Tag: tony ehrenreich

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.

Conspansion

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Remember back in January when I described an evening out at Societi Brasserie? Of course you do.

Societi Brasserie claimed that evening to be in “Constantia”, where it isn’t.
Now, for those of you outside the Mother City, wikipedia describes Constantia as:

an affluent suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, situated about 15 kilometres south of the centre of Cape Town

and that’s a perfectly reasonable representation of the place. It’s green, leafy, pleasant. It’s posh. And that’s why people want to be there. Not least the ANCYL, who earlier this week named Constantia as one of the places that they wanted land:

Yozi singled out Constantia and the Rondebosch Common as land that could be given to the province’s poor.

(you may remember Yozi from this post about extra holidays) (but I digress) (often).

Constantia is sought after. Having the name in your address adds an extra 25% to your house price and a certain something to your standing. And perhaps that’s why so many places claim to be there, when they’re actually somewhere else. If we choose to believe these places, then it’s not hard to see that Constantia, like the Universe, is expanding. I’m calling this phenomenon “Conspansion”.
And I saw some more of it while eating steak at the Hussar Grill last night:

Yes folks, Steenberg Village is now in Constantia. Not Westlake (where it is) or Tokai (where it’s near), but Constantia.

That’s Conspansion right there.

How quickly is this Conspansion taking place? Well, here’s a handy map to help you out:

If you look towards the top left of the map, then you’ll see Constantia labelled clearly as “Constantia”. That’s where Constantia is and where it’s been since the mid 1600s.

You may then note its progress south, to Nova Constantia and Belle Constantia, the latter of which I found first reference to in a document from the 1850s. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and it seems to me that the rate of Conspansion was about 1km in two centuries. That’s about 0.005km per year.

Let’s consider now the period from 1850 to January 2012, when I was at Societi Brasserie. So about 162 years in total, and Constantia expanded by about 3km. That’s a conspansion rate of 0.019km per year – about four times as quick as the previous two centuries. The warning signs were there – we just didn’t see them.

Until now.

Because last night, as I mentioned above, I noted that Constantia has now expanded as far as Steenberg Village – a further 700m south from Societie in Tokai… er… Constantia. 700m in 7 months.

Suddenly, we’re faced with the terrifying scenario whereby conspansion has not only topped the threshold level of 1km per year, standing at 1.21km per year, but also that the rate of increase is an incredible 6268.42%.
“Ish just got real”, I believe is the appropriate modern terminology.

If Conspansion continues unchecked at these rates, soon all of the peninsular will be Constantia. Forecasts as to what exactly will happen then are mixed. While some experts believe that Conspansion with stop at Cape Point lighthouse in Constantia, the majority suggest that we will witness an ever faster Conspansion moving eastward, beginning with the gentrification of Retreat, Lavender Hill and Mitchell’s Plain before Nyanga and Khayelitsha are swept up in an all encompassing Constantia.

Tony, Yozi – stop with the protests and marches. Stop with the violence. Just be patient. You don’t need to come to Constantia – Constantia is coming to you.

This isn’t just service delivery, it’s suburb delivery.

And by my reckoning, it’ll be there by February next year. Just in time for Valentine’s Day. Lovely.
Then we can all be friends and neighbours. And you can stop stoning cars on the N2 in Constantia.

Please forward me any examples of Conspansion so that I can update my database accordingly. 

He’s even got the best poster…

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So said ANC Provincial Secretary Songezo Mjongile of his party’s mayoral candidate for Cape Town, Tony Ehrenreich.
Sadly, Mjongile was referring to the ANC poster of dear Tony, in which he has an obviously forced smile and looks rather creepy as a result. But COSATU have also released a poster of the man, which I think is really cool.

The neutral background, the dated red and green blocks of colour, the three-quarter profile, the slightly raised chin, the positive, but firm gaze into the middle distance. It’s all terribly reminiscent of a Soviet propaganda poster. The politics, of course, aren’t all that different either.
And while I’m disinclined to agree with Mjongile’s assessment that Ehrenreich will get the 750,000 votes he needs to become our Mayor until 2016, he actually did get the poster thing right. Albeit accidentally.

Now Ehrenreich targets “racist fires”

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After his extraordinary claims that the new Cape Town cycle lanes were racist:

Cosatu is outraged that the DA in the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town prioritises bicycle lanes for the white wealthy citizens, while poorer communities on the Cape Flats are subjected to over-crowded and unsafe public transport

Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich has now gone even further, suggesting that wildfires in the peninsular “are only found in well off, white neighbourhoods”.

This follows last night’s huge blaze at Oudekraal between Camps Bay and Llandudno: two of Cape Town’s most exclusive suburbs. Ehrenreich stated:

Take a look at the Oudekraal fire yesterday. If we consider the location of that fire and we extrapolate it to the wider metropole, then it is clear to see that 100% of the veldfires in the Cape Town area are in or close to wealthy white areas. This is an appalling disparity and Cosatu is outraged that the DA in the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town prioritises wildfires to these areas while  poorer communities on the Cape Flats aren’t subjected to any fires at all.

Ehrenreich backed up his statistics by indicating that when considering the Oudekraal blaze, it could clearly be noted that there were no fires in areas such as Khayelitsha or Grassy Park – and this despite the fact that the latter was really very grassy and could have gone up at any time.

The Oudekraal fire was only in Oudekraal – in our view, the evidence is conclusive.

This dichotomy only existed, said Ehrenreich, so that the Provincial and Municipal DA could use fire-fighting equipment and personnel in these areas to “impress their white voters”:

They’ve got a shiny new helicopter and they want to show it off

When asked if he could provide any further examples of Provincial monies being used in supposedly racist ways, Ehrenreich was quick to point out that Cosatu had evidence that more than 98% of the Western Cape Provincial paper budget was spent on white paper.
Asked if Cosatu had looked into the stationery budgets of other (ANC-led) Provincial governments, he accused the reporter of trying to change the subject and then said that the interview had to end as he had to attend an(other) appointment at a local private hospital.