OUT TO LUNCH
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
(Judas Goat – a trained goat which is used in animal herding. The Judas goat is trained to associate with sheep or cattle, leading them into the slaughterhouse while its own life is spared)
Wasn’t it a wonderful start to 2018? Suddenly Jacob Zuma was no more than a horrible, festering memory as Cyril Ramaphosa rode to our rescue rather like the 7th Cavalry in a low budget movie. He jogged along the Seapoint promenade as the sun rose, being hugged by tearful lefties who fervently believed that the messiah had truly arrived. If they had been in possession of palm fronds they would have undoubtedly scattered them in his path crying Hosannah in the highest. They’re a bit like that in Seapoint.
Yes the New Dawn had arrived and the previous decade of ANC thievery was behind us. As St Julian of Norwich, the first published feminist martyr (a slam dunk for all you feminists), observed back in 1395 “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”. The thieving rotters would be exposed, their ill gotten gains confiscated and their sorry carcasses thrown into jail to rot.
The huge financial abysses left in virtually every corrupt state owned enterprise would be plugged to prevent further leakage and the gaping holes filled with sparkling new investment from international investors who, despite the claims of those racist rascals at the ratings agencies, would see us as the great investment opportunity of the millennium.
The rand rallied and the Seapoint libs did little jigs along the promenade as they walked their designer doggies before settling down to another busy day of soya milk cappucinos, calling out “racists” on social media and shopping.
But here we are in the season of goodwill hunting and it hasn’t quite worked out that way. The rand has had a sickly year, each day brings news of even greater assaults on the public purse and one can only wonder at the sheer chutzpah of the ANC when it comes to stealing from the electorate and depriving the very constituency they claim to represent from any hope of a better life.
Even I, as a world weary commentator on the human condition, must doff my rakishly angled Panama at the enormity of the theft. Not even the famed magician David Copperfield can make an entire country’s economy disappear.
The thing is this though. When David Copperfield makes something like the Great Wall of China disappear he generally brings it back at the end of the show and everybody goes home happy. I’m not sure that the ANC have learnt that part of the trick or even want to have a stab at it.
People often ask me what the mood in South Africa is like at the moment and I reply thus. It is rather like returning from a joyful, relaxing three week holiday with the wife and kids to find that your home has been broken into, vandalized, your valuables stolen, your family mementoes smashed, the walls scrawled with hateful graffito and every room has been defecated in. That is pretty much where most law abiding South Africans find themselves at the moment.
Where once was light, now darkness rules and it’s a matter of trying to piece back your life faced with what appear to be overwhelming odds against you in the form of a terminally kleptocratic ruling party, most of whom couldn’t be trusted with putting a slice of white bread in a pop up toaster without stuffing it up.
But, I digress, back to the new team captain.
Now it’s worth mentioning this little snippet of trivia, mostly because I suspect many of you will trot it out at those “racist” dinner parties we honkies are all supposed to attend where we snigger at the ineptitude of our leaders. According to the Forbes rich list Mr Cyril Ramaphosa is worth $650 million which easily qualifies as FU money in my book. But wait…Sir Michael Jagger, the lead vocalist with the musical ensemble collectively known as “The Rolling Stones” is worth $350 million.
Imagine that; after having to put up with 50 years of groupies, drugs, rock ‘n roll, strange encounters with Mars bars and Keith Richard’s jokes poor old Mick is only worth just a few hundred million.
I’ll bet he wishes he’d joined a liberation movement when he was at the London School of Economics when he could have made almost twice that amount in half the time. As the poet says, “Some sing about painting it black and some just paint it black”.
So Cyril is loaded, which makes us assume that, unlike most of his cabinet colleagues, he won’t need to steal any more of our money. He also dresses like an investment banker, enjoys fly fishing, is building a mansion on the Atlantic seaboard and thinks nothing of splashing out R18 million on a bovine ungulate. Hell…what’s not to like? He’s almost one of us cry the Seapoint libs delightedly, except he’s probably not Jewish.
The problem is that what we see on the CR lid may not be what is in the tin. He continues to surround himself with crooks and last week’s cabinet reshuffle allowed some of the most notorious snouts to remain perilously close to the trough.
Ah, but he’s playing the “long game” we’re told and won’t be able to truly purge his crime wracked party until he has won a decisive victory at the polls in 2019. By which time, say the cynics, his purpose will have been served and he will be recalled to allow the kleptocrats to get on with thieving whatever is left of the South African economy.
My own take for what it’s worth is that CR is an honourable man swimming in very dangerous waters. His boiling frog comment from 1994 is often repeated and taken as evidence that the ANC blood runs deep in his veins and that he has it in for the whites. I doubt the man who helped steer SA towards a new constitution pre 1994 wants anything more for this country than peace, prosperity and a favourable mention in future history books.
But I might be wrong. You see, the problem with following a “Judas goat” is that the sheep only find out their mistake when it’s too late.
