Something I never knew existed in this country, and that is "cross-border" municipalities. What this essentially means is that a town is divided into two different provinces which was obviously done without much thought by the ANC government. Now they're reaping the fruits of their (bad) labour.

A township close to Carltonville erupted in violence this week when government decided to declare the whole Khutsong as part of North-West province instead of Gauteng. The inhabitants were not consulted (as is part of our transparent practice in the new South Africa) and Gauteng being the "richest" province, the people protested in the strongest possible way. Police were stoned, councilor houses were attacked and set alight and public buildings destroyed. Another case of the ANC enforcing their will on the people.

To make matters worse, government now decided that the number of provinces should be reduced. This could happen before the next general election in 2009. I reckon that the initial thinking behind smaller (and thus more) provinces was job creation - more civil servants and highly paid jobs for all the comrades of the "struggle". Now they realised that it's a logistical nightmare opening the way to corruption and fraud amongst their ANC members with little means of tracking what's happening where. At least it's a step in the right direction in gaining better control.

Another issue that's costing the country a lot of money is the fuel shortage debacle. Government decreed that by 1 January 2006 older lead based fuel will no longer be available. Whomever decided on this date has no common sense and should be fired, but that's another issue.

Our fuel refineries started upgrading their facilities in order to produce these cleaner fuels and simultaneously "serviced" certain facilities. During the planning of this process someone screwed up major. First we had Cape Town airport grinding to a halt due to inferior quality fuel being supplied for the aircraft. This after the Airports Company of South Africa neglected maintaining the runway resulting in days of the airport being closed to air traffic - they couldn't really afford another incident tarnishing their already bad image.

Shortly after fuel stations started running dry. Philip Jordan from the Petroleum Industry Association apologised profusely for days on end and explained that servicing certain facilities are taking longer than expected. They made provision for a specific time period and only stocked enough fuel for the process to be completed. The result of this inefficient planning is going to cost this country millions.

The Western Cape is the hardest hit with fruit farmers unable to harvest. These guys are talking about thousands of tons of fruit for export which will now rot on the trees. Diesel being in the shortest supply is the most widely used by farmers. Never mind all the company managers and directors driving their diesel 4X4's all over Sandton!

Our motor industry has been plagued by accusations of overcharging for new vehicles. The same car manufactured in South Africa and being exported to Australia, cost the equivalent of R40 thousand less there than here! But where have you seen that by buying a VW Touareg you get a 1.4 Citi Golf for free? Where have you seen buying a Getz you get a free service plan included? Ford will even pay your first three installments for you on any new Ford. And Nissan have dropped the prices on the new Hardbody range by 7.5%. Getting more for the same exorbitant price is the industry's way of protecting the secondhand market, very unlike the motorcycle market in this country. There you get more for quite a bit less - that I like!

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