The Week That Was

Gerald Potash,

Hello again,

This week was all about Wednesday.
With Ramaphosa in America to meet with Trump and taking some Ministers with him, we, the world champion and I settled down at 5.00pm to catch up with Cyril and his entourage arriving at the White House. They were a little late but that just added to the excitement. With Ramaphosa were four Ministers and once they were in the Oval Office we saw Johan Rupert (the richest South African and keen golfer) waiting with our two golfing greats, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. Also there was top businessman, Adriuan Gore. I ws going to show a cartoon of Cyril entering the White House done by Zapiro but my system is letting me down. So no cartoons this week.

As the meeting got underway we saw that Ramaphosa is not stupid and he flattered Trump while stressing that we need mutual support for both of our countries.The press was present and also the two Presidents entourages. Also in the Oval; Office was Johan Rupert, the richest South African, who is a keen golf and our two famous golfers, Ernie ElsAdrian Gore  and Retief Goosen. Adrian Gore, top businessman was also there. 
Trump also had one or two more than his usual entourage and one of them was Elon Musk whom Trump referred to as a South African. Trump gave Johan Rupert and each of the golfers a chance to talk and they each did very well. So much so that I will be voting for a golfer if any of them wants to stand for office.
The meeting got off to a rather tense start and then Trump pulled a surprise , ambushing Ramaphosa by telling them to dim the lights and play several TV clips that had been collected, The clips show Julius Malema ranting in Parliament “Kill the farmer, kill the boer” and then the next clip showed Malema ranting in a packed football stadium to an enthusiastic crowd of followers. The final clip showed Jacob Zuma doing the same thing.
All of this was caught on live TV and Esther and I watched spellbound as Ramaphosa was clearly caught offside by what had happened but he tried to explain that the two leaders in the clips are of minority parties and SA has a freedom of speech. 

Then there were questions from the press and we saw then that Trump is also not stupid. He certainly didn’t let any journalist take a strip off him. 
After that they left for lunch and a private meeting took place to discuss the business for which Ramaphosa was called to  America.  

It does seem that the meeting went well. I look forward to reading all about it in the press later this morning.

The news story that would have made this weeks’ news highlight was the budget delivered in Parliament in the afternoon. Vat was not increased, but certain basic foods that were zero tax-rated are no longer exempt from vat. And petrol, booze and cigarettes have all had tax increases. All in all a rather disappointing budget. 

Even before the budget was presented Julius Malema called the budget “another lie”. He talks nonsense saying that the government wants to privatise state-owned enterprises so that people will be without jobs. he is as bad as Jacob Zuma in doing whatever he can to keep himself in the news. 

The recent municipal by-election results from the end of last week show it is a big mistake to write the ANC off. The majority party won a seat in KZN against the MK party and took two wards in Gauteng. In Stellenbosch, the DA  easily retained their seat but there they had a particularly poor voter turnout.
Gayton McKenzie, leader of the PAC (and our Sports Minister in the GNU) has declared war on the ANC telling them that his party is going to take all their wards in the Eastern Cape.

This week there was again news on our soldiers in the DRC. They were all supoosed to be home by now but we don’t have the money to bring them back.  I tell you again, i don’t make up these stories.

Early this week it was reported that more than 12,000 foreign nationals are in our jails because they are in contravention of our Immigration Act. Can you just imagine how dire their situation must be back for them to want to come here.  Some bad news is that Eskom has warned that we have a shortage of skilled staff for our SOE. There is a shortage of engineers and other qualified staff necessary to keep our power stations operating.

A very worrying story on the Business Day front page on Tuesday foretells the story that Nissan motor car assembly plant may have to close down. The problem is not only the threatened American sanctions , which in Nissan’s case affect mostly BMW X3’s and Mercedes Benz C-class vehicles which go to the States. But not only Nissan are feeling pressure. The new new Chinese models are beginning  to  make a strong statement in our market.

The sporting weekend saw the Stormers clinch a spot in the plays-offs of the UCR championships .Sadly, but not unexpectedly Spurs lost again. The weekend sporting highlight was, undoubtedly the tennis final where Alcatraz beat Sinner. What a game off great tennis.

Although I didn’t think Wednesday couldn’t get any better with news…..Spurs played Manchester United in the final of tone European football championships in Balbao, Spain last night. And Spurs won!!!!!!!!
1-0
Jonny, a Spurs season ticket holder,  who is in SA from London messaged me straight after the game to tell me how to end this newsletter.
“Its easy being a Spurs fan”.

Tom Moyane, fired by Cyril as boss at SARS, our Revenue Services, was in court again this week to get his job back. The court gave him a real snotklap in a blistering judgement.  It also gave President Ramaphosa the green light to appoint a new head of our Revenue Services.

The judge went further and handed down a punitive costs order against Moyane, saying his conduct throughout proceedings had been “abominable” and “reprehensible” and that he had “abused the process of the court”.

The judge found that Moyane’s failure to give evidence to the Nugent inquiry, which dealt with the efficient functioning of SARS, displayed an “astounding lack of insight into what is required for any leadership role in SARS”.

Talk about a snotklap! Will he appeal, he can, but I doubt it,  notwithstanding his attorney’s keenness to do just that. But these costs are harsh, to say the least, and surely he has seen what happened to Accused No 1today.

Oh Accused No 1 was in the news earlier this week too. Talking of snotklaps; the Constitutional Court this week issued a scathing judgment against former president Jacob Zuma’s decision to sign a South African Development Community (SADC) decision in 2014 that removed its tribunal’s powers over member states in the wake of Zimbabwe’s land reform dispute. This is all about expropriation without compensation and from reading the judgement it is quite clear that Accused No 1 has no idea what law means. He and his cronies believe they are chiefs and I am pretty sure that they further believe that chiefs are above the law. Well, slowly they are learning. The costs of this matter are for Accused No 1 alone. He appealed an early judgement that was just as clear.

Hey, Jacob, don’t forget too add these costs to the costs from the judgement given this morning.

Oh, Julius Malema was also in court this week for calling on blacks to occupy land. Land grabs are illegal, but Malema’s defence is that these laws are Apartheid Laws and are no longer applicable in the new SA.

The BLF (Black First Land First) Party advocates killing whites if blacks get killed. They want 5 whites killed for 1 black killed. They are treading on dangerous ground and stoking up racial hatred. It is a crime. They must go to jail, not hog the press.

This week the Jewish Cemetery in Wellington was vandalised. Grave stones were knocked down and some were broken.     The Jewish Board of Deputies has pointed out that everyone who lives in SA is protected as equal under our constitution. The police have opened a case of malicious damage to property, but I am not holding my breath that the police will solve this case. 

The VBS Bank heist is having some pretty serious ramifications. 7 mayors, appointed by the ANC in towns in the Northern provinces, are no longer in office. They have been booted out for their part in illegal giving municipal money to the only “black bank” in the country.

But what about those who plundered money and are living the life of Riley? What about Floyd Shivambu (2 IC to Julius in the EFF) and his brother who stole R16 million because they could. Floyd put pressure on the bank to get money to buy his parents a home when they were not able to pass the bank’s credit worthiness test. The Daily Maverick, and particularly investigative journalist, Paulie van Wyk, has written all about Shivambu’s modus operandi and it is as crooked as it is devious. 

He manipulated the system to get the loan through that they were not qualified for. He even used devious means to keep the loan hidden in ghost entities, so as to hide their connection.

This is a blatant crime.

Will Shivambu or his brother be prosecuted? 

Stealing R16 million from the poor is obviously not nearly as serious as stealing cosmetics from a chemist. That is where our police can show how affective they are and the poor get sent to jail for that. R16 Million, is just too big a case for them.

Then there is the story of the ‘illegal cigarettes’ magnate, confessed criminal, Mazotti, who not only is funding the EFF but also the ANC with the R600 Million he owes the Fiscus in back taxes.

It gets worse, it has to do with cigarette smuggling, cheating SARS and being the big shot at political party functions. The story is long and it is complicated, but as Paulie van Wyk writes, you just have to connect the dots.

As the press gets to see more and more how corrupt the EFF is Brandan’s cartoon in Business Day just about gets it about right again:

The ANC’s integrity commission (all of a sudden they have a Integrity Committee!) has recommended that Danny Msiza, the ANC’s treasurer in Limpopo Province, step down as he is directly implicated in the VBS Mutual Bank scandal. He is exposed by investigators, Werksmans, as a commission agent.

I would like to see Accused No 1 in jail for what he did to this country. The ANC in KZN would like to see him back in parliament as an MP. There is a determined scurry amongst the ANC branches to get their favourite candidates onto the party-lists ahead of the May General Elections.  Zuma has huge influence in KZN, but he also has big support in Mpumalanga and the Free State provinces.  Accused No 1 is still very much a force to be reckoned with. What this clearly shows is the disunity in the party. If Zuma does make it onto the list it could have a devastating affect on Ramaphosa’s grip on power in the ANC.

The crimes have been committed. The evidence is public. Where is the NPA? Will the new head, Shamila Batohi, make the difference from Shawn, the sheep, who sat on his hands for the entire time that he was there elevated above his capability? 

We need to get these high profile personalities into orange overalls and allow them to rot in our horribly overcrowded jails. Nothing else is going to stop the on-going corruption. Even Ramaphosa, this week, has called for prison for (ANC?) officials caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

There is a view that this disunity could cause the ANC to split. Peter Bruce, the political commentator, and erstwhile editor of the Sunday Times & Financial Mail, has been punting we all vote for the ANC to allow Ramaphosa a solid win in next years’ election………that will strengthen Cyril’s standing in the party and the thinking is that he will then be able to move more decisively in removing the rot.

Their is another strong view, that if the ANC doesn’t do well, the Cyril-faction could join with the DA to form a new party.

Last week, The Institute of Race Relations held a snap poll to gage support for the various political parties here. According to the results, the ANC would receive 59%, the DA 22% and the EFF 10% if 69% of our voters turn up to vote.

The Dept of Higher Education has lowered the mark required for a pupil to be admitted into university. Now you need only 30% for your primary language exam and 50% in four other subjects to gain entrance to university. There has been much debate about these lowering of standards and what is likely to be the result of it. One result will be the even further lowering of the standard of qualifying school teachers, where the current standard is totally abysmal. 

The Sowetan reports that Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the deposed head of the SABC is going to contest next year’s election. What a joke. It gets funnier when you read that that this joker says he is going to defeat Ramaphosa. 

This is what we have to read in our newspapers and it isn’t anywhere near April, 1.

There are some matters that I need to bring to your attention.

1. Some of you, mind you, not many, have complained that they find the font of these weekly updates too small to read easily on their computers. I send to my  other email address a copy of these updates and I find no trouble checking them once it is received. So now this part of the email is going out in front size 18 and the first part was in font size 15 instead of my normal 14. On my computer it reads as font size 12 once received. Please let me know whether it is correct that I should use the larger font only.
2. I am going to take a break from writing these updates for a while. Our Sydney family will be with us for a couple of weeks and we are going to be here, there and everywhere with them. Anyway, all the politicians are on leave already so what is there to write about?
3.  The season is upon us and thanks to you I have lots of touring lined up…..so…. 

The Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry is delighted that Cape Town has been voted the best City in the world by the conservative readers of Britain’s Daily Telegraph for the sixth year in a row.

The news comes a week after Cape Town was voted as the second best city by a much wider audience of the travel magazine Travel and Leisure.

“We should bear in mind that we are being judged largely as a holiday city and as a summer refuge for “swallows” from the northern countries,”  

As many of you know, I am a wonderful advertisement for the Woolworths food store in the Waterstone Shopping Centre, just down the road from here. Well, our coffee catch-up this week was at that wonderful coffee shop and it was special, because it was with our dear friends from Atlanta, Barbara and Mike. Mike is back in CT to celebrate his medical class’s 50th anniversary…….my, my but we are getting old. Bev, the world champion’s best buddy was there too, as was “Granny” Margaret, who is as much in Atlanta as in Somerset West these days.

When you have good friends it really doesn’t matter that you only see them only occasionally; they still remain close.

The Coach and Denise are back after seven weeks in Oz. Had a brief encounter this morning, but there will be many more stories.

The 7’s competition in Cape Town was a huge success again this year. The whole weekend saw a full stadium packed to the rafters. Fiji won, deservedly and SA improved last week’s poor performance in Dubai by taking bronze. They actually beat the New Zealand team in the play-off for bronze.

The SA Open (The 2nd oldest Open in golfing history) was won by Loius Oosthuizen. His first win in three years, for this humble former winner of the British Open.

Spurs won in their weekend league encounter and retained their third-place position on the log…..but it is tight up there right now, with plenty of league football coming up in this holiday period.  

Excitement was defined in Barcelona on Tuesday night when Spurs, after a disastrous start in the Champions European League, actually drew against the champions and so managed to qualify for the knock-out stages of this most prestigious sporting event. 

Oh, the 4000 fans who had traveled to support their team were delirious with joy. You should just see the pictures!

What remains is for me to wish you all the very best for the year ahead. May you have a good, healthy and peaceful year.

As always, love to all,

Gerald