“To do something trivial and irresponsible in the midst of an emergency; legend has it that while a fire destroyed the city of Rome, the emperor Nero played his violin, thus revealing his total lack of concern for his people and his empire.” – www.dictionary.com
Well that just about sums up the apparent approach government takes in running the economy, in the opinion of this observer.
Whichever branch of government one looks at, with the possible exception of SARS – surprise, surprise, they collect all the money which the cadres squander – there is near complete collapse.
The latest example is Transnet – its freight rail operations are the backbone of the nation’s economy, a monopoly that should be heaving in money but alas, it’s heaving in debt of R130 billion and now requires R100 billion of taxpayers money to ‘restructure’. Every branch of this behemoth is in trouble.
Its incompetent board and management personnel have been leaving on mass, like rats leaving a sinking ship, with no accountability and no doubt with hefty multi million rand bonselas.
Transnet’s request from the Treasury for this ‘bail out’ is mired in gobbledegook – but they have a turnaround plan – how often have we heard that phrase and it’s supposed to make us think that someone within the organisation with intelligence has had a lightbulb moment which is the solution to all that ails the conglomerate.
Part of the turnaround plan, according to Daily Maverick’s Ray Mahlaka, involves splitting Transnet’s biggest unit in two – Transnet Freight Rail Operating Company and Transnet Rail Infrastructure Management. That involves more positions available for incompetent cadres to occupy adding millions of rands more in salaries when the business is in dire straits, but hell, who cares – certainly not the Minister responsible.
The gobbledegook continues with the suggestion that R47 billion of the ‘equity injection’ can be converted into shares if the plan succeeds which will provide the government with dividend payments. But the government already owns Transnet and all its dysfunctional subsidiaries such as the National Ports Authority and PRASA, so should be getting ‘dividend’ payment already.
A future part of ‘the plan’ is that R61 billion of Transnet’s debt would be ‘taken over’ by the government, in a similar move arranged for Eskom, which is also broke.
Calls for the private sector to help clean up this mess have been dismissed as it would amount to privatisation – an anathema to communist ideology, but the government would welcome the injection of private sector funding without any form of management or control. Yeah, right.
With the failure of all SOE’s (except possibly SARS) it is little wonder why international investors (bar one – China, but that’s a different story) are reluctant to lend money to our multinationals with such an atrocious record of mismanagement and corruption. It is also a contributing factor in our roller coaster exchange rate, which penalises every citizen from every imported commodity, the largest being petrol and diesel, every time you fill up your car or truck.
Eish.
