Robert Kirby: Loose cannon I find myself quite amazed at the runaway spending of people who suddenly acquire a great deal of money. It’s quite baffling that someone who wins six or seven million tax-free quid on a lottery, can squander the entire bundle inside a couple of years.
Sure, a fancy new car and house, new furniture, a fine set of new threads. Take the missus on a first-class trip around the world and you still won’t have made much of a dent in the accrued interest.
Yet, every now and then, up comes the heartbreaking tale of some instant multimillionaire of three years before, now living under cardboard and wondering where it all went. Not a friend in sight.
Realists are now warning that, given a few more years, South Africa will be in more or less the same position as the destitute lottery winner. The country’s once healthy and self- sustaining economy will have metamorphosed into a Promethean foreign debt, the rand will be hovering around the level presently blessing the Zambian kwacha – 2 000 to the dollar – and aside from nourishing nibbles at Mr Mbeki’s renaissance reveries, the majority of the populace will be eating air.
And everyone will be wondering where it all went. They won’t be able to blame Trevor Manuel because he’s actually been doing quite a good job. Anyway, the lottery winner’s bank manager was not responsible for the spendthrift decisions of his client. All he could do was advise.
Even the most casual examination reveals the present South African government is on a spending spree of pathological dimensions.
Take this preposterous Non-Aligned Movement Summit which kicks off tomorrow. So that the government may play magnanimous host to what amounts to a “elitist” assemblage of the world’s most embarrassing political and economic basket-cases, the South African coffers are diminished by a cool R65-million – a cost which is rising by the minute: R13-million for accommodation; R2,4-million for “extras” – the prostitutes did say they were expecting a boom week. The police in Durban have abandoned crime- solving, they’re all out playing find- the-bomb. Its manholes welded shut, Durban comes to a virtual stop tomorrow for little other reason than that dictator crazies like Gadaffi, Castro and 70 or 80 lower-grade despots like them can get together in extravagantly refurbished hotel conference rooms in order to compare notes on the latest ways to lay waste vast slices of human achievement and happiness.
Why us? Why do we have to pay for this ostentatious junket? Aren’t we meant to be building houses and getting some books into the schools? Aren’t our hospitals in desperate need of blankets and sheets? Don’t these necessities come before Mr Nzo’s pretensions?
Yet, like the above profligacy, every week reveals yet more outlandish payouts for those contorted political antics the government decides are in our best interest. Billions are frittered away on consultants and investigating committees, commissions, cornucopian launch parties, opulent birthday celebrations – R4-million here, R50- million there – never mind all that’s being stolen.
An example from a multitude like it. Last week that Kafka wet-dream, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, had its annual subsidy trimmed from R44-million to a paltry R31-million. These poor suffering folk are now bitching that 25 jobs will be lost – at R520 000 each? This from a body that, at its very best, has been next to completely dysfunctional for most of its existence. Staffed with far fewer, much more efficient and far less bombastic personnel, the IBA could get by better on a tenth of what they now get.
If things go on in this bemused way, quite soon South Africa must literally run out of money. There has to be an eventual drying up of the fiscal reservoir which – thanks to the grandiose master-plans and frequently arrogant attitudes of the government – is receiving less and less in the way of topping-up from foreign investors. The untiring efforts of Mr Mufamadi and friends have produced a tear-away crime rate which makes us second to the most unattractive in the world as an investment risk. Even under United Nations sanctions we did far better than this.
Week by week this government is becoming more and more like the bewildered and penniless lottery winner. It has been patsy to every loony-tune political salesman. In financial culpability it has closely mimicked the flauntings of the obnoxiously nouveau riche.
More sooner than later South Africa will go seriously broke. And when the First World starts repossessing us, there won’t be a Gadaffi in sight.