In my daily life, I quite often ask questions of random friends, acquaintances or business associates; asking how they feel about what is happening in our country to ‘take the temperature’ as it were; on the direction we, as South Africans are heading towards. Usually, the response is something like “Well it’s pretty bad, but what can we do but carry on with our lives” or “Well, I try not to worry too much about what’s going on in the news. It’s so depressing, or, “What can we do? We must just hope it will turn out okay in the end.”
I know that people say that South Africans are “So resilient.” that has been true for many decades; but I’ve got news for all you ‘head in the sand,” ostrich like ‘fair weather philosophers’ – WHATS COMIN DOWN THE PIKE NEXT YEAR WITH THE ELECTIONS IS GOING TO BE ANOTHER KETTLE OF FISH ALTOGETHER! . What’s facing our country next year is dozens of political parties; mostly small and a couple of ‘biggies’ – We all know who they are; fighting tooth and nail to gain some kind of political advantage with no holds barred. We are all going to have to face a political and governmental crossroads like nothing we have ever seen before. NO “RAINBOW NATION!; LET’S ALL WORK TOGETHER FOR A BETTER FUTURE.” as we had in 1994.
No! This will be a totally new scenario. You think we are suffering now with loadshedding, less food on the supermarket shelves and horrendous weekly price increases for groceries; but from here on in, it is going to get a whole lot worse. According to our new minister of electricity, we will, be at stage 6 loadshedding for the foreseeable future. I have to ask – what is it going to do to all the SMMEs, factories, transport operators; including those that supply petrol to service stations and tourism operators when the loadshedding rate goes to stage seven or eight?. It will be a case of GET SOLAR OR SINK”!
FORGET ABOUT JULIAARSE. HE’S ONLY GOT ABOUT 6% OF THE VOTE NOW! – HE’LL PROBABLY HAVE LESS NEXT YEAR.
His only hope is to get together with a couple of small fry parties like the PA, Freedom Front Plus or The Good Party (who only pitch up at election time) and form a coalition; but together they’ll never make up 50% plus; and in any case his radical dogmatic stance on ‘land restitution without compensation’ doesn’t seem to be finding favour with any political parties at the moment; not even the ANC.
By all accounts, the so-called ruling party, the ANC, could only muster up about 45% if we had a vote today and next year they’ll have even less; no matter how many t shirts and how much fried chicken they give away.
CORRECTION – UPDATE IT MIGHT BE NIBBLING AT THE 51% LEVEL RIGHT NOW BUT CONSIDERING THE CURRENT DILLY-DALLYING ABOUT LOAD SHEDDING, I’M SURE IT WILL DROP BACK DOWN TO ABOUT 45 % AGAIN PRETTY SOON.
The DA; who I personally think is still the only party that has any chance of restoring some order to our country is not looking so good at the moment after the mess they made of their candidacy for the Johannesburg mayoral elections; so they will really have to pull up their socks if they want to participate and do well in the 2024 general election; in partnership with a couple of smaller parties like the PA under Gayton McKenzie and some others. I am pretty certain that the DA, standing alone, will not get 50% plus of the vote.
My fervent hope is that we will be able to get both the ANC and then EFF out of Luthuli House at all costs, because both these parties can only lead to more of what we have now; being Communist inspired state ownership of everything, including land and continuing cadre deployment, corruption, criminality, unemployment and a continuing slide into being a pennyless, dangerous place to live and a pariah in the eyes of the rest of the civilised world
Perhaps the best solution would be if the DA could partner with the PA under Gayton McKenzie (he has some good ideas!! e.g. put the gangsters into the army and teach them skillsi) and a couple of the other more sensible parties who are capable of working towards a scenario that has elements of democracy, non-racialism, getting the economy going, slowing down corruption and inequality and justice HA, HA,HA – If only ! – then South Africa could start the long climb back to being the great country it could be.
( P.S. What is extremely interesting is the fact that Treasury has commItted to a 300 Billion Rand loan to Eskom over the next twenty years. Secondly, there is a professional technical review of Eskom’s operation that is still ongoing! Until that is finalised – it is still unclear what Eskom’s and the electricity minister’s plan is to solve the energy crisis???. That outcome could have a huge bearing on the 2024 election results.)
What is equally ridiculous is our newly appointed Minister of Electricity who thinks that using emergency diesel supplies to keep the lights on will somehow solve the energy shortage. Using diesel in this way is horrendously expensive; was only designed as an emergency measure and is totally unsustainable
The confusion over the energy crisis continues unabated. Now, all of a sudden, now, Ramaphosa, flip flopping all over the place as usual, (I think he has too many advisers and gets confused) suddenly decides that the only way out of the energy crisIs is to sign a twenty-year partnership with KARPOWERSHIP TO THE TUNE OF OVER 200 BILLION RAND to provide energy for the country! Yes! believe it or not, he is reviving that DODO again, that was previously rejected by the ANC hierarchy because of the serious damage it would cause to the environment, not to mention that it would also drive the cost of electricity even higher!
As usual; typical of all ANC solutions, THIS IS A “QUICK FIX SOLUTION THAT WILL DO SEVERE DAMAGE TO THE COUNTRY! and I believe that the motives behind this move are:
(a) to make the president look good in the eyes of the electorate before the election. He always pitches up at the height of every crisis on his ‘white horse’ to save everyone and then drops out of the picture smartly thereafter to go and look after his pedigree bulls; or whatever else he does when he is not governing the country; WHICH AFTER ALL, IS HIS REAL JOB – INSTEAD OF MAKING MILLIONS OF RANDS OUT OF CATTLE, THAT GO INTO THE ‘SOFA CUSHIONS.’
b) this is a strategy to try and convince the populace in the townships who are struggling in dire poverty; that the ANC is looking after their interests. Meanwhile most of those people have to survive on social grants, so-called side hustles that bring in precious little money to keep food on the table and allow their children to go to school.
Looking at this scenario, it seems to me; and I am sure many others who are not brainwashed by the president’s transparent and totally unrealistic promises – that a much better solution than entering into horrendously expensive 20 year contracts with KARPOWERSHIP for a number of karpowership deals, would be to contract for ONLY ONE SHIP and spend a much bigger portion of the budget allocation from treasury on refurbishing ailing power stations, improving the level of efficiency at Eskom as a whole; fighting corruption in energy procurement and FIRING ALL THE CORRUPT CADRES WHO ARE STEALING TAXPAYERS MONEY, USING ESKOM AS A VEHICLE.
By the way – I have to ask – Where is all this money that Treasury suddenly has coming from? – Is it perhaps Russia?
I’ll leave that one for everyone to speculate about!
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