Politics.za

For service delivery to happen, government needs to spend money. Lots and lots of money in the particular case of South Africa. Every year SARS collects a record amount of tax revenue ready to be distributed to all level of government and used in their fight against poverty. Despite receiving all that money local government just can’t seem to spend it all.

With only 27.4 percent of the budget spent by the end of February and three months to go before the end of the 2006/07 financial year, Mayco member for corporate services Belinda Walker said on Wednesday it was not only a lack of capacity prohibiting budget spend, but also procurement legislation.

It is not a good sign that Cape Town local government has only managed to spend just over a quarter of it’s budget when three quarters of the financial year has passed. It’s unclear if all the blame can be laid at the foot of national treasury legislation holding up spending at municipalities, but if there’s to be any hope of meaningful service delivery both local and national government need to sort this kind of problem out.

Recently the Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers released a report recommending a number of pay increases. President Thabo Mbeki is recommended to receive a whopping 57% pay increase while Constitutional Court Chief Justice Pius Langa is recommended to receive an even larger 65% increase (which would bring his annual salary to R1.7 million).

Instead of protesting that the increases are a bit much considering the lack of pay rise for other more deserving civil servants (policemen, teachers, state doctors etc) national MPs are up in arms because they did not receive a comparable increase. Under the new recommendation MPs will now receive a salary of R643 800 a year. To put that in perspective the salary of a normal US congressman is only R909 372 ($125 000) and they have a history of turning down pay increases. To put that even more into perspective the average black household brings in an income of about R44 000 a year.

But how about a bit of cheese with this whine?

She said the proposed R643 800 package for MPs would also do little to stem the 84 percent turnover rate experienced among members of parliament.

I’m sorry what? You’re earning 10 times the average salary to rubberstamp whatever legislation the executive brings through parliament and you still don’t think you’re earning enough?

Mentor said MPs, already battling to put their children through school, were being forced to subsidise the state while carrying out their duties.

Who the hell struggles to send their kid to school on a R600 000 a year salary? Perhaps you should take them out of Miss Snooty’s Private School for Rich Kids and put them back into Joe Average Public School like most of the population has to as well.

She said that while a car allowance was provided, many MPs whose families live in other provinces find that they need to buy a second car to commute when they were in Cape Town.

While transport is provided for MPs to travel from parliamentary villages to parliament and back home again, it is operated on a strict time schedule and many MPs without their own car find themselves stranded in the village after 5pm and on weekends.

You know they have this thing in other countries, I think it’s called efficient public transport. Perhaps our MPs could put some effort into bringing that here.

Angry MPs across the political spectrum have ditched their ideological differences and called an urgent multiparty meeting to discuss a proposed 5,4 percent salary increase, as opposed to the handsome pay hike for the executive.

Funding a political party in South Africa is an expensive business. It’s estimated the ANC spent R100 million alone in the last national elections which is much much more than the amount the ANC earns from it’s members, who pay R12 a year in membership dues. We know political parties receive funding from other sources particularly massive donations, such as the R25 million given to the ANC (and R500 000 to the DA) by Brett Kebble. Because SA has no laws requiring political parties to disclose their funding, which both the ANC and DA prefer for differing reasons, we have no real idea of exactly who is secretly buying favour.

Which is why the $2 billion deal between SA’s Chancellor House and Russia’s Azot to build a new fertiliser plant in SA stinks to high heaven and it’s definitely not due to the fertiliser. Chancellor House was originally uncovered as an ANC fundraising front by the Mail & Guardian and the Financial Mail covered them in January and found them to be a particularly shady one at that. Even ANC Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe was unaware of their presence but later admitted to it’s role as an “ANC vehicle”.

Now this deal stinks because it the first deal to emerge from the newly established SA-Russia Business Council and coincidentally this deal involves a company that does not only have close ties to the ANC, it is for all intents and purposes the ANC itself. ANC PR spokesman Smuts Ngonyama has denied that there is anything suspicious about the deal and claims that Chancellor House has nothing to do with the ANC despite Motlanthe’s earlier admission about Chancellor House.

We’ve written before on this blog about the seemingly contradictory effect that BEE might actually be good for white South Africans by forcing them to be more entrepreneurial. A 2003 survey by the Bureau of Market Research found that between 1998 and 2002 the growth in entrepreneurs across racial divisions was as follows

That’s not exactly encouraging numbers for black entrepreneurship and because the black segment accounts for 80% of the population a decrease that large in black entrepreneurs will lower the total number of entrepreneurs in South Africa. That is a definitely not a good thing.

A new survey by Finscope has found that most black small businesses are trapped in “survivalist mode” and that only 8% of all small businesses were taking advantage of government small business support. Black entrepreneurs who do succeed quickly find themselves targets to be hired or bought out by large firms looking to source talented black executives.

If small business and entrepreneurship is to be the saviour of the South African economy as government keeps on saying it will be then the growth in entrepreneurship amongst the black segment of the population needs to reverse course and head into positive territory extremely quickly (if it hopefully hasn’t done so already). Government will also need to start supporting small business earnestly, the focus on multi-billion Rand BEE deals with multinational corporations is a bit too much for my liking.

Update: On a partially related tangent: South Africans join the ANC to advance their economic interests

Mayor Of Cape Town Helen Zille has announced that she will be running for the position of leader of the DA.

If she wins she will not be vacating her post as mayor and instead will have to simultaneously juggle both positions. For instance she will have daily 7am meetings with her mayoral staff and then an hour later pop over to parliament for another meeting with national DA staff.

Personally I don’t think it’s a good idea. Cape Town is really too important for the DA to mess up. If they do the ANC will pounce on the opportunity to show the DA are incapable of governing. With the upcoming preparations for 2010 and no doubt some further attacks by the ANC on getting her out of power I feel Zille needs to be 100% committed to Cape Town.

With three European countries (England, Germany and Sweden) about to start their own investigations into bribery involved in the multi-billion Rand arms deal (despite our own government claiming everything was above board) the role of Chippy Shaik, older brother of Schabir, is starting to come under the spotlight. Chippy was head of procurement for the Department of Defence during the tendering and acquisition of the various weapons systems that made up the arms deal.

The NPA alleges that Chippy “suggested” that Thales partner up with his brother Schabir as a BEE partner. That of course led to the R500 000 bribe offer given to Jacob Zuma which basically kicked off the whole saga culminating in Shaik’s conviction for fraud and Zuma’s firing as Deputy President. Chippy has kept a very low profile following his resignation from the Department of Defence but should the NPA decide to investigate further into Chippy’s role in the arms deal I have a feeling he might have a lot more to answer for than Schabir ever did.

Former Head of Procurement for the arms deal at the Ministry of Defence and brother of jailed fraudster Schabir Shaik, Shamin Chippy Shaik, 46, cannot be found and his family have thrown a net of secrecy over his whereabouts.

The Sunday Times has been told that he has set plans in motion to flee the country as he does not want to take the chance of spending time in a South African jail and is making his way to Perth in Australia.

Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is not recovering very well. After being admitted back into hospital for a lung infection she has now received a liver transplant(!). I don’t know what ailment she is suffering from but it seems pretty bad to be affecting both her lungs and kidney functions.

I hope she gets better but I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t the perfect time for government to gently ask for her resignation so that her deputy Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge (who seems to have a plan of action from AIDS) can take over from acting Health Minister Jeff Radebe.

Reports are coming out of Zimbabwe that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is in rough shape in a jail cell after receiving a rather thorough beating at the hands of Mugabe’s finest.

With his imprisonment, along with about 100 others, and the subsequent ban on demonstrations by the Mugabe government the MDC seems to be once again a more united opposition front, following a few years of infighting.

If the reports about Tvangirai are true I wonder what our government’s response will be considering our own past with police brutality.

Joe Seremane has announced his candidacy for leadership of the DA. Now it’s pretty clear that the DA needs black leadership and I have no doubt that Joe Seremane would be a capable leader but he is by no means the solution to their leadership problem in fact I would say that the DA will be in no better or worse shape if Seremane or Athol Trollip are elected. If Seremance is elected leader of the DA they will still have a a significant dearth of black leadership and it is going to take a lot of work, and a lot of time, to recruit and nurture the leadership they need.

Tomorrow Trevor Manuel will be presenting his 11th national budget and the media is full of speculation about who’s going to get their slice of the pie.

• Will Manuel scrap exchange controls?
• Budget to be robustly redistributive – FNB
• Give business tax breaks, is DA’s tip for Trevor
• Market to smile on Manuel
• Budget: prepare to pay for your sins

Update: And here it is.