Of course, ERII does not refer to season 2 of that long running soapie, ER, but rather to an even longer running reality show, namely the reign of Elizabeth Regina II with all its plot twists, infidelities, deaths and scandals.  After 70 years on the throne, she bowed out this past week with the quiet dignity with which she lived her life.  The Queen is dead.  Long live the King. 

I don’t wish to make many comments on her reign as small-minded people like Julius Malema have already taken their cheap shots at her.  The only time Julius takes expensive shots is when the EFF High Command toasts their latest trashing of Parliamentary rules with Johnnie Walker Blue.  All I can say is that South Africans have had a schizophrenic relationship with her.  The Afrikaners hated her, my generation of English speakers by and large had a soft spot for her, and the Blacks lived with her as much as one lives with piles.

The UK is the only country where the country’s name has never appeared on its stamps.  They merely bore an image of the current monarch. The number 8 must be bad luck for the monarchy.  In between jousting, King Henry VIII went through 6 wives trying to produce viable male issue.  King Edward VIII abdicated in 1937 after less than a year after insisting that his jousting with the divorcee, Wallis Simpson, be made a more permanent sport.  The result was that his brief reign is only marked by the issue of 4 basic definitive stamps and no issue to trouble the royal genealogists.  

By contrast, Queen Lizzie set world records – she appeared on 736 definitive and commemorative stamp sets.  The commemorative sets ranged through British history, achievements, current events and art and literature.  Apart from the classic writers like Shakespeare and Wordsworth being celebrated, the Queen also lent her profile to two sets in 2010 that celebrate the stories of A.A. Milne.  I am talking about one of the nicest bunch of literary characters ever conceived – Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends in the hundred acre wood.  These comprised 10 stamps made from the original 1926-8 illustrations by E.H Shepard which are as classical and timeless as the lovely, innocent stories which we could have far more of in these dissipated times of fatwas, elementary school massacres and narcissistic presidents and selfies.

Until 1966, the Queen’s head appeared as a photo (or a woodcut version of it) looking to the left in a ¾ view.  Since then, she appeared as a side-on view, either as a marble bust with a crown on the definitive stamps, or purely as a silhouette without a crown (maybe a tiara) on the commemorative stamps.  

Some people would not care a groat for her.  In the philatelic world, she’s the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time).

Oh well.  Time to turn over a new leaf in my neglected childhood stamp album.  My last British stamp was from about 1974 so I’m missing more than 600 sets of stamps.  Maybe I’ll keep up this time.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 2012 ranks as one of the worst in America with 20 kids and 6 staff killed by weapons that would make a SWAT team proud.  This uniquely American pastime was soon matched by that other favourite American hobby – the conspiracy theory.  In fact, they mainline conspiracy theories.

America seems to pander to the wacky.  There are the countless UFO sightings and it has the distinction of creating two new religions.  There is Mormonism, loosely based on Christianity but elevated to flaky status by the addition of the Book of Mormon inscribed on mystical golden discs.  Joseph Smith translated them using Urim and Thummim and seer stones (whatever that means) which only he had access to.  Hmmm.  Then there is Scientology founded by a science fiction writer and solely based on science fiction that invokes an extra-terrestrial life-form, Xenu.   What about all the sects and wacky evangelical churches with some services looking like a cross between a Britney Spears revival concert and a political rally.  One could possibly argue that they have also created a third religion – the Lore of the Gun – with the NRA being the higher power.  America, it seems, is fertile ground for the charlatan, hoaxer, conspiracy theorist and peddler of fake news.  With the exception of Mormonism, they are all mercenary.  But I digress.

Sandy Hook was grist to the mill for a number of people with a fertile imagination and wilful disregard for the facts.  The arch villain was Alex Jones who has made it his life’s work to promote alternative realities.  Sure, he is far-right but I don’t think that he truly believes in all the disinformation he peddles.  What he undoubtedly does believe though, is that it sells.  He’s a grifter at heart.  After a minor career in community radio and cable TV in Austin, he created Infowars in the early 1990’s which proved immensely popular among the disaffected right.  Although banned from most social media websites, he shoots his own video content for his website which attracts up to 10 million views per month.  The business model is simple, push the hell out of fake news and then sell his own branded merchandise and products.  For instance, he milked the Fukushima nuclear disaster to sell anti-radiation pills.   Sandy Hook came along and it was time again to elevate his image by cynically turning a tragedy into a conspiracy.  He claimed that this was a false flag operation carried out by actors.  For once he miscalculated and he pushed too hard for too long – after all you have 26 grieving real families who can prove that a loved one had been murdered.  He carried on pushing his disgusting false narrative irrespective of the harm he was causing them by trusting in his first amendment rights.  Wrong!

The day of reckoning finally came for Alex on 5 August when the families were granted a total of $49.3million plus costs.

In 47BC, Julius Caesar famously summarised his conquest of a minor potentate in Turkey as veni, vidi, vici – I came, I saw, I conquered.  Fast forward 2000 odd years and another despot with imperialist dreams, Vladimir Putin, thought that he could update this to Vladi – veni, vidi, vici (in Cyrillic of course) and get rid of that joke of a country with its ex-comedian President that was a painful reminder of a lost Empire.

This was going to be easy-peasy.  After all, using surrogate forces, Russia had conquered two important regions in eastern Ukraine in 2014 without any blowback from the West.  Also, Russia had three times the population of Ukraine and the second largest military arsenal in the world.  Following a massive build-up of forces, Russia invaded Ukraine from the east as well as from the north courtesy of his Belarusian stooge who had given Putin usufruct over the south of his country.  These were meant to be lightning strikes reminiscent of the German Blitzkriegs (Lightning Wars) of WWII – rapid and deep penetration by armoured columns, encirclement and the grinding of the demoralised troops into dust.   QED (Sticking with the Latin references, QED = quod erat demonstrandum.  I shall leave the actual translation as a tutorial exercise for the reader.  I might just note that I prefer the cynical student version of Quite Easily Demonstrated or Done after cracking a simple problem.)

But the Ukrainians hadn’t been sitting idle since 2014 and, with the help of American experts and Intelligence, they had prepared for a modern battlefield that involved the intelligent use of drones amongst other techniques.  They also knew their Latin and with a battle cry of Illegitimi non carborundum – a mock-Latin aphorism, translated as “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” – they devastated the Russian armoured thrusts.  They reversed the northern assault and stalemated the eastern one with appalling Russian losses in officers, men and materiel.  The vici part of veni, vidi, vici bit the dust to be replaced by cessi, loosely translated as I ran.

Putin has been forced to bring senior officers out of retirement including a 67-year-old ex-Spetsnaz General who’s the poster child for gastric sleeve surgery.  Their mercenary arm, the Wagner Group, has also been doing the rounds of prisons recruiting cannon fodder.  But where could he get his hands on modern drone type weaponry.

While Putin was mulling this problem, he realised that the Mullahs of Iran could help him if he spent a bit of moolah.  It seems as though the mulish Mullahs haven’t only been sitting around declaring jihads and issuing fatwas to all and sundry, but have also been busy beavers developing sophisticated drones.  So it was off to Iran he ran on 19 July.  Yes, there is talk of solidarity, of creating a single fortress and blah, blah, blah, but actually he is there for the drones. 

Quite embarrassing really for a superpower.  Almost as embarrassing as Biden fist-bumping Mohammed bin Salman who had ordered the vivisection of Khashoggi.

There’s a famous poster showing a steam train engine most of the way out of an elevated train station window with the saying, Oh Shit.  That is how Hlaudi ‘with a chance of millions’ Motsoeneng must have felt when the AFU (Asset Forfeiture Unit) came to attach his assets.

Hlaudi is a little man who was brought up in the arse end of the eastern Orange Free State.  This was Qwa Qwa, a little Bantustan of a few hundred thousand people scrabbling a living.  Not an auspicious start but what this man had in spades was ambition, self-belief and the will to kiss the arses of important ANC personalities.  These qualities took him all the way to the top with his ultimate blesser being Zuma, Mr Big.

As a freelancer for Radio Lesotho, Hlaudi managed to ingrate himself with the Chief Minister of Qwa Qwa with puff pieces.  Sensing the wind in 1992, he moved to Lesedi FM in Bloemfontein and cosied up to ANC heavyweights, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and his ace in the hole, Magashule.  He soon found himself in Mshini Wam’s orbit and landed a top job in the SABC as COO – not bad for an uneducated man from the foothills of the Drakensberg.  He now enjoyed the patronage and protection of uBaba himself, and his ambition knew no bounds.  He dispensed largess like a king throwing sweeties to his subjects and this extended to himself when he upped his own salary by 32% in 2015.  There were unwarranted promotions and appointments and at one stage, he gave R25million to artists.  Yes, part of SABC’s remit is to promote indigenous art and culture, but it is not a SASSA pay point.  It is supposed to nurture and promote them, not give them money out of hand.  Another one of his outlandish schemes in May 2016 was to insist on 90% local music content on radio stations.  When asked whether that was a bridge too far, he stated he would force it to be so and his ego couldn’t resist adding that I am “Hlaudi Motsoeneng, baby! I am in charge.”  But he committed his biggest sin when he sold off the family silver – all the SABC archives – to Multichoice for R650million.  Stupid or not and perhaps that was within his ambit as COO, but he claimed a ‘success fee’ of R11.5million for just doing what he was paid to do.

However, his Tata My Chance (a lotto slogan meaning, take a chance) has become Ta, Ta My Chance when he lost his job and the protection of Zuma who was by now powerlessly gnashing teeth on the sidelines at Nkandla bedevilled by paranoia while plotting revenge.  First his assets were attached, and then, in December 2021, the SIU (Special Investigative Unit) won their court case in the Gauteng High Court for the ‘success fee’ plus interest to be handed over.  Hlaudi applied for leave to appeal but that was turned down on 15 July with costs.

Like Zuma, Hlaudi is an appealing fellow, but only in the legal sense, so I don’t think this is the end of the legal route much trampled by unrepentant ANC apparatchiks.  Another case perhaps for the irrepressible Dali Mpofu and his grandstanding, misdirection, insults and dubious legal arguments.

South Africa is blessed with many game reserves which are responsible for bringing in much desperately needed foreign currency especially as the ANC seems to be constantly on the lookout for ways to debase it with their wastefulness and inefficient policies leading to ever increasing government borrowings.

There is an abundance of flora and fauna to attract overseas tourists and their lovely moolah.  Up the West Coast there is a carpet of delicate daisies to delight in spring.  But if meerkats are your thing, then the veld near Oudtshoorn is the place to be.  You can trek out in the chilly Karoo predawn to join a mob of meerkats for an hour or two as they wake up, stretch a bit, particularly their hardworking necks, groom each other and generally get ready for a busy day of looking for kak (mischief for overseas visitors).  They are fascinating creatures, but at the size of a small cat or large rat, they are not particularly impressive. 

What the tourists really want are the big five.  Some just want to do the ooh, aah thing while others want to shoot them for trophies.  Unfortunately, the odd-toed ungulate possesses an impressive horn which is suggestive of a rampant libido.  This attracts the unwanted attention of Asians in need of a quack sexual pick-me-up which in turn attracts the poachers in need of a quick financial pick-me-up.  At up to 4kg of horn per beast and a price of around R300,000/kg, the Rhino doesn’t stand a chance against an AK-47.  It’s satisfying work.  You can dress casually and you don’t have to go into the office every day.  Also, it’s less dangerous than a cash in transit heist as the Rhinos don’t shoot back.

Picking up on an earlier theme on poaching, I decided to publish a little fun drawing that I did for myself.  Some time ago I redrew the R10 note showing a dehorned Rhino and wondered if the Government would ever have the balls to break tradition and use our currency as an international protest platform.  After all, over the years the ANC has never shied away from using all other platforms to protest, mostly destructively. 

Even more radical would be to change the Rand to a Rhino after all the Rhino even predated the Khoisan in South Africa.   Looking eminently prehistoric, if that is linguistically logical, they have first dibs on our country.  Then again, maybe the crocodiles will take issue.  But wouldn’t it be fun to go to a Ford dealership and pay 559,000 Rhinos for a Ranger or 299,999 for a slightly used Ranger only ever ridden by an old granny on Sundays after church?

Unfortunately, the Government won’t do it.  Their hide is too thick and they’re even slower at thinking and changing direction than Rhinos.

The old South Africa had a plethora of racial legislation but it could be distilled into the three basic pillars of Apartheid.  The first, The Population Registration Act, decided what racial boxes to put everyone into.  The next, The Group Areas Act, decided where those boxes could reside and the third, The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, prevented those little boxes from playing housey, housey.  These three pillars along with their supporting Acts were swept away by 1994 and the unholy trinity of the Tripartite Alliance – ANC, SA Communist Party and Cosatu – created a new hegemony.  It seemed as if SA’s bad luck was going to continue in triples and it was only going to get worse.

After the euphoria of victory died down, the Tripartite Alliance got down to the serious business of transforming South Africa.  Unfortunately, the ANC were indulgent midwives.  Protest action, making the country ungovernable and labour unrest were the most potent tools that helped to overthrow Apartheid.  28 years later and this intransigence continues to roil the economy.  It seriously hamstrings growth and this is in the face of ever-increasing levels of unemployment.  A recent study reports that a third of South Africans are earning less now than before Covid yet government and SOE workers have managed to wring at least inflation related increases out of the fiscus on top of their above par salaries. 

From a policy perspective, AA (Affirmative Action) and BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) constitute the two other pillars that underpin the present foetid state of South Africa.  These two policy initiatives were so enthusiastically pursued without any thought to reality that AA destroyed all institutional knowledge and BEE forced the insertion of letterbox companies into all procurement processes.  They added no value whatsoever except for their BEE credentials.  In many cases, the markups due to these Johnny Walker Blue companies have been eye watering.  In addition, while these two policies might not have created corruption, they provided fertile ground for it to take root with a will.

I know of not one SOE (State Owned Enterprise) and Government Department with the exception of Finance and Justice that is not become a joke.  They are riven with incompetence, venality and laziness and are overstaffed to boot.  However, one must single out Eskom as the single SOE that has the potential of collapsing the economy overnight and is an exemplar of those three pillars at work.  AA ensured that Eskom did not have the skills to undertake the supply expansion needed and to maintain the existing network.  BEE in the flagship construction projects and coal supply contracts coupled with the lack of skills has ensured project timescales doubling and huge increases in coal costs that is now often trucked in instead of being brought in by rail.  The latest bout of loadshedding, one of the most severe in the history of loadshedding, was brought about through illegal striking by militant workers that caused 16,000MW to go off line which is about a third of the total capacity.  They eventually only returned to work after rejecting all wage offers until they exceeded inflation in addition to a variety of direct one-off inducements.

Instead of transforming SA into a more equitable country, these three pillars have transformed South Africa into a shadow of its former capable self and has deepened the inequality through the rising unemployment rate.  Not only have we achieved junk status, but dump status as well.

In 1944, the German Army began a counter-offensive against the Allies in the Ardennes which came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge as the German armoured thrusts penetrated deep into American lines.  Soon an American contingent of about 11,000 troops from the 101^st Airborne Division who had been hastily pushed forward were surrounded in Bastogne.  The besieging German officer asked them to surrender as their position was hopeless.  Gen. McAuliffe’s answer, “Nuts!”  became the stuff of legend particularly as they heroically held out against vastly superior forces for seven days until relieved.  Today the Americans are fighting another battle of the bulge and losing, but that’s a story for another time.

Fast forward to 2022.  Snake Island is a 17 Ha rocky island, 35 km off the south-eastern Ukrainian coast, and it was manned by a contingent of less than 50 Ukrainian soldiers.  It is an insignificant feature, but it effectively controls access to Ukraine’s last free seaport, Odessa.  On the first day of the ‘Special Operation’ as the Russians euphemistically call it, Snake Island was besieged by two Russian warships, one of which was the ill-fated 12,000 ton missile cruiser, Moskva, pride of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.  Via radio, Moskva demanded the garrison’s surrender.  Their response was a non-cryptic Cyrillic, ‘Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй’ (Russian warship, go fuck yourself!).  That bit of heroic repartee cost 13 Ukrainian lives in the ensuing bombardment before surrendering to the Russians.

Since then, Ukraine has got their own back in spades.  The Moskva was later sunk with the loss of many more lives that the Russians refuse to admit to or that it was even hit by Ukrainian missiles.  The Russian forces on the island have been under routine attack by the full range of Ukrainian long-range systems – missiles, Su-27 aircraft and drones – with devastating results.  5 smallish boats of under 100 tons, a tugboat of 1200 tons, 2 helicopters, a badly damaged 10,000 ton logistics ship, several missile defence systems, ammunition supplies and numerous deaths later, the Russians called it a day on 30 June.

Desperate to save face for their embarrassing failure and determined to continue the pretence of holding the moral high ground, a Bloodimir Putin stooge announced that their withdrawal was a gesture of goodwill!

Ja, right.

In the old days, OMO washing powder advertised that it makes ‘whites bright’.  Definitely, that had to go and they’ve replaced it with some rather anaemic slogans.  Two-fisted punch was obviously a non-starter.  Not only was it already taken, it would make the laundry room feel like an unsafe space and the TV adverts would have to carry a trigger warning.  So, we are left with The Power of 10 Hands and Tough Stain Removal.

No matter what your preference is, there seems to be no detergent, mechanism or intervention that can deliver clean Municipal Audit Outcomes.  We are into the 29^th year of the ‘New and Improved South Africa’ and the overall municipal finances are a disaster area.  Granted a Municipality has a very difficult job but, of all its functions, the easiest is to financially account for what it did do irrespective of whether it’s failing its mandate.  Accounting is a mechanistic process.  There is no need to reconcile conflicting human and political interests, being creative with solutions to intractable problems, extracting income from recalcitrant or poverty-stricken ratepayers, planning and regulation, generating and realising a vision, etc.  Once the accounting system has been set up properly, it’s mainly a case of following the recipe. 

Last week saw the Auditor-General release her annual report on this cesspool.  Of the 257 Municipalities, 25% (Western Cape – 3%) had going-concern problems.  Even more frightening was that 75% could not provide quality financial statements.  The Western Cape achieved 22 (73%) unqualified audit outcomes while the rest of South Africa received only 19 (8.4%)!  25 Municipalities (Western Cape – 0) seemed to take the modern trend of the paperless office to the point that the Auditor-General could not even begin to make adverse findings and just disclaimed them.  We do not know if this lack of paperwork is wilful to obscure corruption or due to incompetence and slackness.  I suspect a combination.  Most disaffected whities would automatically blame corruption, but that is contradicted by the creditors books which run at an average of 275 days (excluding the WC – 63 days).  Normally deals involving corruption are sorted out fast.  Also, the debtors books, running at 220 days (excluding the WC – 49 days), indicate that the financial systems have all but collapsed.   In the Free State, the creditors and debtors books are running at eye-watering 483 and 563 days respectively and for the Northern Cape they are 527 and 167.  There are many other metrics but they all tell the same grim story, just from different angles – barring the Western Cape which stands out as a beacon, the financial systems of the municipalities are chaotic and dysfunctional and that they haven’t collapsed yet is a miracle.

But what is glaringly obvious is the lack of consequence management otherwise these problems would not persist year after year.  Maybe we do need some two-fisted punch after all.

The story that broke surrounding the millions of dollars stolen from Squirrel Ramaphosa’s farm raised countless questions.  Why does Squirrel deal in cash, and dollars nogal?  Why was this not properly reported to the police or a case opened?  Is it true that the suspects were effectively kidnapped – held for days against their will, without charge and not in police custody.  Was it $4 million as reported by Fraser, erstwhile head of the State Security Agency who has the skinny on everyone, or a more modest amount according to Squirel’s spokesman?  In fact, Iqbal Surve’s news group, who love to tell porkies, report $80 million!   And so on.  But the one that piqued my interest was why was the cash stored in a couch.  After much scratching of my head, I remembered my Afrikaans.  Apart from a bank being a bank, it can also be a desk or a bench and a rus bank is a couch.  There you have it.  I solved the mystery – they actually did bank the money.

Jokes aside, this is serious shit Cyril.  It is disgustingly similar to the December 2009 theft involving David Mabuza, then Mpumalanga Premier and now No.2 (and we know what that stands for) in the country.  The head of security told the Sunday times that R14 million had been stolen but that he only registered a case for R4 million as it would have raised eyebrows otherwise.  Officially though, the only case on the books is for R1200 registered on 23 December.  This case has never been resolved and has been allowed to die a quiet death.

It is blindingly obvious to everyone except the clinically obtuse that there are nefarious goings-on in both the Mabuza and Ramaphosa cases.  No one deals in that amount of cash unless there is something to hide.  The Zondo Commission made it abundantly clear that it was cash that greased the wheels of corruption.  Cabinet Ministers and a variety of Zuma appointed players were given golden showers of cash money in a variety of amounts, denominations and delivery methods.  With the Guptas, supplicants had to first pay homage by visiting the ‘Saxonwold Shebeen’ whereas Bosasa played Mr Delivery.  Bosasa also used braai packs as an alternative currency – messier and not as compact, but easier to launder.  Within a few days all evidence would turn to shit just like the tenders that the braai packs bought.

Corruption on the industrial scale that we have witnessed would virtually cease if two simple laws were enacted.  The first would prohibit cash payment if it exceeded a stipulated amount, say R20,000.  The second would deem cash in the possession of individuals and companies to be the product of criminal enterprise if it exceeded a certain amount and confiscatable by administrative fiat.  Exemptions based on typical cashflows could be applied for. 

I’m very disappointed that Squirrel has his nuts in a vice and it looks like his smalla-nyala skeletons are coming out of the furniture.  It’s not that I think that he’s a great President, it’s just that he’s the best of a bad bunch.  I shudder to think of a future with any other senior ANC member.  They’re either corrupt, ideologically bankrupt or clowns like Mbalula.