IT IS ONLY 4pm and already November 5 2009 is turning out to be arguably the best day of the year for South Africa.

It started with a hubub in the newsroom early on. When I enquired as to the cause of the celebration I was told that the Government had decided not to proceed with the absurd purchase of 8 Airbus A400m military transport aircraft. When they were first ordered in 2004 the cost was going to be R17bn — already ridiculous. By the end of October it had stretched to R40bn! We are just not the kind of country that can afford that sort of thing.

The idea of the Airbus purchase was to facilitate SAs peace-keeping role in Africa. But I am not sure we are ready to be Africa’s policeman. Let’s sort our own country out first. Obviously we still want to be a good continental citizen in troubled parts but there are cheaper aircraft with which to do that.

The old Hercules C-130 keeps being reinvented (it has now reached, I believe, the C-130K which is well down the alphabet) and is arguably the most capable military transport in history. Let’s buy more.

Or better still, let’s buy them second-hand, like Ecuador just did with the Mirage fighters we have recently sold to them.

I agree with the DA though — even though we will be able to have some R2.9bn returned to the Tresury, the deal needs to be investigated. How did a poor country get to make such an expensive order in the first place? Who benefitted.

I always remember former SAA CEO Coleman Andrews saying to me that the difference between buying Boeing and Airbus was that the Americans sold commercially and the French sold politically. Someone got paid to do this deal. Let’s find them.

Hardly had that news broken than I heard Benni McCarthy would be recalled to Bafana Bafana. He may be a bit fat but at least Benni knows where the goalposts are and how to get the ball into them. Jacob Zuma will be pleased with Carlos Parreira, who only returned to this country hours before the announcement.

Then Jacob Maroga’s resignation as CE of Eskom was leaked. I was cheered up by this not so much because I feel particularly strongly about whether he stays or goes but because it was Business Day’s excellent Energy Affairs Editor, Siseko Njobeni, who first broke the story that he was leaving on our front page last Friday.

Then, nothing. It’s unnerving when you are the editor and your paper has gone out on a limb. Finally, it was the almost total silence that comforted me. We were obvioulsy on to something. Yesterday was merely confirmation.

I trust. There was some confusion about whether or not he had in fact gone and it does appear to have been a tumultuous week for both Maroga and Eskom’s chairman, Bobby Godsell. Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan did the right thing by leaving it to the board to hire and fire.

I know people say it wasn’t Maroga’s fault that Eskom has run into capacity problems. That’s fine. But it was his job to do something about it and there has been little sign of leadership from the utility. It is all very well to demand endless tarriff increases but the economy just can’t absorb them. Someone, not just his successor, will have to come up with a way to build capacity without crippling our capacity to use it.

Of course, no day like this would be complete without the ANC Youth League breaking wind. And they did not disappoint. Maroga had not resigned, the Youth League declared in a statement, and never would, despite Godsell’s “hideous” attempts to undermine African leadership at Eskom.

They were joined with equally absurd statement about blacks being hounded out of state companies (Siyabonga Gama at Transnet being the other) by the Black Management Forum (BMF) which I always thought had more sense. Obviously Maroga would be replaced by a black candidate.

By the time of writing I had not seen the Youth League’s reaction to probably the best news of the day — that the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) had suspended Athletics South Africa (ASA) boss Leonard Chuene and the entire board of the ASA, over the Caster Semenya affair and Chuene’s disgraceful betrayal of her and of the nation.

It doesn’t look as of Sascoc expects Chuene or the board to be back any time soon — it announced an interim administrator at ASA and that an interim board would be appointed. Yay! Pass the champagne.

No doubt Julius Malema and his merry men will pronounce Sascoc to be ridden with the lackeys of white racists and all that in the next few hours. How exhausting it must all be for them.

In an hour I get to decide what to put on the front page of tomorrow’s Business Day. What a pleasure that is going to be. Every time I convince myself the Zuma adminsitration is losing its way I get slapped around the face by something obvious — the right decisions keep being made. Nothing mad is happening.

Cheers

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