I was going to pen a furious rant on Bafana Bafana, who went to play France last week and embarrassed a whole nation. I’m fuming!
When I began writing this column I promised it wouldn’t be about football. But after that pathetic capitulation in northern France, I have to break that promise and say it’s not funny anymore.
We have grown accustomed to laughing at the national football team whenever it fumbles against better competition.
We sneer and label them “losers”, “Buffoona Buffoona”.
We don’t watch their matches anymore; we check the final score afterwards, and when it confirms what we expected — the inevitable loss — we sigh collectively and retire to the refrain, “we told you so”. Last Tuesday I wasted two hours on these donkeys that I’ll never get back.
But then a week is a long time in this country; lo and behold someone out there is bound to do or say something even more infuriating. Living here is a rollercoaster of two dominant emotions, disbelief and anger.
The ANC in Mpumalanga elected new leadership on Saturday, breaking deputy president David Mabuza’s lengthy stranglehold on the province. In fact Mandla Ndlovu’s victory in Witbank marks the official end of the Premier League — a clique of powerful premiers and provincial chairmen who were immensely influential in deciding who got to lead the ANC — and by extension the country.
Two of them, Ace Magashule and Supra Mahumapelo, have been deposed and are out in the cold, the former forced to step aside as secretary-general over corruption charges.
Mabuza was the only one still wielding some form of power as number two in the party and the country, but his political future now looks uncertain without the weight of the second biggest ANC province behind him. Especially since the position of deputy president is being eyed by as many as eight hopefuls in December. Anyway I digress ...
Elected alongside Mabuza in Witbank over the weekend was murder accused Mandla Msibi, who was nominated on the winning slate as provincial treasurer. Msibi had the audacity to accept nomination. Apparently the arrangement was that he would only occupy the position once cleared of murder charges. It was only after a public outcry that he was forced to relinquish the post. I’m livid!
Msibi had the audacity to accept nomination. Apparently the arrangement was that he would only occupy the position once cleared of murder charges. It was only after a public outcry that he was forced to relinquish the post. I’m livid!
Each time you think the ANC can’t go any lower, the party somehow manages to plunge even deeper. How did the winning faction — laughably referred to as “Focus” — think this was going to play out? Do they understand a murder charge? It means someone was killed and this man is the main suspect in the killing. Yes, the courts may find him not guilty, but until that happens you can’t touch him with a 10-foot pole. This is a logical way of doing things; why must it take public outrage to remind ANC members of something so basic? I’m incensed at this lack of focus!
Later on someone shared a video clip of Ndlovu addressing the Mpumalanga conference for the first time as chairperson. I don’t know if it was nervousness or excitement, but the man was incomprehensible. He struggled with basic words that a grade 9 pupil would manage with ease. His reading skills make Jacob Zuma sound like an orator par excellence, a la Barack Obama.
To be fair, I had never heard of this gentleman before his campaign for ANC chair in the province, so I’m truly hoping he leads better than he reads; he’s a future premier of a province for crying out loud!
So far I’m not impressed. If this is the best the ANC has to offer, then this party must hurry up and die for the sake of this country.
Anyway, before I explode with anger, let me at least acknowledge a positive development. Transnet has taken the important step of opening up its rail network to private players. It is selling 16 slots (temporary occupation of the network to enable end-to-end movement of a train) to private haulers with experience in the rail sector. Six slots on the container corridor between City Deep and Durban, and 10 other slots on the southern corridor between Pretoria and East London/Nelson Mandela Bay.
This is a huge and important step for the economy. Transnet has struggled to operate especially on the container corridor due to a shortage of locomotives, cable theft, vandalism and other challenges. The N3 highway is crumbling under the weight of thousands of trucks that make the round trip on the regular, hauling goods from the port of Durban to inland destinations. Most of those goods — especially new assembled vehicles and agricultural products — should be transported by rail.
An info session will be held with interested bidders on Friday and, pending certification by the Railway Safety Regulator, private rail operators could start running freight trains by October. This, alongside the recent auction of spectrum (which could still be nullified by the courts if Telkom is successful) and increasing to 100MW the licensing threshold for self-generated electricity projects, is critical to reforming the economy. Bravo on this score — it’s a welcome break from Bafana, the ANC and other depressing subjects.
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