traffic lights and beg because of the ANC. Too many of them are abused and suffer indignity every day. And too many of these young kids go to bed at night hungry.

But Mr President did not mention that.

Ramaphosa’s speech was nothing more than lies and wishful thinking. Like every year he advises how we are beating the energy crisis in the country because they have done this or that…. ..like last year appointing a new Minister,  a Minister of Electricity. Well, as he was talking our load shedding moved from stage 1 to stage 3 and then on Friday it was ramped up to stage 6 (that’s 10 and a half hours of no electricity a day!) You have absolutely no idea what that is doing to business.

—An aside; our (large) inverter has packed up;  the constant automatic switching on and switching off due to the power outages killed it—but can you imagine what these outages of up to 4 and a half hours at a time does to the food in your fridge? We are having an extra hot summer and temperatures are often up in the 30’s. The high 30’s. The last thing you should do is open your fridge to get blocks of ice or something to eat while the lights are off, if you do that too often everything in the fridge starts to go off and worse, soon you will need a new refrigerator.

The Daily Maverick brings out a weekly edition in print (called 168)  as well as their daily on-line postings. Their big, bold headline on this week’s edition says it all:

                      What the heck!

                             CYRIL

                30 years of ANC promises and the state of the nation is still a mess.

 This cartoon by Rico from their latest edition of Business Maverick really hits our problems on the head where Ramaphosa is serving us:

Tim du Plessis in the weekend Rapport put this SONA succinctly; it was a staggeringly pathetic performance that should give all of the opposition parties great hope for the coming election, the date of which hasn’t yet been announced but more and more journalists are calling it for the 22nd of May.

Du Plessis also opines that Ramaphosa’s ANC will take a beating and it will be because of power outages and Zuma’s new Party denuding ANC support in KZ-N.

This was  Dr Jack’s cartoon in the Afrikaans press on Friday reflecting on “Ramaphosa’s credibility”:

Translation:=Tuma mina (at his first SONA, after ousting Zuma he called for all of us to ‘follow me’);  There are no farm murders anymore;   The ANC has reformed; I know nothing about the millions in my sofa on my farm Phala Phala;  We are tackling corruption;  We are neutral about Ukraine;  Israel is working towards a regime change here.

As you can see his promises are all a pack of lies.

Election date or no date the Opposition Parties are canvassing and holding meetings and creating news if nothing else. The EFF filled the Moses Madhida stadium in Durban (55,000) and sang ‘Kill the boer’ and made promises like creating jobs for all. In fact Malema said they would create 4 million jobs when the take over. According to Malema the EFF is the only political party that grows at every election. He quoted the latest IPSOS poll that shows that they will overtake the DA and become the official Opposition Party.

Malema believes it is only a matter of time before the EFF becomes the governing party in SA.  Heaven forbid.

Then City Press on Sunday ran a front page where polls show that Zuma’s new Party, the MKP, is causing massive defections from the ANC to their Party. The Party has now starting canvassing outside of the KZ-N province and last weekend they were in Alexandra, Johannesburg.

Tim du Plessis believes the ANC will take a hiding which will mainly come from Zuma’s Party and will get them under 50%.

Dennis, that character of note called the usual suspects to the Press Club (CTPC) to hear what Musi Maimane had to say with the general election looming. There were only three suspects with Dennis at the table; Paul, Kenny and me. Musi, who was once the leader of the DA, speaks well. We all enjoyed his crisp account of our political situation but I somehow doubt that his new Party, BOSA —Build One SA—will make much of an impact. As I told the suspects if my vote wasn’t desperately needed by the DA I could see myself voting for his new Party.  What a pity he left the DA.

Late on Thursday afternoon Cyril is coming to the CTPress Club. I hope he is ready. Paul has already sent an email to his spokesperson with the question he will ask and unless Cyril answers it by mail before the meeting, there could be sports. The question has to do with corruption which carries on here, unbridled. Paul is demanding a Chapter 9 institution, independent and well funded which will be free from government interference. This will then allow action to be instituted against those in high places to return the money illegally obtained. Court  orders have been delivered (the Glennister cases) where the government has been instructed to set up mechanisms to prevent corruption. Has the government done anything about it? Don’t be silly;  but why not?

I’m not expecting Cyril to win this battle. Paul is ready.

The clash will be exciting…..So watch this space.

Andre de Ruyter, (erstwhile CEO of Eskom) who is currently a senior fellow at Yale, says his future plans include coming back home to SA and possibly writing another book. De Ruyter was afraid for his life after receiving warnings and left in a hurry. His outspoken allegations were all about top (ANC) politicians and the sabotage/ corruption that is still happening at ESKOM.

A bipartisan bill in the United States wants a review of that country’s relations with SA. Our Dept of Foreign Affairs believes that it will gather no muster and it is most unlikely to affect our trading relationship. I am not so certain.

On Monday the DA won a important battle in the Constitutional Court, our top court. The ANC appealed an earlier court ruling forcing the ruling party to divulge the names of all the cadres that have been appointed to important positions since 2013. That’s when Cyril sat as Chair of the committee.  You might recall the ANC has repeatedly denied appointing unqualified cadres. Now we will see what comes out. The ANC has 5 days to hand over ALL the documents.

The DA’s threat to charge Paul Mashatile (our Deputy President) of corruption is no longer a threat. John Steenhusen laid charges on Monday at the Cape Town police station.

The coach and I were next door on ‘Oom’ Dawie’s couch to watch Spurs play Brighton on Saturday evening. The reason we were next door was not the whiskey but the fact that our inverter has packed up. Being without power for 10 hours a day meant that we were not able to watch at home due to a lack of electricity.  Anyway Spurs won 2-1 with a late goal with no more than 10 seconds left on the clock . I almost felt sorry for BHA. But as the coach says, a win is a win. And that gets Spurs back into the very important position of being in the top four on the EPL team log.

As always,

Gerald

SOURCE:The Week That Was – Africa Unauthorised