The Week That Was

Gerald Potash,

Hello again,

Week after week we hear how little money the government has for this or that.  And week after week we becry the fact that SA is so underresourced. Then last week we heard that our Deputy President spent just over R900,000.00 for three nights accommodation in a hotel in Japan where he & his wife were on a short visit. He has spent R8-million Rand on travel expenses since July last year.

The ministers in the GNU have managed to spend (waste?) more than R200-million on travel in less than a year. This is disgusting! (Disgusting with a capital F)  
The Minister in the Presidency has hidden her travelling expenses.

This year she has travelled to South America & Russia as far as I can recall but she has given her travelling expenses she disclosed to only the Standing Committee of Intelligence, which is then kept secret. Why?

Now I quote from Daily Investor “South Africa is heading for a fiscal crisis as the country’s debt-servicing costs continue to balloon, crowding out spending in other areas that could boost economic growth and improve the lives of South Africans.”  Yet our Cabinet Ministers spend money like it is water or a Christmas present. 

This cartoon is from Brandan in Business Day earlier this week:

How many homes for the poor homeless people could have been built with just a fraction of that money?  And how many poor citizens would R200 million not feed?

We do not even have money to assist the prison service where we have 167,00 in our jails. The prison’s capital budget is underfunded by R222 million. 

Our cabinet is bloated and overpriced with far too many perks.  Cyril is directly to blame for this.  The press tells him that every week and he does nothing.  That’s Cyril.

The sudden replacement of Floyd Shivambu as Secretary-General of Jacob Zuma’s MKParty has made big news this week. The one-time best buddy of Julius Malema and he, who with Malema was co-leader of the EFF now becomes an ordinary back-bencher where he was a front man for the EFF.  There is considered opinion that Zuma’s daughter, Duduzile has the needle to Shivambu and it seems she is leading the MK movement. The firing of Shivambu can’t be good for MK and thoughts are that the Party is unravelling. 

The soon to be retired head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Shamila Bathohi has also been in the news and on TV all of this week. I am sick of her lame excuses for not doing her job properly. She has been in office for 6 years and not one of the politicians fingered by Judge Zondo in his commission into State Capture has even been charged, let alone jailed. I am not convinced by her stories although I hear her. She believes that her organization had been infiltrated and sabotaged in the past and she has not been able to get the quality that is necessary to act decisively. She should have done something about it, not tell us about it 6 years down the line. Even when she came to the CTPress club I was unimpressed by her. 

Paul Hoffman, of Accountability Now got much mileage out of all the publicity that Bathohi has given him and in an exceptional interview on SABC TV he tells it exactly like it is.

You can watch “Adv Paul Hoffman SC weighs on the NPA track record”   by clicking on this link:

I was really surprised to hear that Cyril is going to meet with Bathohi this week go try to iron out her problems. You can guess what the result of that meeting will be.

A story that has made much news this week is the possibility of Helen Zille becoming the next Johannesburg mayor.  This high-profile Chairperson of the DA was our mayor in Cape Town some years ago and there is movement in the enormous disaster that is the Jo’burg metropole that demands competent governance.  Zille is capable and can do the job but already people like Herman Mashaba leader of ActionSA, who was once mayor of Jo’burg as a DA member, is playing the race card.  Zille is strong and honest and would make a huge difference to the wealthiest city in Africa.

Ferrial Haffagee in the Daily Maverick reports that dodgy family linked tenders to the value of R972-million have been awarded by the Jo’burg city council this year. She believes this is nothing more than brazen corruption.

Fixing Johannesburg will be a very big job and no one could do it better than the feisty Helen. Let’s hope she takes the job.

I loved this cartoon from Siwela in Business Day yesterday:

Cape Town has again made the cut with the best restaurant in the world list.  This year not once, but twice. Both La Colombe and FYN are ranked in the top 50 restaurants in the world by 1,100 industry specialists.

Just a warning though, lunch at FYN can take 3 hours.

The weekend sporting events were dominated by the tennis finals in Paris and the rugby semi-finals in the URC competition. The Bulls beat the Sharks quite easily in Pretoria and will now travel to Dublin to face Leinster in the final.

The coach was with me on the couch to watch the enthralling final of the lady’s tennis at Roland-Garros. Coco Gauff was the deserved winner.

Then Men’s Singles final on Sunday was as good as it gets. The almost 6 hour clash was won by Alcaraz beating the top seed, Sinner in a classic.

On Sunday the 98th Comrades Marathon was run between Pietermaritzburg & Durban. That’s 98.8 kilometers. Too far. The winning lady, Greta Steyn won her 4th Comrades in a row and another South African, Tete Dijana, who also won the “down race” it was his third win.

For me the race was spoiled by the ANC Youth League and the EFF harassing the Israeli runners with their taunts of ‘Free Palestine’ and trying to interrupt them. Isn’t sport supposed to unite people? And are the runners responsible for their government’s actions?

In ending, I would like to mention Loius Massyn, the 75-year-old who is the first person to have completed 50 Comrades runs and Johannes Moehela who at 83 is the oldest runner to complete the race.

As always,

Gerald