OUT TO LUNCH

I ran an opinion poll on the absurdly named ‘X’ (which every sane person still refers to as Twitter thank heavens) suggesting that the ANC may be moving into what I termed its ‘scorched earth’ phase where it would be going out of its way to ensure that whoever succeeds them (assuming it comes to that) would inherit as big a mess as possible.

A few people responded saying that, whether it was intentional or not, a mess is inevitable where the ANC are involved because they can’t help themselves. They are on some sort of a political autism spectrum with attention deficit disorder, repetitive destructive behaviour and poor social skills the key symptoms. This presumably qualifies them as ‘victims’ and worthy of our empathy….or not, as you may think. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

I think that’s quite a generous interpretation but I still reckon the ‘scorched earth’ theory holds true, particularly after listening to Frogboiler’s comedic performance last Thursday evening. Well, to be honest, I only started to listen to it and became nauseous quite quickly so turned off the wireless and put on some soothing Sex Pistols lullabies instead. Give me Johnny Rotten over Cyril Rotten any day. I knew that whatever the Frogboiler was about to spout would be all over the MSM and the hard work of picking out the relevant bits would have already been done by conscientious young journos working through the night.

Judging by the response the 2024 SONA didn’t go down too well with Frogboiler’s ‘fellow South Africans’ and social media was full of mocking memes the following day. If ever Frogboiler feels that he has had enough of being a global statesman then a career as a stand up comedian beckons.

How’s this for pure comedy?

“We have delivered on our commitment to bring substantial new power through private investment on the grid which is already helping to reduce loadshedding”.

As all good comedians know, timing is everything if you want to milk as much laughter out of your audience as possible. Just after the SONA waffle shop was over, loadshedding went from Stage 2 to Stage 4 and then to Stage 6 just after midnight. Masterful stuff.

Frogboiler’s other wonderful gag was the joke that he was looking for a pen to sign the NHI bill into law and so cause major mayhem amongst medical professionals. Such a tease isn’t he?

Now, PolWeb readers will be well aware that there have been several well-intentioned approaches to government concerning the wisdom and viability of the NHI proposals not to mention the absurd cost. These approaches have come from respected business organisations and economists but their protests have fallen on deaf ears and the NHI fiscal suicide mission is firmly on the launch pad. You have to hand it to the ANC don’t you…. their links to the rape happy Hamas lads where strapping on a Semtex suicide vest and blowing yourself up in a crowded building is de rigueur has clearly had a strong influence on ANC political thinking (sic)?

So it was this sudden acceleration in crass stupidity that prompted me to launch the aforementioned poll where 92.5% of those polled agreed with my ‘scorched earth’ scenario, 2% disagreed and 5.5% wanted more time to think about it. Admittedly the poll only attracted 200 responses, but my Twitter followers are multiracial, can all do joined up writing and can obviously spot a phoney disguised as a President. So, it’s all about quality over quantity then.

I have never touted myself as a scenario planner, or ‘futurist’ as I believe they like to be known, but if I had my time again I would have dumped the financial market nonsense and the glittering career as a celebrity columnist and gone in for some well remunerated soothsaying. It really is money for old rope because all you have to do is pretend to know what the future holds and then sell this special visionary knowledge to the corporates who will lap it up and pay well for the privilege.

A fellow croquet player who comes out from England for a few months every year to visit his Somerset West mansion got hold of the book I wrote back in 2007 (Screw it, Let’s do Lunch) from his local charity shop. He is massively impressed that pretty much every political forecast in that book has come uncannily true in the past seventeen years. He is convinced I have supernatural powers and has lent the book to fellow residents of his complex with strict instructions to read it cover to cover. Suddenly I have become the Nostradamus of the Cape Winelands and I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if people start pestering me for the forthcoming lottery numbers before long.

However, being a credible ‘futurist’ isn’t simply a matter of hazarding a guess at what might happen to our beloved country. To be convincing you need huge computers to crunch the data and produce various scenarios with the appropriate percentages of likelihood. This is the only way you’re going to be taken seriously and get people to part with big money to listen to your gloom laden tales. But there is a downside to that.

You’ll remember that, at the beginning of the COVID outbreak in the UK, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) came out with all sorts of terrifying predictions of widespread death and urged the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to put the entire country in lockdown and restrict people’s movements and freedoms. A post COVID enquiry under retired judge Baroness Hallett has found that many of the possible scenarios spewed out by the SAGE computer, with forecasts of up to 6000 deaths a day post Omicron, were way too pessimistic even though those figures were what SAGE was asking government to base their decisions on.

In fairness the SAGE forecast was for between 600 and 6000 deaths a day which is a pretty wide spread but not even the lower figure became a reality. That’s the problem though with computer models; they don’t take into account human behaviour and if you programme them for a worse case scenario that is what you’ll get.

I don’t want to get too fancy with my late life career conversion to a futurist or scenario planner and I won’t be making mention of red or green flags or roads high and low. I will just be taking a very calculated guess (as I did back in 2007) and tell you what I think is inevitable given the evidence. If anyone questions my credentials, I will pretend that I have a sophisticated, number crunching computer code-named ‘Nostradamus’ (because everything is based on a hunch).

First things first, what is likely to happen post the 2024 election? Think multiple whirring fans and hot smelly stuff hitting them. An ANC and EFF coalition is not an impossibility. Clearly the ANC have no clue how to run a country and see power simply as a way to enrich themselves. If they retain power you can expect more of the same, whether they are in a coalition or not. The only people likely to benefit post-election 2024 are luxury car dealerships and dodgy construction companies.

The EFF revealed their manifesto last week and obviously a land grab without compensation is top of their agenda. How this would play out with all the wealthy foreigners who have bought wine farms and other top end properties in the Western Cape remains to be seen but my calculated guess is that the EFF may come up against some resistance and it may not always be in the courts.

The EFF favours violence as we have seen over the years and the stated policy of killing white people has been repeated without any fear of prosecution. So, any whiteys who think that the constitution and the legal system will protect them are living in LaLa land.