The Week That Was

Gerald Potash,

Hello again,

Dominating our news this week is the huge amount of illegal and undocumented immigrants and the growing xenophobia crisis we are battling with in our country.  Illegal marches of protesting locals have dominated our press and Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have started repatriating some of their nationals.  We have seen pictures in the newspapers of groups being escorted to airports for their repatriation, but the figures do not show any real or noticeable reduction of foreigners. According to latest figures there are more than 3 million foreigners living in SA. 

Foreigners are blamed for the dreadful poverty and crippeling unemployment of so many SA citizens. Marches, by well-organized anti-illegal immigration pressure groups like ‘March and March’ have, with large crowds of supporters taking part, targeted foreigners and foreign-owned Spaza shops some of which have been looted or even set-alight. This group has given foreigners until 30 June to get out of this country. They are warning of deaths if not listened to.

Politician, Songezo Zibi, leader of the Rise Mzansi Party has also warned of bloodshed on that day unless proper steps are taken.

Add to that the fact that Cyril suddenly woke up to address this phenomenon with his talk to the nation on Sunday evening. He then repeated his thoughts in his weekly newsletter on Monday which has now elevated the foreigner situation to become even more of a concern. What did Cyril say? Very little we did not know. We have porous borders, (we know that) we have poor controls and inefficient police (he didn’t say that but we know all that) but he did say, as he has said before, that we are addressing all of those issues and now we are even getting rid of the green identity books. He also warned that only state-controlled bodies can address these immigrant problems and vigilante groups will not be tolerated.

Ramaphosa then also warned local institutions of hiring illegal workers and announced tougher penalties with fines of up to R1 million for employers violating the Immigration Act.  

The question to ask Cyril now is; why action only now? These problems have been with us for years and years and his government has simply not implemented the controls that have been in place since day one and that he is now asking for. 

So, you may ask, why is it that Cyril is now addressing this problem? Could it be because we are getting close to the upcoming elections?

The Dept of Justice has announced the opening of a special court, near OR Tambo airport, to handle illegal immigration-related matters.

Only the brilliant Zapiro can sum up a political situation in a cartoon like this from Daily Maverick on Friday:

But Yalo of Sunday World also got it right with his view on the tense situation:

A reason SA is under-performing and a reason for its high unemployment figure is a lack of decent education. Prof William Gumede of the Wits School of Governance points out that 500 schools do not teach maths, critical for economic advancement and further is his extreme criticism of the government’s lowering the pass rate for matrics to just 30%. Gumede believes these two factors are the cause of young blacks remaining unemployed. Youth unemployment (aged 15-34) means that 4.7 million people are without work. The expanded rate of unemployment for the country is 43%. It’s the highest in the world and it is certainly nothing to be proud of.

Gerard Papenfus, CEO of the National Employers Association of SA (Neasa) believes that the high unemployment figures have also to do with the BEE –Black Economic Empowerment– policy of the government. He is not the only economist critical of that policy. Elon Musk is equally against it.
 

It very much looks as if the ANC & Zuma’s MK Party are busy shutting down. That may be an overstatement but they are certainly losing support.  The ANC have done it to themselves as years and years of poor cadre deployment, corruption and disgustingly poor service delivery has caused many of even the most loyal supporters to abandon the sinking ship that the ANC has become. 

Two questions now arise;

1. Will the captain go down with the ship?
2. Which party will benefit most from the ANC’s lack of support?

Johannesburg and it’s lack of service and lack of funds is still making news daily. Reports are published of how the city is short of infrastructure maintenance and is subject to water and electricity outages.  The city has written off R45.16 billion in unauthorized, irregular and wasteful expenditure over the past 5 years.  It beats me why Helen Zille wants to be the next Mayor of the city. The city has just passed a budget of R97.1 billion but is owed around R75 million in unpaid municipal accounts. Nothing works and the suburb of Bedfordview has been without water for 11 days. Imagine that if you can!

In SA last year 2,716 girls aged between 10 and 14 gave birth.

Some good news is that Fitch Ratings has for the first time in nearly 21 years up-graded our credit ratings from BB- to BB. This rerating signals growing confidence in SA’s fiscal position. But our big problem remains economic growth.

I was interested to see on SA News the 5 most often misspelled words in SA are in order: colour, favourite, beautiful, license and weird. Croissant was only at 21 on their list. 

It has been 16 years since we have qualified to feature in a FIFA World Cup and that is when the tournament was hosted in SA. Our soccer (football) team, Bafana Bafana plays Mexico in the opening game of the FIFA World Cup on Thursday at 9.00 pm our time. All games that Bafana play at the World Cup will be televised live and free on SABC TV.

In our warm-up game we drew 1-1 with Jamaica but we could and should have done better.

Yellow cards more than anything else cost the Stormers a place in the final of the URC competition. The Bulls won their match in match against Glasgow Warriors 22-21 but in the third game that the coach and I watched from the couch where two of the best school rugby teams in the country faced-off against each other Paul Roos, my almer mata lost to Paarl Gym. What an afternoon of sport.  As I said to the coach, at the end of the long afternoon, lucky for us Spurs weren’t playing.

As always,                                                                                  

Gerald