DA struggles to break electoral ceiling despite ANC shortcomings
Tara Roos’s most recent column refers (“‘Smurfism’ is ruining the DA”, April 23).
The electoral data is interesting, and it should indeed worry the DA that it has not been able to significantly break through the 21% to 23% electoral ceiling it seems to have reached.
In most other democracies the egregious failures of the ANC over the past 15 years should have long sealed its fate.
The new DA leadership seems to grasp this, and it remains to be seen if it can come up with a way to break through the ceiling and propose a vision for South Africa that can appeal to a sufficiently large number of voters of all backgrounds.
Pierre Coetzer
Via Business Day online
Debate intensifies over coal versus nuclear in SA’s energy future
Neil Overy’s article refers (“Eskom’s nuclear push clashes with just transition goals”, April 23).
SA’s primary concern should be keeping the lights on at locally affordable, and globally competitive, prices. The best way to do this is burn, baby burn — leverage the abundant coal reserves with which we have been blessed.
Coal is also the best way to ensure a just transition. Rapid economic growth built on cheap energy will sustain a robust job market, offering people who are laid off, and the millions currently without jobs at all, more than enough opportunity.
It literally is that simple.
Stuart Meyer
Via Business Day online
Government’s commitment to justice reform questioned
Tara Roos’s article (”Justice cluster’s plan to unify SA’s crime response”, April 23)on deputy president Paul Mashatile’s speech claiming the new criminal justice reform programme will help integrate policing, intelligence, prosecution, courts and correctional services to ensure a coherent response to crime, refers.
Mashatile wouldn’t know a reformed criminal justice system if it was a large bag of frozen snoek that hit him full in the face. Hard. Twice.
Why does a respected publication like Business Day print verbatim, without any question, the hypocritical warbling of a really dodgy politician with a back story of unanswered corruption, racketeering and fraud allegations?
Mark Lowe
Durban
US was spot on — Iran admitted to being a nuclear threat
Andile Songezo’s letter (“US misrepresented nuclear threat posed by Iran”, April 24) in response to Martin Neethling refers.
The US did not misrepresent the nuclear threat posed by Iran. The US was 100% on the money. And even if you believe the US didn’t know this before, it sure knows it now.
How does it know? It’s super simple: Iran taunted US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to their faces during the first round of negotiations after the original bombing, telling the US that it still had enough material for six nuclear war heads.
Strange that it should have this material given it was supposedly an entirely civilian programme? Because surely their copper-bottomed fatwa couldn’t be a lie?
Stuart Meyer
Via Business Day online
ANC policies face scrutiny as SA fades in global economic rankings
Sonja Boshoff’s warning (“When regional trade rules collapse, so does SA’s industrial ambition”, April 24) about what she sees as the unfolding instability of the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) is a timely call to action.
What is required is not speeches, slogans, global summits or declarations, but serious practical attention to the problems at hand. Have the authorities taken their eyes off the ball?
Unfortunately, ANC foreign policy — which includes trade policy — is very much tied to declarations, slogans and global summits because this is where our mandarins think they can nail down the major powers, especially the Western powers. As American political scientist John Mearsheimer would say, where the Lilliputians can tie down Gulliver.
Unfortunately, much of ANC policy, particularly in foreign relations, is a matter of form over substance. If the Southern African region states are indeed shifting towards economic nationalism regional integration will unravel, with serious consequences for the South and Southern African economies.
Boshoff says South Africa is positioning itself as a champion of industrialisation within the G20 and as a serious participant in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). In reality, just as the possibilities offered by the AfCFTA are not being fully exploited by African states, so is South Africa’s G20 claim a matter of rhetoric and not practice.
South Africa was invited to join the G20 in 1999 when our economy was the 25th largest in the world; today it is in the 40th or 41st position and South Africa is being replaced by Poland as its economy is now ranked within the top 20.
Shoring up Sacu will also require more down-to-earth awareness about economic realities on the part of the ANC, and less ideological rhetoric.
Francois Theron
Via Business Day online
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