OUT TO LUNCH

The threats of violence from the EFF high command ahead of 20th March 2023 on white owned businesses that dare to remain open and what might be termed ‘coconut’ enterprises sound horribly similar to what happened on Kristallnacht in early November 1938.

Back then the Nazi Kämpfer decided to destroy Jewish owned businesses and properties - in addition to synagogues - which they attacked with sledgehammers and anything else that came to hand.

The German authorities stood by and never intervened. Given the complete lack of enthusiasm for law enforcement on the part of the South African Police Service (sic) I think we can safely assume that they will stand well back once again on March 20th and should the Fighters decide to have a really smashing day out.

The EFF has already had a couple of dress rehearsals going back as far as 2018 when they completely trashed a few H&M stores in Gauteng. They also terrorised branches of Clicks for running the wrong sort of hair shampoo advert if memory serves.

The thing about an EFF demo is that most of the party followers lead frustrated and fairly pointless lives so a grand day out getting rid of all that pent up hatred and class envy is always a welcome diversion, particularly if a t-shirt is thrown in as an incentive. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

As my esteemed fellow scribbler WSM wrote last Saturday, the EFF have already posted a lovely pic of one of their members of the Mpumalanga provincial legislature posing with an automatic rifle with the caption “By all means necessary or possible, we are ready.” You’d have to be pretty dim to not see that as a threat wouldn’t you? Particularly as Malema adds a bit of clarification… “Let the state come with its power, we will come with our mass power … they will find us ready.”

Thus far though, not a word of admonishment from President Frogboiler which suggests that the ANC are very relaxed with the situation since it will take the common people’s minds off things like load-shedding and the cost of living.

The adults in the room will probably question how on earth a registered political party whose members of parliament pay themselves generously from the public purse can be calling for the destruction of the economy and encouraging massive damage to South African infrastructure.

To ask such a question though would reveal that one is a white supremacist, imperialist bigot married to the idea of a repressive post colonialist political system and utterly disrespectful of proud traditions such as the quest for decolonisation.

Or to be more precise, selective decolonisation because one wouldn’t want to get rid of German luxury autos, designer clothes, Breitling timepieces and Louis Vuitton accessories even though they might attract a charge of ‘cultural appropriation’.

The important thing to remember about cultural appropriation, as Douglas Murray points out in his bestseller “The War on the West”, is that it is a one-way street. White women braiding their hair, white men with dreadlocks, white boys thinking they can rap are apparently all examples of ‘problematic’ and deeply hurtful cultural appropriation (I assume Eric Clapton playing the blues would also qualify). On the other hand, black men dressed in Jermyn Street shirts or sipping a fine Highland malt whisky are not examples of cultural appropriation. It can be terribly confusing, can’t it?

Apart from the EFF threat of widespread violence on March 20th we also have to take into account the complete lockdown of our already hobbled economy As JuJu has decreed there will be ….“no school, no university, no factory, no bus, no taxi, no trucks, no trains moving on that day”. So even if the EFF barbarians don’t get the opportunity to trash a few shopping malls and smash some display windows or set fire to businesses the economy is supposed to come to a grinding halt that day.

Not surprisingly the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) have thrown their considerable weight behind the EFF’s call for a day of inaction although they don’t seem to have endorsed the call to violence as yet, but these are early days.

To their great credit SAFTU have obviously thought the whole matter through and come up with eleven ‘demands’ which will justify their members losing a day’s work and, in some cases, a day’s pay. As is so often the case the demands are completely loony but worth examining from a practical point of view I feel; if only so we can all have a good belly laugh in these troubled times.

1  Jobs for the unemployed at a living wage…. Not a great start guys. The unemployed are unemployed because there are no jobs. If there were they wouldn’t be unemployed would they? DUH!

2  End load shedding… Spot on. We all know it doesn’t really exist and it was just a sinister plan by the ANC to distract us all from State Capture corruption and large amounts of foreign currency stuffed into soft furnishings. End load shedding by tomorrow morning latest. #stopturningthepoweroff

3  Implement a universal basic income grant… Smashing idea because then we would wouldn’t need to create jobs for the unemployed (see 1 above)

4  Lower the cost of living… This is dead easy and I’m staggered that greater minds than those at SAFTU haven’t thought about it earlier. A bottle of Lagavulin 16 year old now costs around R1 800 a bottle but it used to cost around R600. So what the gumment must do is whip these exploitive capitalist retailers into line and tell them what they are allowed to charge. That’s how free markets ought to be run.

5  A minimum wage of R72 per hour for all workers…. All workers definitely…that would put a member of parliament on R138 000 per annum assuming you could get the buggers to work an eight-hour day, twenty days a month. They can have weekends free to recover from the exertion.

6  End crime and violence against women and children…. but not against men?

7  Transition to renewable energy without job losses… Obviously a real concern for anybody digging up lumps of coal for a living. My suggestion is to re-purpose all the collieries as gigantic braai stations and force Woolworths to cook their rotisserie chickens there. I’m genuinely surprised that no other strategists haven’t thought of this before.

8  Renationalise certain entities; including SAA… I’m disappointed SAFTU. Only certain entities? I mean, really? No, no and no again. Renationalise them all because we all know how well government runs state owned entities. Plus I still have some postage stamps left over from the bad old days and would love to be able to use them

9  Reverse budget cuts and increase government spending in critical areas of service delivery… Totally singing from the same hymn sheet on this one. We all know those budget cuts were made so that politicians could steal more of our money and not because we are virtually bankrupt as a country and can’t borrow cheaply because we have a bad credit rating.

10  Expand the public sector wage bill for better pay for teachers, nurses, officers and social workers… but don’t insist they actually have to turn up for work and aren’t allowed to set fire to the workplace when they are feeling a tad frustrated.

11  Pay government workers well and protect collective bargaining… this is getting a bit repetitious SAFTU. You’ve already got 9 and 10 above… don’t be greedy now. You don’t get three wishes you know.

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I promised I would update you on the car situation back in early February. The 18-year-old Porsche was loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken away by a very efficient bunch of guys called Auction Nation a couple of weeks ago and the money was in my account within two days. The guy collecting my old Porsche asked what I was getting to replace it and when I told him he collapsed with laughter.

After extensive research I’ve decided to buy a Suzuki Baleno GL with automatic transmission. It’s going to set me back all of R263 000 which is about a third of the price of a BMW320i. But it does most of the things that the BMW does such as going forwards and backwards, keeping the rain out, keeping the car cool with the air-con, playing music on the Bluetooth friendly sound system and transporting up to four people in comfortable seats.

Admittedly it doesn’t accelerate quite as fast but the upside is that the fuel consumption is much better. However, the best reason for buying it in South Africa is that it is far less likely to be hijacked than the Beemer because it simply isn’t cool enough for your local drug dealer or hit man.