The good news first - ahead of his maiden speech on the 22nd October, the Minister of Finance, Mr Nene, promises to cut public expenditure quite drastically. Cuts in Ministerial perks, public sector wages, and limited bailouts for state enterprises seem to be on the cards and should be welcomed as money flows from our coffers into the pockets of politicians and civil servants largely unrestrained. The bad news - the budget cuts are allegedly being done to make way for the Russian-acquired nuclear reactors. I sincerely hope this is not the case.
Waste of public funds continues unabated. The claim that Tshwane ANC Regional Secretary benefited from R75 million contracts from that same municipality over two years is as common as media reports that bombard us daily of crony capitalism from the President's office down to municipal level.
Corruption is as incestuous as it is constant and this deluge of taxpayers' money to enrich the ruling elite is unsustainable and will backfire sooner than later. So when the Minister of Defense Mrs Mapisa-Nqakula admits that Armscor is experimenting with a R1.6 million budget to find the perfect shoe for women in the defense force because defense force women have ‘weirdly-shaped' feet, I wondered who got the tender this time?
This Cinderella ugly sister project has apparently taken six years to perfect and needs another year for Armscor to come up with the definitive female defense force shoe. To quote the Minister:
"Due to the diversity in shape, variability in foot sizes and specific foot characteristics identified in the SANDF population, commercially available uniform footwear does not accommodate the full spectrum of the female SANDF population"... "So they had to do substantial research to characterise the South African female foot".
When I sent this newspaper article to a friend, she cracked up asking, "has the minister ever heard of CROCS?"