The Week That Was

Gerald Potash

Hello again,

If I asked you to guess what happens 75 times every day in SA I am not too sure how many of you would actually guess what it is. It is the average number of murders committed here, daily. It is simply shocking.
Joblessness, poverty and generally the state of lawlessness with many perpetrators getting away with their dastardly deeds because of our poor policing adds, no doubt, to this depressing fact. The crime figures were just released for the last quarter of 2021. A small spark of good news is that the number of murders for Cape Town has decreased somewhat but more about that later.

Julius Malema faced Afriforum in court this week, defending his singing of the freedom song “Kill the boer, kill the farmer”. Afriforum is suing him for hate-speech but he says he didn’t sing it. He did say a helluva lot more though. He is a hate-factory and his hate is for all white people.
He told Adv Mark Oppenheimer, (acting for Afriforum) that he will be President of this country one day “whether you (Mark Oppenheimer) like it or not”. He called the Advocate incompetent and a terrible lawyer and was as arrogant as he always is and extremely aggressive. Malema is scary and the quicker he gets his comeuppance for his criminal activities the better for us all.
But this trial was a bad mistake. It gave Malema the opportunity to publicise his views and it will make him stronger in some voting circles. He thrives on publicity and exploits it.
He is right out of the Hitler playbook and remains an undeniable threat.
This weekend he was out campaigning for 1 million members. He wants one member of his party in every household.

Ace Magashule was in court on Monday & Tuesday for a pre-trial session. Actually when he is in the limelight he uses that opportunity to repeat his mantra to the gathered press that the NPA have nothing on him and they are wasting time and money. It was interesting to hear the prosecutor on Tuesday telling him and his lawyers to read the charge sheet if they want to know why he is in court. The fact that the ‘Asbestos roofing’ project was run by his office while he was Premier of the Free State and the fact that his province paid R255 million for work which they outsourced and which cost between R21 & R31 million, is a detail that doesn’t ever come into his press utterances.
But Karyn Maughan, top legal reporter for News24 has warned that there are holes in the NPA’s case and they better fill them properly before the trial starts.
This Brandan cartoon from the Sunday Times some months ago still hits the nail on the head. Like the person he looks up to, JZ he asks……..After all what did I do? I mean he was only in charge of the whole asbestos roofing project.

Arthur Fraser, once Director-General of our spy unit SSA ( the State Security Agency), was elevated into that position by Jacob Zuma. When Cyril took over he was not fired but moved to head up prisons notwithstanding that he had just been found guilty by a panel looking into his conduct, of disgusting wastage of tax-payers’ money while he was in charge there. He squandered R1 billion and was implicated in fraud and corruption. Well, it has come out that he lied about his qualifications and was never at the University of London (Churchill was) and in fact he was a bouncer during his time in the English capital. This information is from the writer, Jacques Pauw.
Doesn’t this go to show how guilty the ANC are in their lack of oversight and competence in appointing (unqualified) cadres into key positions ? It is just so typical and so frustrating. Following this revelation the newspapers this weekend gave many examples of ANC big-shots elevated into important positions because of their lies and the lack of qualifications—just like Dudu Myeni at SAA and Hlaudi Motsoeneng at SABC.

Then, John Steenhuisen, leader of the DA has asked in Parliament why lifestyle-audits promised by Cyril four years ago haven’t been put into practice yet. He says that would get rid of the crooks in the cabinet quickly and reduce corruption in our country.

Yesterday our new Min of Finance delivered his first budget since having been appointed. He is a lucky fellow in that the price of metals has sky-rocketed this year and it has given us a bit of welcome cushion in that the mine-houses have accordingly paid increasingly more tax as their profits soared. Sin tax is up (of course) but there are certain cushions for the tax-payers. SAA will not get the 3.5 billion that it is short but some SOEs like Denel and Eskom are being helped. Not all is good, though and those wealthy with assets of more than R50 million will have to declare that and there are other matters coming under the microscope, too. There will be plenty of analysis in the weekend press.

The census is upon us. It happens every 10 years but this time it may take 10 years to complete. It’s hard to explain how poorly the government have gone about their task. None of my friends has been questioned and neither have we. Where? How? When?
Pathetic organisation as usual.

Last week three prospective councillors at an ANC municipal meeting were shot. All three are in hospital with serious wounds. Has even one perpetrator of the attack been apprehended?
Don’t be silly. Not infrequently are ANC municipal officials murdered. It’s become a dangerous occupation.

Mind you, eight would-be robbers were shot and killed during a foiled cash-in-transit heist in Johannesburg on Monday where 25 heavily armed gangsters tried to rob a cash vehicle.
11 of the armed robbers were taken into custody but some got away. Of those who fled and are being sought, two are policemen, one of the dead was a police lieutenant.

The Sunday Times Mampara if the Week is again Bheki Cele, our Minister of Police. He makes up facts and just goes on spewing nonsense without even blushing and he was giving evidence at the currently running Commission into the ‘insurrection’— wearing another one of his fancy hats throughout. He unblushingly tells the Commissioner that he knows nothing, nothing was ever discussed with him and remains an embarrassment.
Many believe that the poor effectiveness of our police is because our Police Minister and the Chief Cop hate each other and are forever fighting.
What a Mampara Cele is! Is this the best Ramaphosa can do for Ministerial quality? Cele is a very typical member of Ramaphosa’s cabinet. But then, each week the Sunday Times could quite easily pick another member of that cabinet as their Mampara and give very cogent reasons for the selection.
Natasha Mazzone, the DA whip called out several ministers by name in her response to SONA last week whom she would like to see sacked. She told Cyril that they are worth nothing more than ‘a fork in soup’.
This is Zapiro’s view on the crime stats and what our Minister of Police is doing about it:

This week we heard that our airforce planes don’t fly. The entire squadron of Gripen-fighters is grounded because we have no money to service them and our airforce helicopters are also gathering dust. Our submarines are rusting—oh, one is operational. Apparently we now have more admirals than operational seaworthy ships in our navy.
Even the army hospital is a disgrace.
The armed forces are a joke because there is no money and when they were called out to “help” like during the insurrection they stood around with machine guns not knowing what to do. Anyway, what do we need an army for? Perhaps to do the job of the ineffective police ?

This week the government announced huge salary increases for those already overpaid state workers and then they went and gave R50 million to Cuba!!
Our poor have no food and are hungry, our systems are falling apart, but this government gives money away. It is unbelievable.

Nedbank has told Iqbal Survé that they are closing down his 43 different banking facilities. He has gone ballistic and, of course, has accused all SA banks of racism. His rags, you can hardly call them newspapers anymore, carry his tirade —always with a photo of him. You see Nedbank aren’t the first or even the second bank to walk away from Survé and all his entities. He is becoming unbankable (that is exactly what happened to the Guptas and probably why they ran away to Dubai). Amabungane, the investigative journalism group, have exposed Surve’s group’s malfeasance this week. Among the reasons for closing his accounts are ‘odd’ transactions ranging from donations to Carl Niehaus and others, to what was tagged as a R25-million divorce ‘settlement’ paid from funds held by the struggling African News Agency. (Since when do Co’s pay divorce settlements?)

Dennis, that character of note got the usual suspects together at the CT Press Club on Monday to listen to the young (36 year old) new mayor of our city, Geordin Hill-Lewis tell his story. How very impressive this well educated fellow is. He doesn’t waffle, he tells it like it is and not all of it pleasant. That Strand St in the middle of the city is becoming a squatter camp with homeless people living on the pavements in tents is shocking but his hands are tied to a large extent to do anything about that. CT does have its own “police force” though and they are making wonderful strides in reducing crime, particularly in the scary suburbs where gangs are rife. (An interesting aside; these ‘police’ are recovering at least one unlicensed fire arm every day; and more than a third of them were police issue. Hill-Lewis wanted to know if that didn’t prove that SAPS is the largest arms dealership in the country.)
This mayor wants to make CT free from load shedding and has great plans in that direction. He also wants to get the trains running again, but that is an enormous problem because about 10,000 people now have homes on the rail tracks.
Thanks to Dennis you can watch the little more than 1 hour of the Mayor’s address by clicking on this link:
https://youtu.be/utIK_lP7wNQ

Tom Cruise has landed! According to reports, the Mission Impossible actor is in South Africa filming the latest instalment of the action spy film franchise and fans are loving it. He was spotted in KZN and again in the Kruger Park. One of the journalists wanted to know whether he was going to make contact with Accused No 1 while he was in KZN to ask him whether he (JZ) will be court for his corruption trial on April 11.

Let’s not talk too much about the cricket test against New Zealand. There is a difference between embarrassing and deplorable. The Proteas were humiliated and something must be done but I am not going there.

Did you watch the soccer on Sunday evening? Spurs played the top team. They played away. Tottenham had lost their last three games and were given no chance. And in one of the most exciting games we have ever watched, the coach, sitting on the couch and I saw Spurs go ahead 3 times in one of the most thrilling games ever. The final goal came at the death through the quality of Harry Kane who was totally brilliant throughout (and he is the captain of the England team!)
But then last night Spurs went down 0-1 to Burnley.
Oh, it’s hard to be a Spurs fan.

As always,

Gerald