The Opinion Pieces are an eclectic bunch on current affairs & history often with a human interest aspect. The Movie/DVDs reviews are mainly on documentaries with a smattering of movie reviews.
Trump was riding high, surfing his personal tsunami after announcing huge reciprocal tariffs on every country in the world. He then smugly boasted that 50 countries were now “kissing my ass.” Given Trump’s penchant for hyperbole, it might not have been 50 countries but five piss ant countries. Perhaps it even included a delegation of tuxedo attired penguins from the McDonald Islands who arrived to give him the bird and flip him off. But it still played out well with his non-discerning Magalanders especially when Trump threatened to double down if anyone retaliated. This was a tough guy script straight out of a Hollywood Chuck Norris screenplay.
Just about all South Africa’s economic woes of lack of growth, the highest level of unemployment and concomitant widening wealth gap amongst Blacks have their genesis in the race-based legislation enacted by the ANC since 1994. But even after their parlous showing in the 2024 elections which forced them into a coalition government with the ‘white’ DA, they have doubled down on their employment equity and preferential procurement rules. For SMAC’s take on this you can
For 31 years the ANC has pushed its transformation agenda using racial preference laws and regulations. Yes, there has been significant transformation but these laws underpin just about everything that has gone wrong with the country. For the first decade or so, the effect was relatively minor due to the technocratic, technical and financial sophistication and depth of the economy which the ANC had inherited (along with its problems) and it had the backing of the liberal western democracies.
Of all the BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) concepts introduced to redress the inequalities, Affirmative Action, via the Employment Equity Act of 1998, was the seed for the demise of the competent state. This was initiated in state and quasi-state bodies where white employees were levered out by making them unwelcome while offering retrenchment packages. Many of those who took them also left the country permanently taking their skills, institutional memory and families with them. This was followed by the Preferential Procurement Act of 2000 culminating in the BBBEE (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment) Act in 2003.
Still the economy soldiered on as the useful life of the infrastructure hadn’t been exhausted yet and the world’s economies were booming. However, the storm clouds were gathering particularly with the election of the venal and corrupt Jacob Zuma as president of the country in 2007. The first indication of the impending storm was the Proudly South African phenomenon of electricity load shedding introduced at the end of that year after the ANC had ignored a 1998 report by Eskom that warned of a lack of capacity by 2007 and a recommendation that the company be split into generation and transmission companies.
By now the negative effects of the race-based legislation had been fully entrenched. The four horsemen of the South African apocalypse were unleashed and became part of the weft and the weave of the economy – greed, incompetence, corruption and general criminality. The deployed cadres proved to be incapable of running a sophisticated state, both technically and honestly. Over the last 15 years every State-Owned Enterprise had to be repeatedly bailed out at huge cost to the fiscus. The poster child for this was Eskom which, despite bailouts of up to R500bn, and huge above inflation increases for 15 years, unleashed more load shedding in 2023 than in all the previous years. Rampant corruption and incompetence made Kusile the most expensive coal power station ever built, priced comparably to a nuclear plant, and taking just as long to build.
The overall effect has been economic stagnation but coupled to an ever-increasing population. Something had to give. So while the tenderpreneurs continued with their flashy cars and Johnnie Walker Blue and government employee’s salaries increased at the inflation rate plus, the unemployment lines grew ever longer to the point that criminal activity now forms part of many people’s CVs.
One would think that the ANC would realise that they should perhaps rethink the legislation, particularly after their disastrous showing in the 2024 elections.
Nope, instead of a case of BEEN there, done that, they have doubled down on their race-based legislation.
The beginning of Trump’s second Presidency has been without precedent. It has been characterised by extreme chaos as he has been all over the place like a demented squirrel on tik. He has declared economic war on everyone (except his secret bff, Putin), threatened to own Panama, Greenland, Canada and Gaza and he is busy taking a chainsaw to the Federal system courtesy of his point man and ‘Tech Support’, Elon Musk.
South African society is plagued by the wealth gap between black and white inherited from the old days. SMAC has nervously dipped his toe into these dangerous waters and reveals that “blacks are good, whites are bad” is just a useful trope for the ANC and it is actually their policies which have made it worse.
In a series of articles, Norman Smith, the son of HB Smith, records events of his life in Port Elizabeth. In this one, he records what life was like in early Mill Park shortly after it became the suburb in the country. This is a lightly redacted copy of that article.
From 1819 onwards Korsten played an ever-larger role in the shipping trade of the Cape Colony. At one time or another, Korsten owned no less than 13 coasting schooners and cutters of various sizes, 12 of which ultimately came to grief. In the process, Korsten gained the reputation as the largest boat owner in the Cape colony.
As can be imagined, most of these vessels were the smallest size of ocean going vessels as they were merely used for servicing customers along the Cape coast. As such they probably weighed no more than between 80 and 140 tons. Whether the Helena, a 500-ton ship which Korsten owned while living in Cape Town and on which his family went on holiday to England in 1809 is included in the total of 13 vessels which Korsten owned over his life, is unknown.
Just over a century ago, the name Bunton was well known in Port Elizabeth as John’s father and grandfather in their day were both owners of the Grand Hotel in Belmont Terrace. When John’s father, Henry, changed careers in 1927 and went farming in the Selbourne district near Kirkwood, the name Bunton would never again resonate with the residents of Port Elizabeth.
John would attest to serve in the artillery. Later his younger brother, Peter, would join him in the same unit. It was during the opening stages of the battle of El Alamein on the 13th July 1942 that John would be mortally wounded, and Peter, who served in the same unit, would see his brother for the last time as he was stretchered away never to be seen again by him.
Hammelberg was a Dutch lawyer who emigrated to South Africa in 1851 and lived here until 1871 taking a leading part in the affairs of the Orange Free State. This blog covers the 10 days during December 1861 when he visited Port Elizabeth.
Recollections of the town by visitors especially in its early days, provides an indelible record of how they viewed the town but more importantly, how it operated. Some of the descriptors relate to the residents’ industriousness and the consequential hustle and bustle whereas others refer to the stark bareness of the hill especially prior to the planting of trees.
These recollections of John Campbell, a surveyor, and passenger aboard the Eastern Province who visited the town from the 25th February 1862 to the 17th March 1862, adds a fresh layer of depth to the understanding of this bustling town.
