OUT TO LUNCH

Time flies and I only realised last week that it was all of four years ago that I was invited by the DA’s John Steenhuisen to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that leads up to the State of the Nation address (SONA) by the incumbent president.

Of course, back then we actually had intact parliamentary buildings and the whole pomp and circumstance that went with that was great fun. Now that parliament is still an unrenovated burnt out shell things aren’t quite as glamorous. I didn’t crack a post COVID invite this year thank heavens which meant that I didn’t have to come up with the famous Peter Cook put down “oh dear, I find I’m watching television that evening”. After all, who on earth would want to brave the Cape Town traffic to attend an event that was being held in what amounts to the village hall?

I didn’t even bother to follow it on television because the whole SONA thing has become rather predictable. As happened four years ago, it’s a given that the EFFers will make a nuisance of themselves because they have short attention spans and can’t sit still for too long. Then somebody will hit someone else and security will have to be called.

Once the chamber is cleared of disruptive riff-raff the president is free to burble on about his erotic fantasies of bullet trains crisscrossing the country, of smart cities popping up all over the place and of plans to eradicate poverty, build a million new homes and create jobs.

It was slightly different this year but the EFF, true to form, used the occasion to demonstrate that should they ever come to power we may just as well throw in the towel. I have commented before that I don't know why a political party led by thugs and alleged criminals is even allowed to exist but I guess if the ANC is allowed to exist on those terms then there’s no good reason not to allow the EFF.

If the EFF have any policies or strategies to improve the quality of life for the majority of South Africans then they are keeping very quiet about them. While various legal experts have stated that the EFF technically did nothing illegal by storming the stage with Pres Frogboiler on it and that they were simply demonstrating their democratic right to protest, what happened last Thursday could be a chilling foretaste of what is yet to come post 2024. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

The EFF love to use quasi military terminology so Malema, instead of being the party leader becomes the Commander in Chief (CiC). There are command councils and whenever there is a chance to smack a few white heads the EFF ground troops are sent to stir up some street violence; although they didn’t do terribly well at Brackenfell.

The EFF claims to stand for the emancipation of the poor and downtrodden but the bling lifestyle of the party’s leaders and their very dodgy circle of friends and funders would suggest that this is utter nonsense. Not that the average red beret would even begin to comprehend that because the rank-and-file membership of the EFF suggests a pretty low level of education and an even lower grasp of reality.

So, when the CiC promises land expropriation without compensation lots of faces light up at the prospect of all those white land thieves being turfed out of their Camps Bay mansions and the keys handed over to the poor and downtrodden. Small matters of who would pay for the upkeep of the property are conveniently ignored.

Apart from the promise of an EFF run South Africa seizing all privately owned land and then distributing it on a more equitable basis the EFF also advocate nationalising banks, mines and other strategic sectors of the economy, again without compensation. This just goes to show how thick the EFF really are.

Having seized all the privately owned property without compensation, the majority of which will be bonded to a bank, there will obviously be a complete collapse of the banking system as the banks will have a huge liquidity problem and won’t be entitled to seize the property that they thought was collateral for loans.

So if JuJu and the EFF brains trust plan to nationalise the banks what are they proposing for the bank’s role in an EFF Utopian society? Presumably to lend money that doesn’t exist to people who will never be able to pay it back to buy very expensive things that will demonstrate their social superiority.

One of the other EFF promises to their gullible followers is that there will be “free quality education, healthcare, houses and sanitation” but no mention as to how this will be funded other than the massive development of the African economy. The worrying thing is that there are tens of thousands of people who actually believe this could all happen if JuJu becomes President.

If we thought that the ANC were a bunch of financial buffoons then I can assure you that the EFF will make them look like whiz-kids by comparison. Mind you, given the recent flights of fancy mouthed by Pres Frogboiler one shouldn’t be surprised that a party like the EFF also jump on the gross exaggeration bandwagon.

About the only thing to come out of this year’s SONA (apart from the news that we are now officially a State of Disaster which isn’t really news to PolWeb readers) was the announcement of a dedicated Minister of Electricity, or Captain Sparky as he or she will be known.

This seems to my cynical thinking just another example of kicking the can further down the road. Who is this wondrous being who will assume the mantle of Min of Electricity and make all our load shedding problems go away? The ANC isn’t exactly known for intellectual heft so will Frogboiler be appointing an outsider perhaps? Since the murder attempt of the departing head of Eskom I would imagine that willing candidates are as thin on the ground as snow in the Karoo.

The gloom-merchants have already suggested that the link between a National State of Disaster and the appointment of a newly created Min of Electricity is little more than one final pre-2024 chance for the cadres to steal whatever is left in the kitty and, given the disgusting shenanigans during COVID, who can blame them.

The one glaring omission in the SONA speech was any indication of what might happen to the ever increasing number of ANC scumbags facing serious criminal charges, many of them now going back years. Can we expect any of them to be wearing orange overalls any time soon or will they still be allowed, at taxpayer expense, to endlessly delay their court appearances and give the middle finger to the rule of law?

My guess is that it will be business as usual, that Zondo was just a ruse to make us think that Frogboiler was really cracking down on corruption and that SA will eventually, out of sheer desperation, be forced to sell out to Russia or China; the only countries prepared to have anything more to do with our international skunk status.

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When you see something priced at R199.99 in a bottle store do you immediately think thank heavens it wasn’t R200 because that would have been a deal breaker?

Or what about those properties which are priced at R4,999,999 which, if you were in a generous mood, you could chuck in an extra rand which would give you bragging rights that you lived in a five million rand property.

Most of the fresh veggies I buy seem to be priced similarly with a bag of sugar snap peas at R39.99. I don’t know about you but I find this both hugely irritating and insulting. Are we really supposed to believe that putting the price of R40 on a pack of sugar snap peas would deter us from buying them? Only if you were a semi-numerate cretin (and quite possibly a recent matriculant) would you believe that R39.99 was a substantially better deal than R40.