The ANC inherited a morally and ideologically compromised state, but one which was the envy of Africa in many ways.  It was far and away the most advanced educationally, industrially, technologically and had a first world level banking system.  The provincial hospital system provided a fantastically affordable and top notch service albeit with disparities across racial lines.  With South Africa the darling of the world, the first 15 years were plain sailing and the economy grew significantly.  This allowed the medical system to be equalised across racial lines.  However, the consequences of badly thought through policies, corruption, state capture, the burgeoning of indolent and incompetent supernumeraries in the state sector and the defunct SOEs put increasing pressure over the next 15 years on all state activities.  Eventually the medical system copped it and it flatlined in 2023.

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The ANC has a symbiotic relationship with shit.  In the 30 years in charge of the country, the ANC has created a pile of doggy do and then has fed off of that individually and organisationally.  Jacob Zuma is the embodiment of that.  He has been both the creator in chief and the parasite in chief.  He has also been the main shit stirrer.  No more so than when he shocked the ANC and political commentators just before Christmas by announcing that he is going to vote for the MK Party while remaining an ANC member.

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2023 saw Biden play hide and seek with the exit from the podium a number of times while Trump played hide and seek with the truth, the Republication debates and his innumerable court cases.

Internationally, the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine droned on, much to the horror of around 300,000 Russian mothers, not that Putin cared.  His ‘chef’ Prigozhin tried to execute a coup d’etat and failed.  It didn’t take long for Putin to execute a coup de grace and change him into pulled beef by placing a bomb on his plane.  He got off lightly.  He was dead before he knew it.  Normally it takes years to die in a forgotten Siberian Gulag, or between minutes and weeks to die by Russian poisoning as you reflect on your reckless ways, or about 3 seconds of wondering what the world record is of surviving freefall onto concrete from your 10^th floor apartment.

It was turning out to be a boring year until Hamas put on their one act production of egregious killing, rape of the most sexually repressed kind, beheadings, mayhem and hostage taking of innocents across the age spectrum.  The Israeli response to the deaths of about 1400 was, “We raise you 20,000.”

On the home front, things meandered on and one could just platz from all the platitudes spewed out in Squirrel’s ‘Family Meetings’.  He did once wistfully wish that we could be less negative like the Chinese.  What planet does he live on? Negativity and criticism results in immediate cancelling by the state and strenuous re-education to teach you the error of your ways.  Just ask Jack Ma, probably China’s richest man. 

6 years after it began and 18 months after the last volume of the Zondo Commission into State Capture thudded onto Squirrel’s desk, 5437 pages in all, the Prison’s Department still has to put out a tender for orange jumpsuits. Ho, hum.

2023, though, will be remembered as the year the electricity died.  Future parents will tell their kids about how tough it was growing up without electricity and how they went through gate and UPS batteries like Malusi Gigaba goes through teeth whitener and baby oil.

So Much for 2023.  The forecast for next year is mild with a chance of meatballs, or big Macs with a side order of bone spurs if Trump wins, but the coming years don’t look good – actually, sunny, too sunny.

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In the nigh on 30 years of ANC misrule, it desperately tries to convince everyone and itself that it has done a good job.  The two main metrics they quote are that they have rolled out electricity and water to virtually the whole population.  True, but they are both running sores and for similar reasons – corruption, incompetence and cadre deployment. 

Yes, they rejigged the racial distribution of wealth but mainly by making a few black people fabulously wealthy and giving a multitude of overpaid sinecures to black people in government while unemployment rose to amongst the worst in the world.  Our consistently world beating GINI ratio changed from reflecting the black/white wealth divide to reflecting those who got to eat at the trough and those who missed out and are jobless and rely on a variety of grants.

By most other metrics, SA is a failing state.

Unfortunately, SMAC can offer no solace and only a cynical view of what will be a cheerless Christmas for many as they face a bleak time with nothing but Cyril’s platitudes to sustain them.

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Elon Musk, the boykie from Pretoria made good, seemed to be a man with the Midas touch.  Since buying Twitter he now seems to rather have a touch of madness.  From the get go, he was not only all over the place, he was all over the planet, if not, all over space.  He has managed to alienate just about everyone with x-twiteratti looking more like a bunch of Angry Birds. 

His unprecedented success has led to excessive arrogance and hubris where he is no longer content to be the smartest man in the room, but the smartest man on the planet (and Mars as well) and is prepared to use up some of his considerable fortune and go down in flames trying to prove this.

He thought that by bringing the X-factor to Twitter he would be creating yet another success story.  Instead, X, formerly known as Twitter, has joined the busted flushes like Artist, formerly known as Prince and Ye, formerly known as Kanye.  Soon everyone will be calling him Prick, formerly known as Musk.

In his latest act of self-destruction, when major advertisers suspended their accounts due to his support of an anti-semitic post, his response on public TV to the was to explete, “Go f**k yourself!”