In a country of spectacular own goals, the past week’s hatchet job on the president must rank right up with the 1930 World Cup. Reading a history of that inaugural tournament, hosted and won by Uruguay, is like sifting through a catalogue of calamities committed by this government in trying to grow the moribund economy.
Take for example that in the age of steamship travel the team representing Egypt, the only African country playing in the tournament, missed their boat and had to telegraph their apologies, leaving the tournament with a difficult-to-square 13 teams. There isn’t enough space to list all the boats the ANC-led government has failed to miss to speed along economic growth, from the mining cadastre stuff-up to power station builds bungled.
In 1930 host Uruguay took on the bad boys of the tournament, neighbours Argentina, in the final. About 15,000 Argentine fans set off for Montevideo aboard another steamship, only for the ship to get lost in dense fog, causing the fans to arrive a day late — to news that their team had lost, sparking riots. Sounds like the sort of party the ANC’s tired bedfellows in the SACP and Cosatu would be proud to be late for.
One poor fellow, Romanian midfielder Alfred Eisenbeisser Feraru, fell ill on the journey home and was left in a hospital in Genoa. The story goes that when the Romanian team arrived in Bucharest without him a rumour spread that he had died. This caused his mother to faint when he walked in on his own wake.
I imagine President Cyril Ramaphosa must have almost fainted in Tuynhuys when he first read the section 89 panel report into Phala Phala. But what did he think would happen when he first decided to keep Arthur Fraser inside the tent, along with a raft of other crooks for that matter?
The fact that the ANC, by removing its most popular leader according to opinion surveys by Ipsos and The Social Research Foundation, is risking falling below 40% at the 2024 election, appears to be lost in the nostrils of those lusting for more taxpayer loot.
Most credible legal scholars — including an excellent summary by retired judge John Murphy — have dribbled through the section 89 report’s main arguments with Messi-esque ease, because it’s largely based on hearsay, with no original forensic investigation, and fails to cross the threshold of provided sufficient credible evidence.
It should provide the president with enough offensive power to mount a comeback. Judging by the Sunday papers, he has been persuaded to do exactly that, thanks largely to ANC chair and mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe.
Whether he is possessed of the will to engage in what will inevitably be a long battle is another matter, given that he has shown little appetite to engage in the mudslinging, kompromat politics of the radical economic transformation (RET) faction of the ANC. What has real consequence is the parliamentary impeachment process that kicks off on Tuesday.
Whoever takes the reins of the ANC conference in two weeks’ time will have to work with a significantly altered national executive committee if current nominations are anything to go by, one strongly populated by members of the RET faction — including the return of Malusi “Gupta-enabler-in-chief” Gigaba.
Back to 1930, and one of the most bizarre incidents during that inaugural tournament featured a physically brutal and dirty Argentinian team eventually prevailing 6-1 against the US. In a particularly Monty Pythonesque scene after an exchange of handbags, the US physio rushed onto the pitch to tend to an injured player and confront the referee. However, he lost his footing before landing on a bottle of chloroform in his pocket, taking a few deep breaths and falling unconscious.
I fear for the president and his team suffering a similar fate if they are to engage in a protracted battle with a faction of the ANC that has proven it will break all the rules and fight the dirtiest fight to win (and stay out of jail).
Perhaps it is time to confront the reality that the only way SA can stop scoring own goals (including being unable to fix the electricity crisis, rail crisis, infrastructure crisis, confidence crisis) is for the ANC to collapse below 40% at the 2024 polls, ushering in an age of messy coalitions that may at least stop the looting.
Who knows, we might even see Bafana Bafana back at the World Cup with that sort of reset in broad societal leadership. Or I could wake up from this chloroform-induced dream.
Nampak management have finally bitten the bullet on a rights issue the market could see coming a mile away. I mentioned back in July that management needed to confront the tough decision of asset disposals rather than relying on hope, which we know is not a strategy.
Sadly, hope has led us to a situation where the announcement of a R1.35bn rights issue sent the share price crashing more than 30% as investors, who were essentially holding a call option on the outcome, were instantly out of the money. The only ones making money are the investment bankers, lawyers and accountants (R150m to be exact).
There is so much wrong in the announcement, beginning with the need to raise capital to pursue its “growth strategy”. This is the ugly side of financial distress.
• Avery, a financial journalist and broadcaster, produces BDTV's Business Watch. Contact him at badger@businesslive.co.za.
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