We got our new and improved government officials in place. I'm not going to say anything about Zuma, except for the fact that we now have to give the man a chance. Not much choice in this now. Might just as well put shoulder to the wheel and hope the driver knows where we're going.
Just days after being sworn in our new transport minister "nearly" accepted a nice shiny new Mercedes Benz worth over a million bucks. This was (amongst other gifts) one thing he didn't declare. There are rules and regulations in parlaiment and government structures regarding gifts and discounts.
Now poor old Tony Yengeni got sent to prison for not declaring the massive discount he received on another Mercedes during the arms deal debacle. Here we have a minister who has a car allowance (according to him) that would cover the 1.5 million Rand Benz and he got it for pasella! Then he still had to run to Zuma to see if he couldn't (pleeze) keep it.
Zuma of course has no problem with this, nor the fact that the donation came from a group of contractors who just got a nice 400 million Rand deal from this minister. Yes, public outcry made him decide to rather return this extravagant gift, and the ANC will through the power of government revise these conditions of donations to members and get rid of these petty little obstacles.
What I do not understand, a minister qualifies for the same class vehicle as the president? Smells a bit fishy to me and believe me, it's not a nice smell.
In the meantime, Tito is blasting the banks for all colluding on the lending rate to customers. He called for banks to find new and innovative ways to make things a bit easier for the man in the street. Nice one Mr Mbweni!
And municipalities under ANC control now happily point fingers at Eskom for the 34% increase in electricity cost that's looming round the corner. How quickly they forget that it was their comrades who laughed off Eskoms' budget proposals not so long ago. At least they cannot blame the apartheid regime anymore! And at last Eskom found some 6.1 billionRand to fund new power stations. We're gonna pay!
Coming back to the South African industry in general. Tiger Brands were found guilty of price fixing and got a hefty fine. So did Sasol not so long ago. Now Sasol is once again in trouble and will probably have to pay another fine. Why is this money going to government? They actually made money out of this as well through a higher sales tax that the consumer had to pay all those years. What happens to that money at the end of the day - part of the Zimbabwe bail-out money perhaps?
This money should go into an independently administered account and should be applied in projects to uplift the poor communities who suffered the most out of these price fixing schemes. I wonder what would happen if these guys were ordered by the competitions board to repay the consumer? It will probably cost them more than the fine imposed on them.
And it's not only Tiger Brands and Sasol. The whole industry is rotten. Cashbuild claimed that their building material suppliers increased there prices by the same margin at the same time. Murray and Roberts and Aveng has agreed on pricing on their pre-cast concrete products. And the consumer just suffers?
This is why there are structures and organisations in place, to protect the consumer.
Let's have your ideas -
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