Category: economic issues

It’s the end of the world as we know it

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And I feel fine.

Robert Sefatsa of Soweto feels rather differently though:

T he Constitutional Court has received an “extremely urgent court application” for the appointment of an “investigative task team” to prepare for the end of the world on December 21, according to a report on Wednesday.

Robert Sefatsa, 38, a Soweto resident, also stated in papers handed in at court that the government needed to form a new department to prepare for judgement day next Friday, Beeld reported.

He suggested that the new state department should be called the “department of paranormal and esoteric sciences”.

Sebatsa pointed out that according to the Mayan calendar, judgement day would be on December 21, and it was therefore a matter of extreme urgency that South Africa and other countries make their preparations for the apocalypse.

A commission of inquiry should include geologists, statisticians, astronomists, economists and extra-terrestrial technologists, and should be competent to cope with evacuation procedures, sea and air logistics, and resettlement, he said.

Seriously, Robert? What’s the point of all this expense if the world is going to end next Friday. Then again, I suppose there’s no point in saving any money if the world is going to end next Friday. And if the world is really going to end next Friday, where exactly are you planning to evacuate to and resettle in?

In other news, the rest of the world has known about this whole Mayan Calendar nonsense for years and years now. Has news of our impending doom really only just reached Soweto? Perhaps the most laughable thing about this application is that he expects the Government to actually do something inside a nine day timeframe.

Of course, Mr Sebatsa, as a South African citizen and taxpayer, is completely within his rights to make this court application. Just as the Constitutional Court is completely within their rights to throw it out and then pop down to the Mystic Boer to laugh it off over a few brandies.

However, this is South Africa, and thus I fully expect to be blogging tomorrow about the new DPES which is hastily being set up in Pretoria.

Two Government Documents – 2

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I wasn’t going to comment on the local issue of the farmworkers and their violent strike action up in De Doorns (but spreading elsewhere) until a government minister – in my opinion – did a silly thing.

The minister in question was Tina Joemat-Peterson –  Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – and the silly thing was taking sides in a dispute which she needs to mediate, rather than politicise.

The fact is that these farmworkers earn a tiny, tiny wage of R70 per day for their work, which at the moment is picking table grapes. I’m not going to get into the discussion over whether this wage is morally right or wrong – I have no idea how financially stable local fruit farming is at the present time – but the fact is that the wage is legally ok. And that’s illustrated by this statement from the Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant earlier this year:

In terms of Sectoral Determination for farm workers the minimum wages will with effect from 1 March 2012 to 28 February 2013 be adjusted upwards from an hourly rate of R7,04 to R7,71; a weekly rate of R317,51 to R347,10 and monthly minimum wages of R1375,94 to R1503,90, calculated on a 45 ordinary hour week.

Of course, local opportunist and Western Cape Cosatu representative Tony Ehrenreich is blaming the farmers for paying their workers poorly, but there is no evidence that I have heard which suggests any of them are paying workers below the minimum wage. That being the case, one wonders why his gripe isn’t with Ms Oliphant and the ANC rather than the employers. And if the minimum wage is such a big problem, one also wonders why he didn’t bother to kick up a fuss back in early February when the announcement about the minimum wage was made.

Why is the soapbox only coming out now, Tony?

Now Joemat-Peterson  is allegedly set, among other things, to review the farmworkers’ national minimum wage – something that had already been agreed upon by all parties for the foreseeable future (it was set to rise by CPI +1.5% in March 2013 and by the same amount each year thereafter). This ‘caving in’ to the strikers demands smacks of the Lonmin decision a couple of months ago and sends a clear message to workers that illegal and violent strike action gets results. As a private company, Lonmin could get away with making that decision, although it has set a very dangerous precedent. Government cannot afford to do the same, merely to pander to their prospective voters.

I don’t want to take sides in this. I’d like to see farmworkers better paid, obviously, but I’m mindful that the money might not be there to do that – especially not for the 100% pay rise they are demanding. Job security must also be considered by those making the decisions and the heavy-handed and one-sided approach immediately taken by Joemat-Peterson makes me wonder whether she is more more concerned about the future of the agricultural sector or over trying to garner extra votes for the ANC in 2014.

Last Tuesday

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Records were set when, last Tuesday the 6th November, I used the Exclusive Books store in Canal Walk as a cut through to get to Sportsman’s Whorehouse and aurally encountered this:

Wham!’s Xmas offering has long been held as my official notice that the Christmas shopping period has begun and madness may now officially ensue. Other signs – fake plastic trees and the like – have been around for a while, but it’s not really Christmas shopping hell until you’ve heard “Last Christmas”.

There seemed no more appropriate place to realise this than in Canal Walk.

Breezy

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Someone recently commented that this is the time of year when Capetonians stop complaining about the cold and start complaining about the wind. And that someone was right. With spring comes the SouthEaster, the Cape Doctor, which stays with us until December, or, if we’re going to be completely realistic about this, March-ish.
Agulhas gets it too and we’ve been treated to a fine display today. Really blowy.
Already covered by a fine layer of sand, we headed inland to Bredasdorp and the Shipwreck Museum.

image

And what a find. As a family of four, you don’t get much entertainment for R60 these days, but this was pretty special.
Artifacts and history from the 150-odd shipwrecks which have occurred around Agulhas, plus some vintage vehicles (the highlight being a 1905 Cape Town fire engine) and an entire Victorian household which looked like it hadn’t been touched since… well… since then, actually. The kids got educated and I’m still not sure they even realise it.

There was also a lovely garden out at the back, complete with cat, which the youngest member of our party wanted to take with her and expressed her acute disappointment when we refused. Thankfully, all was forgotten (including the cat’s name) with the clever addition of a biscuit.

There are photos, there’s just not bandwidth, so I’ll get them up later in the week.

UPDATE: Photos here (minus many that were lost by a corrupt SD card – we’ll have to go again). Also, never realised how horrid the image in this post was. Only saw it on a 3″ phone screen – looked ok there – sorry.

Art v Jobs

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New from Northamptonshire County Council – which just last year cut 900 jobs as part of a £69,000,000 package of budget savings comes “STITCH – A new art installation”.

As part of the countywide GLOBAL FOOTPRINT project, artist Jo Fairfax and the FLOW team will deliver a new laser art installation – STITCH – in Northamptonshire. A new art installation that binds together the historic villages of Earls Barton and Wollaston with a 3 miles long laser beam.

This path of light skims across the beautiful Nene valley pinpointing two prestigious boot and shoe-making factories, Barker Shoes and Griggs, home of Dr Martens.

Glorious – and surely worth every single penny.

We’ve mentioned before that art projects and installations could be considered as a complete waste of money. For example, Cape Town insists on funding the annual Infecting the City arts festival, during which:

City “treasures”, including King Edward’s statue on the Grand Parade, were covered in clingwrap and trees on the station forecourt were draped in toilet paper.

despite having a housing backlog of around 500,000 people.

One can only wonder what those individuals made redundant by Northamptonshire County Council think of this:

ambitious countywide programme of contemporary ‘living heritage’ events and exhibitions, using visual and digital arts to showcase and celebrate Northamptonshire’s defining cultural heritage and identity.

What a load of cobblers.