Monthly Archives: May 2021

Why persist in failure when solutions exist?

At the end of May, previously vaccine-starved SA faces a curious paradox: the supply of inoculations against the deadly coronavirus vastly exceeds demand. At least in theory. This strange dilemma is almost entirely explicable because the government, in light of so many demonstrable serial botch-ups on this front, insists on centralising and nationalising the broken [...]

The president loves big numbers and big talk but it’s all fantasy economics

My former parliamentary colleague, Errol “EK” Moorcroft, once offered sage advice on the perils of overpromising and underdelivering: “Least said, soonest mended” was his stance. President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government have a different approach. “Cyril loves big numbers” is the inside view of a National Treasury mandarin. Indeed, a scroll back to Ramaphosa’s “new deal [...]

Have you no sense of decency, Mkhize? Oh, how a mighty reputation has fallen

Eventually, after four years of unchecked recklessness which not even popular US president Dwight Eisenhower could interdict, US senator Joseph McCarthy was undone by one killer question. He provided posterity with the synonym for scapegoating individuals for disloyalty usually involving Communism, and in his case for making often unsubstantiated accusations involving the so-called “Red Scare”. [...]

Be worried, ANC. You’ve failed on jabs and jobs and the local polls loom

Local elections anywhere can often lead to false readings of the national picture. Such an error here in the local government polls in 2016 prefigured the national decline of the DA three years later in the general election in 2019. Many will remember how — against all expectation and for what passes as “informed commentary” [...]

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