COMMENT, by Pete Bower
GAUTENG
MAGAZINE
HOW TO MAKE YOUR PLOT PROFITABLE
V17 No12 / V18 No1 Dec 2016 / Jan 2017 PUBLISHED BY Bowford Publications( Pty) Ltd Established 1985
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FRONT COVER
Given the role of the donkey prior to the birth of Christ, it’ s fitting to feature one on our cover at this time of year, and to wish all a happy Festive Season.
COMMENT, by Pete Bower
The caravan moves on
What a month it ' s been! Following weeks of shenanigans, intrigue and gloom and doom at home involving Shaun Abrahams, Pravin Gordhan & Co, Jacob Zuma, Brian Molefe and a motley cast of hangers-on and toadies ~ not to mention flooding in Gillooley ' s Interchange ~ we were able to take a breather, courtesy of the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free. For news-watchers were treated to the final spectacle of the 2016 US presidential election. Oh, how vicious to each other were the contestants! Oh, what hubris in the result! And oh, how awful some of the humour( example: this is not the first time in America that a white family has ousted a Black family from public housing …) So, what have South Africans, and the rest of the world, learned in the last 30 days? For ourselves, it is clear that the issues currently feeding our daily discourse bear absolutely no relation to the issues occupying the minds of world players. Here, we are consumed by the activities of one man, his family and his immigrant friends as they seek to plunder as much of our tax money as they can before they inevitably get caught, kicked out of office and( in the case of the immigrants) out of the country and even, with a bit of luck and good management, kicked into jail. The South African media, whose efforts are vital in the fight against corruption, are not entirely blameless in spreading confusion and depression among the citizenry, and the way to avoid being drawn into the web of deceit and lies that abound as events unfold is simply to see everything through a sharply focused lens ~ a lens that focusses clearly on Zuma and the Guptas. For everything, whether it be the nuclear deal, or Pravingate, or Saxonwold shebeens, or Chinese massage parloured-links to rhino poaching, all have their genesis in the machinations of Zuma and the Guptas. So while we all need to play along with these charades if we are to stymie the larceny in any way, we need have no fear that any development involving the current cabal has any foundation in a higher purpose, such as adhering to the rule of law or serving the needs of the people. More worryingly, perhaps, some commentators are starting to ask the“ what if” question: what if Zuma pulls the classic African dictator stunt and, alaMugabe, makes himself president-for-life? Now THAT’ S something to fret about. But we focus on our own affairs and our mickey-mouse economy at our peril. There ' s a world out there that ' s changed fast, and will continue to change, and if we don ' t keep our eye on what ' s happening we ' re going to find ourselves left behind. For there ' s a nationalistic ~ some would say right wing ~ wave of sentiment sweeping across the northern hemisphere which started before, but had its first truly public manifestation in, Britain ' s Brexit vote. One can analyse the reasons for Brexit long and hard ~ and many have ~ and one can point out that the European Union, while a grand philosophical idea to prevent the Germans from ever going to war with the rest of Europe again, is hopelessly flawed, not least economically. Its collapse, or at least further fragmentation, is by no means an impossibility. And, apart from Brexit( and Trump, across the Atlantic), there ' s more European nationalism on the way. Germany ' s current welcoming mistress Angela Merckel hopes for another term but her countrymen have had a skinful of her open-doors-to-refugees policy, and there ' s a very real possibility that she ' ll be replaced by a more nationalistic leader. Down in France Francois Hollande is far less popular than the right wing firebrand Marine le Pen, who is only marginally less radical than her now-senile father. And there are other examples across Europe of right-wingers on the ascendancy. So Trump, as dishonest, obnoxious, Islamophobic and sexist a bully as he may be, is not the only right-wing candle on the world cake. Our problem, of course, is that attempting to form personal opinions on the basis of pollsters and the media can lead to the kind of disappointment felt by US Democrats following Trump ' s victory. The media and pollsters did the world a disservice by starting to believe their own hype ~ that Clinton would win. And a swing to the right is not necessarily a bad thing. It happens all over the world from time to time, and it remains to be seen whether Trump has real teeth to push through some of his more extreme ideas or if he ' s just a loud-mouthed lout. And, to be frank, a more conservative, localised, down-to-earth approach to life is what sustainable-living proponents worldwide themselves espouse. So while the world gears up for another chapter in its history, we wind down for some time unuder the African sun.“ The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”
SAY YOU SAW IT IN THE GAUTENG SMALLHOLDER