Our national anthem ought to be “Send in the Clowns”.

By David Bullard

These days I find myself standing back , shaking my head and having a quiet chuckle at the many economic problems South Africa faces. I’ve even been known to silently mouth the words “told you so”. I realise this is not a good thing but I think it’s got something to do with age and the fourteen odd years I spent “farting against thunder” as a newspaper columnist. I was re-reading my first book, Out to Lunch, which was published almost ten years ago, and what I was writing about then I am still writing about today. Nothing has changed. We have learnt nothing and we still seem set on a course of self destruction. We are the Amy Winehouse of global economies.

Of course, pointing this sort of thing out inevitably leads to one being labelled a “racist” which is the predictable reaction one can expect from people too stupid to debate important issues. Launch into an attack on our government’s economic non-performance and you’re bound to be accused of wanting the black man to fail/not believing that the black man is entitled to wealth/not having made the transition to a new South Africa etc etc. It’s the biggest load of horse shit you can imagine but what more can you expect when first world thinking has to co-exist with the majority of a country still stuck in the middle ages? Because, let’s be brutally honest here, we may be the Cradle of Mankind but the early settlers certainly didn’t stumble across anything approaching a sophisticated and developed society (over to Biko Lives). After all, why invent the wheel when you don’t plan on going anywhere?

However, the confusion comes when a country like South Africa pretends that it wants to play with the big boys in the global playground but doesn’t have the stomach for it. Our latest and, to date, most embarrassing example is the way our government is treating the Walmart deal. Having eventually given a qualified go ahead for the US retailing giant to invest in SA it seems as though our Economic Development (sic) Minister Ebrahim Patel has changed his mind and now wants to put a permanent stain on Walmart’s reputation. This means that, even if the deal does come off, it will always have a taint. One wonders how a buffoon like Patel can hold such an important position but nothing surprises me these days. Most of those holding high office in this country I wouldn’t trust to put bread in a toaster without fucking it up. Our national anthem ought to be “Send in the Clowns”.

I heard on the radio last week that foreign investment had fallen 70% in the past year. Is it any wonder when we are so hostile to anyone who comes knocking on our door keen to do business? But is there any point in any of us suffering high blood pressure because of this? Absolutely not. The best course is to hedge your bets by getting money offshore and to significantly reduce the amount you pay to the taxman. If you have a small business here then wind it down before it gets seized, taxed or legislated out of existence. Why would anyone want to deal with a lazy and uncommitted unionised workforce and a government openly hostile to capitalism?

Forget all the bullshit about the ANC wanting to create jobs. That’s just a guilt trip being laid on the dwindling minority of the economically active. The government’s task is to create an environment conducive to job creation and economic prosperity. They’re clearly too dumb to understand that so why on earth would private enterprise want to try and help when it’s quite clear that the government is going to screw them over?

If you run a hospital you tend to put people with medical experience and knowledge in key positions. If you run a university, hopefully you would appoint well respected academics (although that clearly doesn’t apply at some of our Universities so it’s not a great example) as heads of faculties. When you run a country you would hope that people who have some experience or understanding of the business world would be given key cabinet positions but that doesn’t happen. Instead we have a clutch of luxury car driving halfwit Commies with lunatic ideas who simply cannot grasp the fact that we are sailing merrily on to failed nation status and are deaf to advice.

Link: http://www.NewsTime.co.za