OUT TO LUNCH
It doesn't seem as though Pres Frogboiler has the voomah to lead the ANC into the 2024 election. Accusations of spinelessness and extreme wishy-washiness have been around for a few years now but they have mainly come from white land thieves such as myself. In early August, my former Moneyweb editor Alec Hogg’s bestie, Rob Hersov, was a keynote speaker at a BizNewsTV conference in Hermanus where he made the following statement:
“For those of you who still believe that Cyril Ramaphosa is a reformer, those of you who still believe that, the greater fool you. For those of you who believe he is not pushing forward with the National Democratic Revolution, those of you who believe he is not part of the Rapid Economic Transition, the greater fool you. He is just a smoother, silkier, more evil way of pushing the socialist agenda forward. At best he should be reading the news on SABC….that’s all that man is good for. He has never done anything in his life that he has truly deserved. He was given his money as a BEE ‘tenderpreneur’. He has not earned his stripes. He is a sneaky, spineless and useless human being, pushing a socialist agenda on all of us. Wake up South Africa….and stop kissing Cyril’s ass.”
It’s difficult not to disagree with Rob Hersov’s view, even if it is expressed in rather extreme language. But one must also take into account that we white land thieves who subscribe to free markets and a capitalist outlook on life might be approaching our expiry date in South Africa. But, on the other hand, maybe not.
At the weekend, Mondli Makhanya, my old whisky imbibing chum and the former Sunday Times editor who was given the unfortunate task of having to sack me back in 2008 (circulation then 550 000 a week, circulation now 97 000 a week…. just saying) wrote a superb leader as editor of his current organ, City Press.
It’s not a happy read but here is the gist of Mondli’s column:
“On governance, corruption, investment, security and almost everything he has touched, Ramaphosa has been an out-and-out failure. It is time South Africa called him out for what he really is: a smooth con man.”
Mondli opened his piece by talking about our very brave Chief Justice, Raymond Zondo (would that there were more like him in the judiciary) and his address to the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council.
“The levels of corruption in our country have reached completely unacceptable proportions, and, unless something very drastic and effective is done soon, we will have no country worth calling our home.”
“No country worth calling our home”? And yet the overpaid clowns in Cyril’s cabinet continue to make complete fools of themselves cavorting on the international stage and here at home by coming up with the sort of comments that only a mentally deficient child could possibly manage.
Not only that but they continue to flaunt their stolen wealth by posing on social media with all sorts of expensive designer nonsense which is supposed to impress their gullible followers, many of whom have no access to basic services or know where their next meal is coming from. It is a political confidence trick of the most obscene kind but when you have a, by design, largely ignorant electorate dependent on a R350 handout and glib promises you can get away with this sort of nonsense.
I was asked by an academic friend to comment on Rob Hersov’s speech where he describes a dream of a future ANC free South Africa in 2025 with 8% economic growth, a rapidly diminishing unemployment number and investors fighting to put money into the newly rejuvenated South Africa. My answer was very simple. Have you ever tried to take a full bowl of food away from a hungry Rottweiler?
There are those on social media who believe that the 2024 election results have already been pre-arranged (ZANU-PF style) with a hefty 60-70% majority. Personally, I don’t think they are clever enough to wangle that trick. However, the idea that a gangster government which has enormously enriched a chosen few over the past thirty years would suddenly say “Fair do’s guys, you won; we lost….good luck with picking up the pieces” is straight out of LaLa land.
The ANC is not into petty crime. They are big players in the undermining and financial rape of an entire country as the Chief Justice has observed. Many other commentators, some of them previous ANC supporters, have also made this observation but that is unlikely to shame anybody in the high echelons of the ANC. Rather like crack cocaine, alcohol and porn, OPM (other people’s money) can become very addictive.
For some it would be unimaginable not to travel in a convoy of VIP vehicles with blue flashing lights or to give up all the freebies that come with high office in SA. So my guess is that the likes of Gwede, Bheki, Naledi, Thandi, Blade, Angie, Ebrahim, Nkosazana et al would fight like furious honey badgers to hang on to their perks, even if that did mean the country going up in flames and a crashing currency. Let’s face it … outside of crony politics they are all unemployable.
Then there’s the thuggish EFF to consider. Possibly even more corrupt than the ANC, the EFF are fortunate to have a loyal following of supporters who are even more terminally shortsighted than the ANC supporters. Imagine if these two can manage to forge a coalition to steal whatever is left to steal in South Africa. Where is Rob Hersov’s dream then?
The reality is that neither the ANC or the EFF leadership give a damn about the lives of ordinary South Africans. Both parties are led by economic and financial illiterates who believe communism holds all the answers and both pose the most serious threat to economic stability in South Africa since the rinderpest.
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One of the questions that our media don’t appear to have asked (or if they have then it has received scant coverage) is why Mr Hazim Mustafa, the buyer of Frogboiler’s buffaloes, hadn’t demanded his money back when delivery of said buffaloes didn’t happen. This of course is the rather neat piece of legal fancy footwork which absolves Frogboiler from any potential criminal action.
Yes, a considerable amount of US currency was found in the soft furnishings at the Phala Phala farm seemingly in contravention of Exchange Control Regulation 6(1), but since no transaction had actually taken place that was all apparently hunky-dory; a view that caused many a raised eyebrow in parliament.
As I understand it the facts are these. The incredibly wealthy but rather dubious Mr Mustafa, along with his much younger blonde wife Bianca who hails from KZN, was wandering around Limpopo on Christmas Day in 2019 looking for a larger property for his wife’s parents who live in a smallish house. He came across Phala Phala and suddenly felt an urgent need to buy a buffalo; rather as you or I might feel the urgent need to buy a burger.
Apparently there were buffalo for sale on a Christmas special that day….$33 000 each or $580 000 for twenty. So Mr Mustafa took the Christmas special and bought twenty paying in cash which he had managed to bring into South Africa without any hassle at all.
Give or take that $580 000 was only worth around R8.2 million back in those halcyon days of rand strength this clearly wasn’t a big deal. Questioned as to how he could bring such a huge amount of cash into South Africa Mr Mustafa told SkyNews
“I declared it, in Johannesburg – yes, O.R Tambo airport,” he said but refused to show Sky News the declaration forms due to the current parliamentary process.
“$580,000 is nothing for a businessman like me. I don’t know what the big issue is,”
Just as he was looking forward to the delivery of his new buffaloes COVID intervened in 2020 and poor Mr Mustafa and Bianca had to return to their luxury lifestyle in Dubai sans said ungulants.
Meanwhile someone at Phala Phala decided that too many people had keys to the farm safe and that the dollars should be stuffed under a cushion for safe keeping instead. Since the largest denomination dollar bill is $100 that would be 5 800 bits of paper stuffed under the cushions which wouldn’t arouse any suspicion surely. After all, some people prefer lumpy sofas. There the cash remained for 45 days when it was allegedly stolen by the folks currently appearing in court, their faces covered with masks.
Meanwhile, Mr Mustafa probably no longer wants the buffalo because they have an extra four years mileage on their already limited lifespan. But he doesn’t seem to have asked for the moolah back either. That could be because it’s only worth $445 000 at today's exchange rate. Or it could be because the incoming $580 000 actually had bugger all to do with buffaloes. Pure speculation of course. Fortunately a carefully appointed compliant judiciary would never entertain such heresy.
