Weblog
Jozi
22 April 2009There is a quaintly Luddite quality to the South African Taxi Industries belated response to the impending introduction of the Bus Rapid Transport System and its impact on their revenue stream. In the general babble it is difficult to evaluate whether much consultation took place, and quite possibly it didn’t; probably to forestall an inevitable opposition to an inevitable event.
For offshore readers South Africa’s/Azania’s most important cities: Cape Town, the national legislative capital, Tshwane, the national executive capital and Jozi [The Big J] : the magnificently materialistic financial capital of the continent, have for decades been dependent on a savage breed of entrepreneur: predatory in every sense of the essential capitalist spirit; for the mass movement of less affluent citizens who need to commute daily to and from work, and perform other chores.
Globally prestigious newspapers like for instance the economist have over the decades written paeans about one of the world’s most successful [so-called] Black capitalist developments and by and large it is a justified source of pride.
It leapt into a gap presented by the disintegration of the sclerotic Apartheid era cronyist dominated publicly sponsored mass transport system and provides fast, efficient, time dependent citizen movement. They are also terrifying to fellow road users, through whose space many hurtle with reckless abandonment,[and always did: my childhood was shot through with the reality of crossing the road in front of my parents house, to the park beyond, dodging speeding taxing driving lunatics in big Plymouths, Dodges, Chevrolets and Ford Galaxies.] The annual death toll from minibus taxis crashes with other road users, or just passing furniture, probably makes up a large part of the annual road slaughter that is part and parcel of an era of mass movement. Personally I prefer to use routes that are less populated with minibus taxis unless I feel specifically, the need for an adrenaline rush.
Nowadays it is an over traded and frequently violent industry in the ‘slippery slope’ stages of its product life cycle. It is being forced by legislative fiat to modernise its fleet, at about the time in a product life cycles stage where it is over -commoditised and the return on capital is negative. It managed to see off the prospective competition from the new high-speed rail line being created between Jozi and Tshwane by seeing to it that it only drew audiences from the private car sector. It is now faced with competition from an unanticipated source; a mass movement bus rapid transit system that runs on dedicated high-speed routes that are being carved out on all the major arteries serving the Big J [presumably all over Tshwane and Cape Town too.].
One remembers that there was a time when stagecoaches kept the cities and the citizens lined. They fell prey to the coming of trains in the late 19th century. Presumably ‘they did not go quietly’ into that dark night. The same is true for the taxi industry facing regulation and competition. There has been violence, sticks are routinely waved, shots are routinely fired in rage, frustration or whatever and now the new President has agreed to simply stop the whole business for awhile until the election is over [technically he is only the new president after the election, which is a foregone conclusion unless something remarkable happens over the next 48 hours. So I am making an assumptive statement].
Of course next week when the election is over the BRT process will continue, Contracts are signed, work is in progress; the entire region is being routinely disrupted by a battery of roadwork programmes, that are well under way; and are fortuitously helping to propel us along the upper surface of this Great Global Recession, gripping the planet currently. To stop this BRT process now could have catastrophic financial repercussions and would undoubtedly impact on exchange rates and market confidence.
Then there is the question as to whether the interests of the State are synonymous with those of an unelected business consortium? We await Mr Z’s position after the election when I am sure the entire matter will be delegated to people who will simply carry on regardless. This is a pattern of behaviour that has become predictable and impervious. Why abandon a winning formula? Especially when you have just been given what, subject to an unanticipated “Lie” factor, looks to be an 80% majority.
The real answer here is that the minibus taxi has reached its commoditisation date and must yield to the more efficient system. That does not by any means mean the end of the taxi industry. Rather that the smart money will move to something more lucrative. Others will search out niche markets and cross town routes linking parts of the city that currently require multiple journeys to reach. They will have to practice running around the web rather than down the main lanes to the hub and out again, we are in any event no longer that type of city really… We are an edge city and most city planning hasn’t worked that out yet.
A big competitive issue will be to improve the quality of the journey and develop more credibility and exploit the natural advantages the minibus has over the BRT; Nimbleness, flexibility, linking routes between BRT lines. That is how you deal with market competition… not by demanding protection from progress.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The great BRT Taxi war.
Weblog
Jozi
21 April 2009
There is a quaintly Luddite quality to the South African Taxi Industries belated response to the impending introduction of the Bus Rapid Transport System and its impact on their revenue stream. In the general babble it is difficult to evaluate whether much consultation took place, and quite possibly it didn’t; probably to forestall an inevitable opposition to an inevitable event.
For offshore readers South Africa’s/Azania’s most important cities: Cape Town, the national legislative capital, Tshwane, the national executive capital and Jozi [The Big J] : the magnificently materialistic financial capital of the continent, have for decades been dependent on a savage breed of entrepreneur: predatory in every sense of the essential capitalist spirit; for the mass movement of less affluent citizens who need to commute daily to and from work, and perform other chores.
Globally prestigious newspapers like for instance the economist have over the decades written paeans about one of the world’s most successful [so-called] Black capitalist developments and by and large it is a justified source of pride.
It leapt into a gap presented by the disintegration of the sclerotic Apartheid era cronyist dominated, publicly sponsored, mass transport system; and provides fast, efficient, time dependent citizen movement. They are also terrifying to fellow road users, through whose space many hurtle with reckless abandonment,[and always did: my childhood was shot through with the reality of crossing the road in front of my parents house, to the park beyond, dodging speeding taxing driving lunatics in big Plymouths, Dodges, Chevrolets and Ford Galaxies.] The annual death toll from minibus taxis crashes with other road users, or just passing furniture, probably makes up a large part of the annual road slaughter that is part and parcel of an era of mass movement. Personally I prefer to use routes that are less populated with minibus taxis unless I feel specifically, the need for an adrenaline rush.
Nowadays it is an over traded and frequently violent industry in the ‘slippery slope’ stages of its product life cycle. It is being forced by legislative fiat to modernise its fleet, at about the time in a product life cycles stage, where it is over-commoditised and the return on capital is negative.
It managed to see off the prospective competition from the new high-speed rail line being created between Jozi and Tshwane [known as Gautrain] by seeing to it that it only drew audiences from the private car sector. It is now faced with competition from an unanticipated source; a mass movement bus rapid transit system that runs on dedicated high-speed routes that are being carved out on all the major arteries serving the Big J [presumably all over Tshwane and Cape Town too.].
One remembers that there was a time when stagecoaches kept the cities and the citizens linked. They fell prey to the coming of trains in the late 19th century. Presumably ‘they did not go quietly’ into that dark night. The same is true for the taxi industry facing regulation and competition. There has been violence, sticks are routinely waved, shots are routinely fired in rage, frustration or whatever and now the new President has agreed to simply stop the whole business for awhile until the election is over [technically he is only the new president after the election, which is a foregone conclusion unless something remarkable happens over the next 48 hours. So I am making an assumptive statement].
Of course next week when the election is over the BRT process will continue, Contracts are signed, work is in progress; the entire region is being routinely disrupted by a battery of roadwork programmes, that are well under way; and are fortuitously helping to propel us along the upper surface of this Great Global Recession, gripping the planet currently. To stop this BRT process now could have catastrophic financial repercussions and would undoubtedly impact on exchange rates and market confidence.
Then there is the question as to whether the interests of the State are synonymous with those of an unelected business consortium? We await Mr Z’s position after the election when I am sure the entire matter will be delegated to people who will simply carry on regardless. This is a pattern of behaviour that has become predictable and impervious. Why abandon a winning formula? Especially when you have just been given what, subject to an unanticipated “Lie” factor, looks to be an 80% majority.
The real answer here is that the minibus taxi has reached its commoditisation date and must yield to the more efficient system. That does not by any means, mean the end of the taxi industry. Rather that the smart money will move to something more lucrative. Others will search out niche markets and cross-town routes, linking parts of the city that currently require multiple journeys to reach. They will have to practice running around the web rather than down the main lanes to the hub and out again. We are in any event no longer that type of city really… We are an Edge city so is Tswane, and most city planning hasn’t worked that out yet.
A big competitive issue will be to improve the quality of the journey and develop more credibility and exploit the natural advantages the minibus has over the BRT; Nimbleness, flexibility, linking routes between BRT lines. That is how you deal with market competition… not by demanding protection from progress.
Jozi
21 April 2009
There is a quaintly Luddite quality to the South African Taxi Industries belated response to the impending introduction of the Bus Rapid Transport System and its impact on their revenue stream. In the general babble it is difficult to evaluate whether much consultation took place, and quite possibly it didn’t; probably to forestall an inevitable opposition to an inevitable event.
For offshore readers South Africa’s/Azania’s most important cities: Cape Town, the national legislative capital, Tshwane, the national executive capital and Jozi [The Big J] : the magnificently materialistic financial capital of the continent, have for decades been dependent on a savage breed of entrepreneur: predatory in every sense of the essential capitalist spirit; for the mass movement of less affluent citizens who need to commute daily to and from work, and perform other chores.
Globally prestigious newspapers like for instance the economist have over the decades written paeans about one of the world’s most successful [so-called] Black capitalist developments and by and large it is a justified source of pride.
It leapt into a gap presented by the disintegration of the sclerotic Apartheid era cronyist dominated, publicly sponsored, mass transport system; and provides fast, efficient, time dependent citizen movement. They are also terrifying to fellow road users, through whose space many hurtle with reckless abandonment,[and always did: my childhood was shot through with the reality of crossing the road in front of my parents house, to the park beyond, dodging speeding taxing driving lunatics in big Plymouths, Dodges, Chevrolets and Ford Galaxies.] The annual death toll from minibus taxis crashes with other road users, or just passing furniture, probably makes up a large part of the annual road slaughter that is part and parcel of an era of mass movement. Personally I prefer to use routes that are less populated with minibus taxis unless I feel specifically, the need for an adrenaline rush.
Nowadays it is an over traded and frequently violent industry in the ‘slippery slope’ stages of its product life cycle. It is being forced by legislative fiat to modernise its fleet, at about the time in a product life cycles stage, where it is over-commoditised and the return on capital is negative.
It managed to see off the prospective competition from the new high-speed rail line being created between Jozi and Tshwane [known as Gautrain] by seeing to it that it only drew audiences from the private car sector. It is now faced with competition from an unanticipated source; a mass movement bus rapid transit system that runs on dedicated high-speed routes that are being carved out on all the major arteries serving the Big J [presumably all over Tshwane and Cape Town too.].
One remembers that there was a time when stagecoaches kept the cities and the citizens linked. They fell prey to the coming of trains in the late 19th century. Presumably ‘they did not go quietly’ into that dark night. The same is true for the taxi industry facing regulation and competition. There has been violence, sticks are routinely waved, shots are routinely fired in rage, frustration or whatever and now the new President has agreed to simply stop the whole business for awhile until the election is over [technically he is only the new president after the election, which is a foregone conclusion unless something remarkable happens over the next 48 hours. So I am making an assumptive statement].
Of course next week when the election is over the BRT process will continue, Contracts are signed, work is in progress; the entire region is being routinely disrupted by a battery of roadwork programmes, that are well under way; and are fortuitously helping to propel us along the upper surface of this Great Global Recession, gripping the planet currently. To stop this BRT process now could have catastrophic financial repercussions and would undoubtedly impact on exchange rates and market confidence.
Then there is the question as to whether the interests of the State are synonymous with those of an unelected business consortium? We await Mr Z’s position after the election when I am sure the entire matter will be delegated to people who will simply carry on regardless. This is a pattern of behaviour that has become predictable and impervious. Why abandon a winning formula? Especially when you have just been given what, subject to an unanticipated “Lie” factor, looks to be an 80% majority.
The real answer here is that the minibus taxi has reached its commoditisation date and must yield to the more efficient system. That does not by any means, mean the end of the taxi industry. Rather that the smart money will move to something more lucrative. Others will search out niche markets and cross-town routes, linking parts of the city that currently require multiple journeys to reach. They will have to practice running around the web rather than down the main lanes to the hub and out again. We are in any event no longer that type of city really… We are an Edge city so is Tswane, and most city planning hasn’t worked that out yet.
A big competitive issue will be to improve the quality of the journey and develop more credibility and exploit the natural advantages the minibus has over the BRT; Nimbleness, flexibility, linking routes between BRT lines. That is how you deal with market competition… not by demanding protection from progress.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The Knowledge economy and SA's election
The Knowledge Economy Rulz
I was struck the other day by a news item that in a nutshell summarised the opportunity and dilemmas inherent in this great global economic meltdown.
First though let me say that I didn’t feel that the current election campaign was turning out to be anything other than an anti-climax. There is no point in listening to the welter of messages being sent out by our motley crew of parties and contenders.
Perhaps there is a contest and the election date itself will reveal a ‘moment of truth’ as we like to pander it, but at this moment there are about a dozen parties all sounding the same as the current ruling party and one party that seems to be marginally different… By this time next week we will know that the majority will rule and that one swimming upstream will either have been brutally rejected or surprisingly strengthened.
I find everyone’s policies incoherent. I presume they are deliberately incoherent. They reflect the truth of our age: a truth we hate to acknowledge. There are no solutions to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
The reason why there are no solutions is because ‘we’ [those who are in public office] are not working for the common good, as would be supposed, when remunerated from the common pot, but rather every opportunity seeking individual who joined the Struggle with the intention of achieving personal enrichment, seeks to build a lavish lifestyle [according to their fancies] from controlling access to real opportunity. This can only occur at the expense of the poor and ultimately it will cripple the nation no less than has been empirically demonstrated so many times over the past century in so many failed states, that it is actually boring.
The news item that caught my attention in a puzzled way was broadcast out of Bloomberg TV. Briefly it consisted of a story and an interview. The subject, a mid-life American male former construction company owner who had seen his business collapse following the real estate bust in the U.S. and had re-skilled as an independent currency trader.
I was forcibly struck in full force by the reality that we live in a knowledge based economy. The story explained how currency trading had become a big field of endeavour and the volume of daily trades in a wide range of such financial instruments as the euro, yen, ruble, sterling and of course dollars, had doubled over the past few years, and was a huge sum by any of today’s inflated standards.
As recently as a decade or so ago currency dealing, or as it was more arcanely known “arbitrage”, was a skill passed down from father to son over generations and was always a source of huge wealth to a limited pool of people who sensibly did not display their wealth [much] and thus were able to live happy rich and anonymous lives, unlike the vast mass of humanity who live poor and anonymously whether happy or not. George Soros, for instance also interviewed this past weekend on Bloomberg, will always inspire awe as the man who broke the Bank of England in 1992, such was the rarity of the skill.
Now a construction entrepreneur can 'take a course', he said, learn the ropes from expert sources and when interviewed was up at some 03.00 hours trading euros in an Australian market which he later sold somewhere else in the world. Now that is serious re-skilling and the market is providing the man with his opportunity as it always did… he simply shifted markets because he had access to knowledge.
America being what it is with a sluice way full of funny money pouring into the economy in tranches of trillions, a huge percentage of those losing jobs in the old pre-2009 economy will re-skill within the year and be re constructing their lives in a new, emerging and completely different world. There is something odd about trading a productive lifestyle building homes for people, to becoming one of an army living symbiotically off certain core lubrication points in the non-real part of the economy: the money part, but ultimately that is what the knowledge economy is all about.
The dilemma for those of us in developing country’s where the majority of our voters will never even conceptualise arbitrage, albeit they could all confuse it with arbitration, is that the Chinese strategy of undermining the American dollar by pricing their currency at about a twenty percent discount to the dollar; and then fixing the price so the dollar couldn’t shake it off, was to annihilate our [S.A’s] rather subsidy dependent textile industry, through flooding the country with ridiculously cheap, Chinese imports at the expense of both the Chinese worker and ours.
There is no quick fix, like learning currency manipulation to solve the employment conditions of former machinists and other clothing industry workers wiped out by the Chinese invasion. Sadly most will never work again. Similarly the hosts of warlike men dancing and chanting about our new emerging President may well find that like front line troops in all conflicts once the war is over they become superfluous to need; and while some may become remittance men, the rest will subside back into a sea of workless anonymity without the skills to construct their own lives out of nothing, as the construction man [and a million or so of his peers] will be able to do.
We are in recession now and have during boom times been barely creating enough jobs to even marginally dent the army of aspirant work seeking persons, who otherwise have no way out of poverty other than through criminal activities. We are no longer a society, which sees self-development as the solution to unemployment, those who now control the fortunes of the ruling party are of an essentially kollektivist mindset; and we are about to elect a populist leader who is promising things that cannot be under our present circumstances other than through actions that may well destroy the State itself, in any seriously productive form.
We remember I think that the last election was noted for posters proclaiming: “ vote for us we’ll bring jobs and wealth”. It was true that some people gained immense wealth beyond all dreams of avarice. For the rest it was ‘tata ma chance’ with the State controlled lottery with its State controlled winners. And that hasn’t happened on a scale sufficient to have any lasting impact. Right now we are shedding jobs much faster than they can be “created”: as entire industries struggle to survive the greatest financial meltdown in recorded history.
Frankly the last thing this country needs right now is a government that wants to emulate Hugo Chavez or worse and the only way that cannot happen is if every eligible voter goes to the polls next Wednesday and votes for change.
As many of you know this blog’s cynical definition of democracy enlarges on Churchill’s famous assertion that all government is bad, democracy is simply the best form of bad, by widening the frame to include the idea that democracy is about the citizen having an implicit, enforceable right to routinely change the gathered vultures who flock daily to the largesse table in search of easy pickings. [I would call them thieves but there is an election brewing and I wouldn’t like to be rude to those few people of integrity who, I am certain, exist in every party.] And it is time for a feeding frenzy adjustment.
Frankly I think it is time for a total change of government, even if it ends up as a coalition type of relatively unstable government… After all, Italy for instance, has virtually had no stable government for about sixty years and managed to be prosperous and successful; that is, until a couple of months ago when Sylvio [their prime Fatcat] passed a law making him immune to prosecution; and look at the shock wave that caused: an entire town fell down.
The Americans proved last year that they could vote for a dramatic change. Now is not the time to vote for a party with a covert Kollektivist agenda. We have no choice but to go with the market economy, it is the only form of economic activity that even partially solves the problem of superfluous human lives, and the market economy in the 21st century is a knowledge economy. So go and vote for change next Wednesday.
I was struck the other day by a news item that in a nutshell summarised the opportunity and dilemmas inherent in this great global economic meltdown.
First though let me say that I didn’t feel that the current election campaign was turning out to be anything other than an anti-climax. There is no point in listening to the welter of messages being sent out by our motley crew of parties and contenders.
Perhaps there is a contest and the election date itself will reveal a ‘moment of truth’ as we like to pander it, but at this moment there are about a dozen parties all sounding the same as the current ruling party and one party that seems to be marginally different… By this time next week we will know that the majority will rule and that one swimming upstream will either have been brutally rejected or surprisingly strengthened.
I find everyone’s policies incoherent. I presume they are deliberately incoherent. They reflect the truth of our age: a truth we hate to acknowledge. There are no solutions to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
The reason why there are no solutions is because ‘we’ [those who are in public office] are not working for the common good, as would be supposed, when remunerated from the common pot, but rather every opportunity seeking individual who joined the Struggle with the intention of achieving personal enrichment, seeks to build a lavish lifestyle [according to their fancies] from controlling access to real opportunity. This can only occur at the expense of the poor and ultimately it will cripple the nation no less than has been empirically demonstrated so many times over the past century in so many failed states, that it is actually boring.
The news item that caught my attention in a puzzled way was broadcast out of Bloomberg TV. Briefly it consisted of a story and an interview. The subject, a mid-life American male former construction company owner who had seen his business collapse following the real estate bust in the U.S. and had re-skilled as an independent currency trader.
I was forcibly struck in full force by the reality that we live in a knowledge based economy. The story explained how currency trading had become a big field of endeavour and the volume of daily trades in a wide range of such financial instruments as the euro, yen, ruble, sterling and of course dollars, had doubled over the past few years, and was a huge sum by any of today’s inflated standards.
As recently as a decade or so ago currency dealing, or as it was more arcanely known “arbitrage”, was a skill passed down from father to son over generations and was always a source of huge wealth to a limited pool of people who sensibly did not display their wealth [much] and thus were able to live happy rich and anonymous lives, unlike the vast mass of humanity who live poor and anonymously whether happy or not. George Soros, for instance also interviewed this past weekend on Bloomberg, will always inspire awe as the man who broke the Bank of England in 1992, such was the rarity of the skill.
Now a construction entrepreneur can 'take a course', he said, learn the ropes from expert sources and when interviewed was up at some 03.00 hours trading euros in an Australian market which he later sold somewhere else in the world. Now that is serious re-skilling and the market is providing the man with his opportunity as it always did… he simply shifted markets because he had access to knowledge.
America being what it is with a sluice way full of funny money pouring into the economy in tranches of trillions, a huge percentage of those losing jobs in the old pre-2009 economy will re-skill within the year and be re constructing their lives in a new, emerging and completely different world. There is something odd about trading a productive lifestyle building homes for people, to becoming one of an army living symbiotically off certain core lubrication points in the non-real part of the economy: the money part, but ultimately that is what the knowledge economy is all about.
The dilemma for those of us in developing country’s where the majority of our voters will never even conceptualise arbitrage, albeit they could all confuse it with arbitration, is that the Chinese strategy of undermining the American dollar by pricing their currency at about a twenty percent discount to the dollar; and then fixing the price so the dollar couldn’t shake it off, was to annihilate our [S.A’s] rather subsidy dependent textile industry, through flooding the country with ridiculously cheap, Chinese imports at the expense of both the Chinese worker and ours.
There is no quick fix, like learning currency manipulation to solve the employment conditions of former machinists and other clothing industry workers wiped out by the Chinese invasion. Sadly most will never work again. Similarly the hosts of warlike men dancing and chanting about our new emerging President may well find that like front line troops in all conflicts once the war is over they become superfluous to need; and while some may become remittance men, the rest will subside back into a sea of workless anonymity without the skills to construct their own lives out of nothing, as the construction man [and a million or so of his peers] will be able to do.
We are in recession now and have during boom times been barely creating enough jobs to even marginally dent the army of aspirant work seeking persons, who otherwise have no way out of poverty other than through criminal activities. We are no longer a society, which sees self-development as the solution to unemployment, those who now control the fortunes of the ruling party are of an essentially kollektivist mindset; and we are about to elect a populist leader who is promising things that cannot be under our present circumstances other than through actions that may well destroy the State itself, in any seriously productive form.
We remember I think that the last election was noted for posters proclaiming: “ vote for us we’ll bring jobs and wealth”. It was true that some people gained immense wealth beyond all dreams of avarice. For the rest it was ‘tata ma chance’ with the State controlled lottery with its State controlled winners. And that hasn’t happened on a scale sufficient to have any lasting impact. Right now we are shedding jobs much faster than they can be “created”: as entire industries struggle to survive the greatest financial meltdown in recorded history.
Frankly the last thing this country needs right now is a government that wants to emulate Hugo Chavez or worse and the only way that cannot happen is if every eligible voter goes to the polls next Wednesday and votes for change.
As many of you know this blog’s cynical definition of democracy enlarges on Churchill’s famous assertion that all government is bad, democracy is simply the best form of bad, by widening the frame to include the idea that democracy is about the citizen having an implicit, enforceable right to routinely change the gathered vultures who flock daily to the largesse table in search of easy pickings. [I would call them thieves but there is an election brewing and I wouldn’t like to be rude to those few people of integrity who, I am certain, exist in every party.] And it is time for a feeding frenzy adjustment.
Frankly I think it is time for a total change of government, even if it ends up as a coalition type of relatively unstable government… After all, Italy for instance, has virtually had no stable government for about sixty years and managed to be prosperous and successful; that is, until a couple of months ago when Sylvio [their prime Fatcat] passed a law making him immune to prosecution; and look at the shock wave that caused: an entire town fell down.
The Americans proved last year that they could vote for a dramatic change. Now is not the time to vote for a party with a covert Kollektivist agenda. We have no choice but to go with the market economy, it is the only form of economic activity that even partially solves the problem of superfluous human lives, and the market economy in the 21st century is a knowledge economy. So go and vote for change next Wednesday.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Wot a shower
I thought of writing about the end of the never, never trial of Mr Jacob Zuma, President-in-waiting of South Africa but it was such an anti climax i was left thougthtless.
I wondered instead about the Brian Rix farce qualities of the entire affair, but a Rix farce always has a plausible resolution, which is known beforehand to the audience. Does Mo Shaik’s revelation to the nation at some place in Tschwane [sic] count as bringing the audience into the unravelling plot, or was that too close to the denouement to count as creating farce: hmm more commonly used with tragedy.
And then there is this anti-climatic discovery that the entire case was a fabrication conspired by our own Rosenkranz and Guildenstern [sic]. This strange conclusion, whereby about a hundred million rand [not really much money is it?] is spent to discover via a random mysterious audio tape delivered via unofficial/unorthodox means that the entire business was an NPA conspiracy, hatched by a couple of flunkeys in the system and not the Butler everyone has suspected all along. No wonder the man is now sitting in an aggrieved circumstance offstage albeit not yet in the Green Room. This ending was not at all farce like. It has a distinctly continental even French touch. It’s more like the kind of ending one should have in a pink panther movie, where credulity has already been so overstretched that R&G are simply the comic relief.
So: the unanswered questions. Why was there a rumour that the NPA was proposing to charge Mr Z with more than 700 counts of what should now, appropriately in our newly transformed society, be [so-called] Black-collar-crimes? Did those huge files we kept seeing in foto glimpses on Tee vee in the hands of the prosecution simply contain malicious gossip? Was telling the nation about it all over these years that we have been bored with this saga also malicious gossip and shouldn’t those who perpetrated and broadcast such gossip be hunted down and apprehended? Will Rosenkranz and Guildenstern be hunted down? Will they mysteriously become, as they were in Hamlet? Or will they simply have to lay low in exile for awhile until everyone has forgotten that there were ever unfavourable thoughts about the new beloved leader, say by later today?
When Mr Shaik was found guilty of supplying more than R2,000,000 bucks to Mr Z did this not imply that the money had been received by the latter, or is that, unproven and therefore, he is innocent of using the money to finance the school fees of his many children [which is of course as it should be shouldn’t it ] and maintaining a lifestyle, in conflict with his declared income… Ah that too is unproven and therefore like the personal affairs of all persons a private matter [again as it should be] is out of bounds for discussion.
The great thing about winning this marathon struggle is the ten-year After-party that is our forcoming attraction. Have a great life Msholozi [sic] with your wondrous Machini wami [sic] Those guys in the G20 are all lining up to have a foto-op with you at the next big summit. They would have all buckled under the strain, well maybe not Mr Putin or that tough little Frenchman, but you are undoubtedly "The man": chutzpah deluxe..
Better to be a man about whom questions are asked than one about whom the answers are known.
Final question. Could this oddball ending be improved with a close out shot of Mr Z taking a shower?
Blogroid
I wondered instead about the Brian Rix farce qualities of the entire affair, but a Rix farce always has a plausible resolution, which is known beforehand to the audience. Does Mo Shaik’s revelation to the nation at some place in Tschwane [sic] count as bringing the audience into the unravelling plot, or was that too close to the denouement to count as creating farce: hmm more commonly used with tragedy.
And then there is this anti-climatic discovery that the entire case was a fabrication conspired by our own Rosenkranz and Guildenstern [sic]. This strange conclusion, whereby about a hundred million rand [not really much money is it?] is spent to discover via a random mysterious audio tape delivered via unofficial/unorthodox means that the entire business was an NPA conspiracy, hatched by a couple of flunkeys in the system and not the Butler everyone has suspected all along. No wonder the man is now sitting in an aggrieved circumstance offstage albeit not yet in the Green Room. This ending was not at all farce like. It has a distinctly continental even French touch. It’s more like the kind of ending one should have in a pink panther movie, where credulity has already been so overstretched that R&G are simply the comic relief.
So: the unanswered questions. Why was there a rumour that the NPA was proposing to charge Mr Z with more than 700 counts of what should now, appropriately in our newly transformed society, be [so-called] Black-collar-crimes? Did those huge files we kept seeing in foto glimpses on Tee vee in the hands of the prosecution simply contain malicious gossip? Was telling the nation about it all over these years that we have been bored with this saga also malicious gossip and shouldn’t those who perpetrated and broadcast such gossip be hunted down and apprehended? Will Rosenkranz and Guildenstern be hunted down? Will they mysteriously become, as they were in Hamlet? Or will they simply have to lay low in exile for awhile until everyone has forgotten that there were ever unfavourable thoughts about the new beloved leader, say by later today?
When Mr Shaik was found guilty of supplying more than R2,000,000 bucks to Mr Z did this not imply that the money had been received by the latter, or is that, unproven and therefore, he is innocent of using the money to finance the school fees of his many children [which is of course as it should be shouldn’t it ] and maintaining a lifestyle, in conflict with his declared income… Ah that too is unproven and therefore like the personal affairs of all persons a private matter [again as it should be] is out of bounds for discussion.
The great thing about winning this marathon struggle is the ten-year After-party that is our forcoming attraction. Have a great life Msholozi [sic] with your wondrous Machini wami [sic] Those guys in the G20 are all lining up to have a foto-op with you at the next big summit. They would have all buckled under the strain, well maybe not Mr Putin or that tough little Frenchman, but you are undoubtedly "The man": chutzpah deluxe..
Better to be a man about whom questions are asked than one about whom the answers are known.
Final question. Could this oddball ending be improved with a close out shot of Mr Z taking a shower?
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