OUT TO LUNCH

Judging by the comments from some of my esteemed fellow columnists on this website patience is wearing thin with the way the ANC raiding party are running the country into the ground. The odd thing is that the only people who don’t seem remotely concerned about this are the raiding party themselves and there’s probably a very sound reason for this: they have got away with thievery for so long that they now no longer fear any consequences.

But consequences there will be eventually as my learned friend Jeremy Gordin gently hinted at the end of his PoliticsWeb article “The Insect Inside”:

“But, given what the coterie of ganovim (thieves) who run this country have done, and are still doing, given the massive feelings of anger, powerlessness and frustration they’ve engendered, I’m not going to be too surprised if “Voetsek ANC” metamorphosizes soon from a social media line into the kind of action the fat and complacent are not going to like one little bit.”

Buying a luxury vehicle with stolen funds which should have been allocated to the purchase of PPE equipment during the Covid-19 crisis tends to make you rather visible. As indeed does buying a sprawling estate in an expensive Johannesburg security complex or buying ludicrously overpriced items of clothing like R30 000 pairs of sneakers. It’s one thing to post photos of yourself bragging about such ostentation on social media but the whole point of purchasing these things is to be seen out in public with them thereby rubbing the noses of those less fortunate in the dirt.

We are gradually learning the identities of the cadre scumbags who have laughingly robbed us over the past decade or so, although prosecution and an orange overall still seems a long way off. So what happens when said scumbag drives his R2 mln car off to his favourite nightspot in Sandton to bathe in Louis Roederer Crystal? Are we expected to genuflect and say “well done matey, you pulled that one off…. enjoy”. Not for long I suspect.

I am frequently reminded as a ‘right wing racist’ and as a former contributor to the SAIRR, that “white supremacist hate group” (© Kelly-Jo Bluen PhD candidate at the London School of Economics) that I resent black commercial success and want to hold the entire black population back lest I should miss out on my share of the swill trough.

This is a fairly typical lefty response and one eagerly echoed by many white ‘wokists’ keen to over-compensate for their pale complexions and the fact they can’t easily escape the country’s dismal future. They are the modern day equivalent of those who believed in 1930’s Germany that it might be advisable to cosy up to the Nazi party just in case things turned really unpleasant. That didn’t work out too well did it?

The fact is that #VoetsekANC Friday is gaining momentum on social media and there are many ordinary, law abiding, tax paying citizens out there who have finally come to realize that, to coin a UK phrase, they have been ‘royally rogered by the ANC without the use of KY jelly’. The sense of hopelessness and desperation is palpable.

This is dangerous territory. If we sink, as other countries have, to mob justice and vigilante squads then we are in unimaginable trouble. I still have every faith in the judiciary and the rule of law but I fear I am part of a rapidly diminishing minority. When, 26 years into democracy, you still have to share a water pipe with your neighbours, use a shared chemical toilet which remains unemptied for days and live in a tin shack which floods in winter and is as hot as hell in summer you may well have reason to doubt the sincerity of the bloke who rolls up in a gleaming Range Rover Sport to promise a ‘better life for all’ in return for votes before driving off to meet his latest consignment of donated Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

Admittedly the signs were there for all to see but slogans like “I didn’t join the struggle to be poor” and “now it’s our turn to eat” sounded so sexy and revolutionary way back then to those who were doomed to live a life of hopelessness. Wasn’t “our turn to eat” supposed to include all the oppressed and not just the few?

The major failing of the ANC in the admittedly difficult period of Covid-19 has been one of a spectacular lack of empathy and humility. Not easy when the Presidential spokesperson allegedly has her hand in the till, albeit vicariously. I know some will disagree with me but I think that our government has, on the whole, managed the Covid crisis a lot better than many others. The USA is a total disaster and my own homeland, perfidious Albion, has been nothing short of a dog’s breakfast.

The A-level results debacle and the decision as to who should and who shouldn’t get into university this year is a disgrace. And just imagine the mockery our government would have been subjected to if one minute you were allowed to holiday in Spain, Croatia, Malta or Austria and the next the government was slapping a 14 day quarantine rule on returning tourists from those destinations.

At least NDZ was consistently stubborn and we knew where we were, even if we didn’t like it that much.

No, our problem is the epic amount of well publicized Covid related corruption piled on top of the already epic state capture and the fact that the General Secretary of the raiding party can smilingly lift a big fat middle finger to 56 million South Africans and say in effect “What? You never knew you we were stealing from you? We’re all in on this so suck it up”.

However, as the President explained to an incredulous people over the weekend, it’s all the fault of apartheid; a sort of ‘the devil made me do it’ unconvincing defence. It’s mind boggling how out of touch with public sentiment this poor man is.

Over the years I and many others have been labeled ‘racist’ because of our criticism of government. This is fairly easily explained by the country’s demographics so if your government is predominantly black and corrupt then that’s where the accusations land. As I said when I got sacked from the Sunday Times back in 2008, “assholes are like M&M’s; they come in all colours”.

The screams of ‘racism’, amplified by our Marxist friends in the media and those organisations who unconvincingly claim to espouse ‘liberal’ values are now ringing a bit hollow. Thanks to the Covid corruption the howls of protest are now widespread. The ANC might like to think about that as they kick the prosecution can further down the road and continue lying to the people.

The next election may be a comfortable four years away but I’m getting the impression that many South Africans can’t afford to wait that long. I wonder how long it will be before the ANC get the message.

***

One of the frequent topics of conversation on social media among the ‘twittering classes’ is whether one should get money and self offshore ASAP? The feeling that we are living on borrowed time in SA and it’s only a matter of months before we are the new Zimbabwe is gathering momentum.

Of course, the ‘twittering classes’ are a fairly rare breed and only include those who a) have wealth to transfer offshore b) have transferable skills and c) have foreign citizenship. So that rules out around 54 million SA citizens who have no choice but to sit out the coming hell.

With regards to getting your money out of the country the question is where were you in 2008 when the Minister of Finance was encouraging you to do just that and help weaken the rand to promote exports? With the current exchange rate you may as well not bother. A small flat in Wimbledon will set you back the equivalent of R12 million.

If you do decide to take your savings offshore at this late stage make sure you don’t invest it in a currency that might not look so good in a year’s time. The mighty US dollar…. too big to fail? Don’t believe a word of it. Nothing is too big to fail these days. But let’s assume all goes well and you get your money offshore (where interest rates don’t exist and you have to put your faith in the Stock Exchange).

Are you planning to join that money at some stage? If not then remember that you still need to pay for your utilities and groceries in rands. Also don’t forget that communist regimes such as the envisioned NDR Utopia the ANC are planning may well help themselves to a large chunk of your repatriated savings as punishment for being unpatriotic.

If, on the other hand, you’re planning to emigrate and escape the looming chaos then pick carefully. It used to be easy to take a sheet of A4 and write down a list of names of countries that you’d like to live in based on their political stability and quality of life. That sheet of paper would be pretty empty now.

I am told Iceland has a beautiful three weeks of summer, crime is almost non existent, the people are friendly and some even speak English.