WHAT AN unadulterated pleasure it has been to watch ANC Youth League Presidentresident Julius Malema sulk and pout and kick and scream since he was so rudely booed at the SA Communist Party congress last week. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Needless to say he has managed to persuade one or other press club to organise a press conference for him tomorrow (Tuesday). It’s a sure way of getting all the media to focus one just one thing (him) as he tells us what he’s going to do about it. I would love not to send anyone to cover it but starving a publicity addict of oxygen isn’t something you can do piecemeal.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

SO, ESKOM has backtracked on its demand that electricity tariffs rise by 45 per cent immediately. It now says 35 per cent will do.

But it won’t. It still has to be argued and justified and, frankly, there can’t be a case for it. Not a real case. That’s because Eskom’s acting CEO, Mpho Makwana, revealed yesterday, after announcing the slightly lesser tariff nightmare, that the company was considering partially privatising it’s yet-to-be-built R120bn Kusile power station.

That would be, um, in order to finance it. Kusile, planned for Mpumalanga, would pump out 4 800MW at its height, making it one of the biggest coal-fired power plants in the world.

But here’s the thing. If Kusile can partly be funded by private capital, why not the rest of  Eskom’s build programme?  Why should industry and consumers pay for anything?

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Popularity: 12% [?]

MENZI SIMELANE, who has been named National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) by President Jacob Zuma, is a really nice guy, friendly and quick to laugh. But that doesn’t cut it in this job, unfortunately. All prosecutions in the country are run through the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which the NDPP heads.

Sadly for Simelane, he was forced to give evidence in chief for the Government at the so-called (Frene) Ginwala Inquiry into whether or not the previous NDPP, Vusi Pikoli, was fit for office. Former president Thabo Mbeki, who suspended Pikoli, didn’t think so and wanted Pikoli to desist from arresting the former National Commissioner of Police, Jackie Selebi (if you’re new in SA, read this slowly) back in 2007 before the ANC congress where Zuma ousted Mbeki as party leader. Mbeki didn’t want Selebi in Zuma’s camp.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

AS A NEWSPAPER editor I am blessed with wonderful colleagues. In this business, as in most no doubt, the moment you’re the boss and you start thinking you’re the smartest guy in the room you’re in loads of trouble.

My job is to make other, smarter, journalists famous and over the years, particularly on the opinion and editorial pages of Business Day, I have tried to do that. I think it’s paid off too.

One of those colleagues is my friend Tim Cohen. He is far and away the most widely informed and opinionated guy I know. He told me once that his dad used to force him to argue with him. He wasn’t allowed not to have an opinion about things. The result is a writer who is in thought mode all the time and when The Weekender closed I moved as fast as possible to ensure his fabulous Weekender column moved on to Business Day.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

NEWS that the South African Ballet Theatre (SABT) is in trouble is very sad but, perhaps, not surprising. Whole banks have vanished in this recession and a struggling ballet company at the bottom of Africa could hardly be expected to escape the storm.

The SABT is what was once PACT. Its dancers, jobless when the state closed PACT down, formed their own company. It is hard to describe what a feat that must have been for people utterly removed from business in their day to day vocation.

For the last decade though the SABT has been able to bring world class ballet to Johannesburg and to provide unbelievable learning opportunities to children in Alexandra.

Now they are in a financial hole. They need R2m to keep going at the rate they have been after some big sponsors withdrew funding. One of those was FNB, which has its eye only on a successful SWC next year. Surely this can be done? These people are not rich or stuck up and they work damn hard. A principle dancer earns less than R15 000 a month.

The thing about ballet that we lose as a country if the SABT goes down is discipline in dance. Some folk say its “eurocentric” and stuff like that but they need to get over themselves. Ballet prepares you for a life in dance the way a good piano grounding prepares you for a life as a musician. It is the very essence of any dance.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

AS WE said in an editorial the other day, Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan is on a hiding to nothing. It is hard to think of a single decision she might make or not make that would satisfy everyone, even in her own Cabinet. The way she gets out of that bind is just to make decisions, as best as she can. Indecision is the enemy of this particular government. We had never, in all my time as editor of Business Day, ever written an editorial suggesting someone resign. The one about her came closest. We said she should consider her position after the Eskom cock-up.
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Popularity: 18% [?]

SO, THE President has finally grasped the corruption nettle, we reported on the front page of Business Day today.

He formed a committee.

Look, I know it is easy to make fun of people. I know the President is serious when he says he wants to stamp out corruption. But it’s how you go about it that matters, surely. Slipping out of a corruption trial is hardly a good example. Getting your mate out of prison isn’t either.

Surely what has to be done to stop public officials (ok, let’s add the private sector in there, it’s politically correct but more than misleading) stealing money that doesn’t belong to them is to live a pure and modest life yourself. Then you can look people in the face and tell them to stop. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6% [?]

Bobby Godsell’s decision not to return to the chair at Eskom is a tragedy. It leaves Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan sitting with a utility in the middle of the biggest capital spending programme in South African history, no clear way to pay for it, and one terribly nice guy with not enough experience acting as chairman and chief executive.

Nothing in her struggle experience will have prepared Hogan for anything like this, and if she’s nervous about it then good. The lesson to be learned here is this — stand up for what is right immediately, minister. This sort of thing will happen again. Will you hesitate the next time too? Don’t fuss about with the country’s future.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

** Update at the end

I SEE that President Jacob Zuma has had to remind the ANC’s partners who is boss! Good. Well I thought ‘good’ until I read on. City Press said he had told an ANC national executive committee meeting the weekend before last that — and here was the let-down — ‘Cabinet ministers serve the ruling party only’. Of course, in context that is a stand of sorts. It is aimed at Cosatu and Communist Party critics of Trevor Manuel and his Planning Commission.

In the greater scheme of things, however, it is a concession, if not a surrender. In most mature parliamentary democracies, Cabinet Ministers serve the head of the government, or state. The prime minister or the president. Not here. Here it is the party that calls the shots. Here is where a party secretary general like Gwede Mantashe can dress down a minister directly if he or she drifts off the party line. In other countries that would be the president’s job.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

SO, BOBBY Godsell was right all along. Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga did resign on October 28, as Godsell reported. This, just now, from the Eskom board itself, sans, obviously, Godsell himself. He resigned as chairman last Monday, complaining the government wouldn’t back the board’s view that Maroga had, in fact, resigned.

No he didn’t cried the ANC Brat League. Show us the letter! Where’s the letter!

Er, actually Brat League, in business — or at least in business conducted with integrity (look it up) a verbal agreement is a deal. If Maroga said he would resign, then he resigned. That’s how the productive part of the world works. The leech part (your part) waits for written proof.

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Popularity: 6% [?]