Zumanomics one and zero one

South Africa is very angry today; all except those who benefit from President Zuma’s extensive patronage system, and those who either don’t care or are too ignorant to care about what happens to their country.

They’re not angry because his knowledge of geography is as pathetic as his understanding of large numbers. They’re angry because Zuma has probably become the single biggest threat to the economy of this country. He’s just fired the Minister of Finance Nhlanhla Nene and replaced him with a little known crony, who failed dismally at being the mayor of a small town.

While the country’s Rand currency was struggling to regain value from an all-time low against the Dollar, David van Rooyen, Zuma’s latest addition to a network of questionable and downright incompetent appointees to positions of power, was being sworn in.

Not surprisingly, the media and others have been scathing in their criticism of Zuma and the cowardly members of the ANC who support this despicable creature. Read some of the criticisms here, here and most importantly here.

The seething continues…

We've heard it before, but does it become truer the more times you say it…

Has anyone been keeping count on how many times, and how many different ANC-government members have said that nationalization of the mines is not government policy?

I don’t expect anyone to have kept count, but it’s been very frequent, and it’s aroused my suspicion that something’s afoot. Methinks the government doth protest too much.

The latest in a long line of statements designed to allay the possible doubts created in the minds of investors comes from the Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan. All these protestations comes in the wake of the ANC Youth League’s exuberant ignorance getting the better of them once again, when they called for nationalisation of the mines.

It just leaves one wondering why there has been the repeated attempts to make the motives of government clear, as if it was not articulated clearly enough, the first few times. And do the puppeteers in the ANC who pull the strings of the government frontmen, think that they have not done a good job in keeping the hounds of investigative journalists at bay, up to this point?

Do they sense that all the other naysayers might not have had sufficient credibility, and have thus unleashed probably the only person in government who still has it in relative abundance?

Hmmmm…sniff sniff…