DigitalScalpel

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU VOTE

Democracy in South Africa is played like a Ponzi scheme; the people at the bottom of the pyramid are the millions of suckers who believe the system can work for them, and despite 18 years of being victims of this confidence trick, continue to believe the lies that are told them by the ruling party. These masses continue to labour under increasingly difficult conditions, always believing that some of the lies they have so capriciously embraced will come to be and that their miserable existence will be noticed and improved by the ones they have voted for. Theirs is the cruelest of illusions, because they have no hope of ever sharing in the wealth of the nation, trapped by social grants, crime and drug addiction. These poor people do not possess the intellectual capacity denied them by inferior education to know they’re being exploited and used as vote cows to keep the corrupt regime in power for one more term.

The next level up are the taxpayers who unwittingly pay for everything, including the excesses and largesse’s of the ruling party, among these are many intellectuals, who derive their status from the artificial strata created by the ruling party, to keep the tax money flowing in, and under the control of the under-class, created by the racist legislation enacted by design to bind thousands of taxpayers to the ruling party, giving them the illusion of power based on race. Just like the Afrikaners before them, they believe implicitly in a racist system, all too glad to reap the rewards of racism while the going is good. Paying scant attention to the reality of the corrupt system they support with such ardent fervor. The reality of the system is it rewards not achievement, nor enterprise but race, colour of skin, accident of pigmentation.

Nor does it punish transgression or lack of performance, but in many cases it rewards lack of performance with advancement and promotion, especially in the ‘Civil Service’ where corrupt activities are seen a prerequisite to acceptance by one’s peers. This is really the intellectual mass, where so much vociferous social media commentary emanates from, Two million not so civil servants, encouraged to show public support to prop up and show public support for a declining Kleptocracy, seemingly intent on bankrupting the country as soon as possible. One might be mistaken into thinking that some real power was resident in this group, but it appears beyond voting for the kleptocrats in the vain hope of keeping their jobs, this group, mired as it is in racist dogma, and does little more than consume 41% of government budget spent on salaries. It is also where many of the gross inefficiencies and incompetence of government are resident. They are kept happy with jobs and generally inflated salaries to ensure their loyalty. Again the parallels between the old Afrikaner regime and current regime can be drawn with alarming rapidity. Keeping control of the civil service in this way ensures that a large voting block is maintained.

Taxpayers however, are not all government employees, and within them are the people that are forming the nucleus of the resistance to the kleptocracy, young well educated un-indoctrinated professionals, who are not part of the grand kleptocracy, either by choice or by lack of opportunities who rail at the established kleptocracy and actively campaign against it. They join opposition political parties, and they make their voices increasingly heard on social networks and in the public arena. For the moment they are the minority, but with every passing year, more and more are joining their numbers. Interestingly they seem to be a group not conscious of race bias and determined to rise above the fear politics of their peers.

It’s above the middle class that the true corrupt nature of the sham that is Democracy in South Africa is really exposed. The class occupied by the direct relatives and beneficiaries of the delegates that were promised fats and magnificent riches in return for their votes at the party conference which brought the current kleptocrat to power. These are the Two Thousand Eight Hundred delegates and the entourages around them that have benefitted from virtually every public project since the coronation of the current kleptocrat. Some of these are recently featured in press exposés as criminal beneficiaries of government awarded tenders and others have successfully evaded prosecution for criminal charges ranging from rape to murder, to drug smuggling and human trafficking. Many of these loyal cadres are members of communist organisations, content with trampling the masses to reap their just rewards for oppressing the many, so that the few may live in luxury, paid for by the taxpayers. These are the real foot soldiers of the kleptocracy, making massive profits from defrauding taxpayers and in many instances covering up the activities of organized crime, for yet more profit. These are the people who actually voted in the election of a South African Government, the masses rubber stamped their choices in a sham election, which effectively makes South Africa a one party state with dictatorial tendencies.

From the ranks of the criminal cabal have risen the industrialists who through legalized extortion and racist legislation have taken control of corporations and see themselves as the ruling elite. In their opinion the own the government of the day, and by their continued presence on the executives of the ruling party, they jockey for presidential position, by discrediting each other and embroiling themselves in repeated plots and conspiracies each more ridiculous than the last. All of this under the scrutiny of a sitting president that has no idea of what a professional government should be, who has in turn surrounded himself with a large group of hangers on, who see him and their kowtowing to him as their extended meal ticket for the next 5 years. An individual so devoid of integrity that he is the butt of myriad jokes about his lack of sexual urge control, his total lack of regard for safe sex, and his seemingly endless appetite for women. He has been mercilessly lampooned as an unintelligent philandering buffoon, incapable of sustaining any kind of sustained intellectual discourse. The most alarming aspect of his tenure has however been the wholesale degeneration of the entire government apparatchik towards massive corruption.

Much of the corruption is only now surfacing in the media, who despite many threats against media freedom, have managed to unearth evidence of widespread corruption and outright theft of taxpayer funds by key members of the kleptocracy. Much of the disclosures relate to criminal activities that have resulted in numerous murders of not advocates and prosecutors but also whistle blowers and witnesses. Entire divisions of the Police Service have been compromised by bogus claims made purely to cripple investigations into corrupt individuals. Most of the murders committed in the obfuscation of criminal activities have been labeled suicide, hijackings or robberies “gone wrong” in the media. To the core of law enforcement and investigative officers that still care about the maintenance of good order and justice, these are the kleptocracy’s death squads doing their work. The members of the death squads are drawn from government agencies and given unwarranted promotions and enlisted to eliminate political opponents. The death squads don’t hesitate to kill spouses or anyone else in that gets in the way, in order to carry out their orders.

Just as disturbing is the mass abuse of power to eavesdrop on and monitor the communications of millions of people by unauthorized personnel with the various internal warring factions within the kleptocracy, as part of the various factions’ attempts to take over the government from the others. Complicit in these illegal attempts are the large corporates who either turn a blind eye, or actively support and facilitate the process, helping to destroy the lives of those who raise the social consciousness of the masses.

Is this what democracy is about? Is this what South Africans demand from their government?

If the only voice the people have is their vote, why do they choose to remain silent for so long? It is getting to the point where the kleptocracy will rig the next election to stay in power one more term, to harvest whatever is left of the economy before we become another African failed state, to join the other failed states because of government corruption and thuggery.

The people whose conscience would not let them let a racist outburst go unchallenged, irrespective of whom or what the colour of the racist, are the people that truly care about South African society. This is far cry from the people having blatantly opportunistic reactions, from the fashionably sympathetic to the overtly racist from all races.

There is apathy towards attacking the real issues which have driven general racism in South Africa. We stand at the at the nexus of a failed social engineering experiment, where one race has through a majority and legislation, done everything they could to relegate all other races to status of “Untermensch” while elevating themselves to “Ubermensch”. I use the terms purposefully due to their highly emotive connotations, and also because of the consequences that arose as a result of those heinous assumptions being made by other regimes in the past.

No human being can be superior purely because of the colouring of their outer layer of skin. No human being can be superior because of their political affiliation. Most political entities are by nature divisive and partisan, and in the South African context, they are also racist, bigoted, homophobic and very frequently misogynistic.

Any human being that assigns any degree of importance to race politics, be it by overt or covert support, or by enthusiastically following racist agendas, is not worthy of the interaction with other humans, because they don’t see them as humans. They see them as cardboard cut-outs to be used as target practice whenever the opportunity arises. Into this category fall most of the “media personalities” plying their trade and dropping their poison on all South Africans, because it sells copies.

Shame on you.

Racism is an attack on fundamental human rights.

Jessica Leandra and Tshidi Thamana despite their massive gaffes on Twitter, and the cataclysmic overreactions resulting from it, probably did South Africa a considerable service. It highlighted by the responses and reactions to their insensitive racist tweets, how far removed from the Constitution of South Africa many people really are. It in no way excuses their comments or the consequences that will follow from them, not only for them, but also from some of their most vocal supporters, who will also have to face the consequences of their actions in support of racism.

It sadly brought to the fore three types of people two of which South Africa quite honestly may well be better off without.

Reactionary Racists of all colours intent on promoting their brand of naked hatred are the most obvious, with death threats and expressions of naked racism as some of the screen grabs demonstrate. [Not published here due to highly racist content and inflammatory hate speech] Tragic and sad as many of these people may be, they are easily dealt with due to their high visibility and easy traceability. Black or white, racism seems to follow the same lines. It’s an outpouring of naked hatred, brought about by racist social engineering, whether perpetrated or perpetuated by the old National Party or the ANC, the outward manifestation is remarkably similar.

By far the most disturbing category of reactions is the selective black and white racists, who hide behind the constitution and human rights to selectively condemn according to their own agendas the racist outbursts of others. Into this even more highly disturbing category fall many so called local luminaries, who harp on about the constitution and human rights while selectively condemning tweeters of different races, all the while adding their own bias to the condemnation. Some of them going to the extent, of selective reporting of offenders to the Human Rights Commission of South Africa. Sadly most of the defenders of racism in this category have public platforms which they use to continuously and covertly pursue these objectives. At times the motivation for their not so transparent support of government sponsored and endorsed racism appears to be nothing more than an attempt to curry favour with their editors who are also indebted to the government of the day, and with pending media legislation so looming, want to do everything possible at the cost of the people of South Africa to maintain their comfortable positions as long as possible. Opinionistas and other assorted pseudo-intellectual media entities abound in this category; too many too mention on one blog posting, use the description supplied to identify the culprits.

Be alarmed however that so many of these so called influential commentators only go into hyper drive, when the racism is white on black, which in anyone’s definition of racism, makes them racists as well as hypocrites. It also indicates a deep level of inferiority and persecution complex on their part, with a smattering of race guilt thrown in for good measure. The quality most lacking in this group is honesty, the honesty to treat racism as a universal problem in South Africa, and to seek universal solutions, that would benefit all the people, not just their narrow personal agendas. People falling into this category are lower than the overt racists, and are beneath contempt.

The last but most encouraging group are however a mix of people of different races and upbringings who slowly but surely, despite any past racist upbringing or parentage or education, are voicing their opposition and disgust to all forms of racism. These are the people willing to stand with people of other races and openly condemn all racism no matter what the origin. It is also evident that many of the people standing together on social platforms against racism, may at some time in their past have been separated by racism. They have achieved more than any racist could ever wish for, instead of prejudice they have humanity. The very humanity that tells them that racism is an attack on their fellow humans and denigrates the humanity of others by reducing vibrant people to skin tones.

We can all learn from these quiet voices of reason.

Corruption has become SUCH AN OVERUSED WORD South Africa that no one really appreciates what it means to them as taxpaying private citizens. Generalizing how the ANC has corrupted South African life, political and business is meaningless without explaining how it has happened. After ten years and millions of words written about the Arms Deal, if every South African has not by now discerned how devious and corrupt the ANC government of the day was in that, I’m certainly not going to spend any more time on that subject. I am however going to explain how other major projects and some lesser known SCAMS work in the South African context.

Taxpayer Role

At the core of every Tender manipulation and fraud is the illegal and fraudulent expenditure of taxpayer funds. It’s very important to understand that the machinery that has evolved around corruption is driven by public funds only. Where there are outside companies involved as suppliers, the profits they make from supplying the government in fraudulent tender processes are all provided from public money, yours and my taxes. In all of the examples mentioned in this piece, don’t lose sight of the fact that the only source of funding for all the scams is taxes. Bear in mind as well, that there are only about Five Million registered taxpayers in South Africa, among 48 million people. Tax revenue amounts to about R750 Billion per year, this was the figure for 2011 as disclosed by SARS, although their role has also become questionable, more on this later.

The role of BEE

Legislation has been abused by the ruling party to ensure continued support for their corrupt structures at various levels of business but specifically aimed at government awarded contracts and tenders. As with most ANC policies one has to look past the patent and carefully postulate the latent possibilities packaged in the various pieces of legislation that have been enacted in the 18 years of democratic rule. I will not argue the intrinsic racism contained in these laws, it should be self-explanatory, and anyone having any doubts should familiarize themselves with the 1947 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pay particular attention to the fact that the ANC is not mentioned in the document at all.

Back to BEE and its stated objective of addressing the injustices of the past and creating wealth for previously disadvantaged persons, stripping away the euphemisms its racist pure and simple.

BEE’s most important function however is not the publicly stated one; its principal function is to assure that all government contracts are crony beneficial. The public face of BEE is to discourage other business from trying to enter into business with the government without the proper credentials. BEE accreditation does not guarantee government contracts as many companies have found out after complex share transactions to meet compliance requirements. A detailed examination of BEE transactions may well be the topic for a well-funded and lengthy investigation. Many Billions have been lost in these transactions, due to shifting financial conditions impacting on heavily debt leveraged transactions.

BEE has been used as part of a mechanism to effectively run government awarded tenders in what can be described as a closed shop environment. It is important to understand where BEE fits into the overall corruption landscape, this can best be illustrated by some recent events, both from the news and some lesser known but very high value deals.

Capital Projects

Capital projects are the happy hunting ground for government driven corruption, due to their large scope for obfuscation of costs. This is where BEE comes into its own, as one leg of the triangle used to defraud taxpayers of Billions of Rand. Simply put, preferred BEE companies are the conduits through which capital projects are used to siphon off billions from public funds, your and my taxes, of course. The process not only appears transparent on the surface, it bears up under scrutiny to a point. The Gautrain comes to mind, as a typical case, because it is such a great example and it can be traced in the public domain, for the most part.

Step One

A proposal to build a high speed rail link between Johannesburg and Pretoria is mooted at an estimated cost of R3.5 Billion. Cost seems a bit high, but it based on the prevailing cost of infrastructure to the South African Railways at the time of costing. The project is deemed to be viable, but SAR is not deemed to be the ideal contractor for the job, for various reasons. Enter the company Bombardier with an estimate for R10.5 Billion for a complete system. Three times the initial cost estimate seems unreasonable and would raise serious questions in correctly run business. Not so in South Africa when it comes to Capital Projects funded by the taxpayer.

Step 2

Enter the BEE player in this peccadillo, the Mbombela Consortium, comprising of well-heeled politically connected ANC elite. The project is initiated without further ado, except for one subtle detail, hidden in the contract are escalation clauses put there by Mbombela to facilitate the fleecing of the taxpayers money into their pockets. These clauses are used to inflate the project price to R30 Billion, no one asks any questions, because all of the documents are public, correct? To put it in perspective, if a builder quoted A million to build you a house and then after completion tried to get you to pay 10 million for the same house, what would your reaction be?

Step 3  

The hidden step and what happens in all publicly funded capital projects is quite simple. The contractor who does the work is employed by the front BEE Company and the price he gets for the project in most cases does not vary, on the surface all the variation orders are real, with one exception, they are in fact fictitious. They are merely a means to inflate the cost of the project, and a substantial portion of the inflated costs are paid to the front company directors by various means, which is why foreign contractors are so popular in South Africa for large capital projects, once the money has left South Africa no South African Authority can trace its movements. Payments can then be made in Europe, to nominated accounts and hidden in the income statements and balance sheets of the companies concerned.

Think of every Capital project undertaken since 2002, look at initial estimates, then look at tender winning companies and then look at final project costs, this is the surest way to track the corrupt entities involved in these projects.

One of the most interesting projects to come to my attention in recent years was the as yet unconfirmed report of a R300 million police station that started out life as a R3 million police station in KZN, I’m told that several high profile generals were behind that and more than one person has died in accidents that might have been commissioned to maintain their silence. The rumor goes that the family of the deceased has all gone to ground outside of South Africa, with our police service, who can blame them?

Eskom projects

As a parastatal company Eskom should be the epitome of transparency and due to its high strategic value as a power supplier it should be among the best managed assets of the South African people. In reality it yet another BEE cash cow, plagued by corruption too entrenched at every level to ever be totally corruption free. The concealment of vital project costs and regular escalations in price is brought to the taxpayer for additional funding. A prime example of this is the twin black holes of Medupe and Lephalale power stations, the subject of cost escalations in the order of 3.5 times original estimates. Again no alarm is raised by the government, only additional taxes and an escalation of the cost on energy in the order of 150% over a period of two years or so. Another most interesting scam to come out of Eskom is the Consultant Scam, this works very simply, outside companies are contracted by Eskom to provide consulting services on tender. Only BEE companies need apply, and the scam is simple, Eskom provides volumes of data to preferred suppliers [cronies] who quote at R2500 per hour for analysis. They employ junior consultants and promise to pay them R200 per hour for their services to sit and convert the data to excel pivot charts. Nothing more, the pivot chart files are delivered to Eskom electronically to release payment. Payment is then shared with the person in Eskom doling out the orders, invariably the junior consultant is fired after three to five weeks for some infraction and salary denied on that basis. There is a company in Randburg with an extensive property portfolio paid for in cash generated through such a scheme which has been running for some 5 years.

The obvious link between the ANC front company Hitachi Africa, has been ignored for the purposes this piece, it is public knowledge, no more needs to be said about it.

Company Registration Manipulations

CIPRO or the Company and Intellectual Property Registration Office was a mess, it was fraught with endemic corruption, intrinsically involved with rigged tenders, and run by foreign nationals by remote control. This is what the public was told to justify the total overhaul of the company registration and the safeguarding of intellectual property. So the CIPC was born, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission was meant to combat both internal fraud and corporate crime. Bear in mind that there was no mass dismissal of employees at CIPC, only the name changed. Mind you a few other things changed as well. The service delivery to the public stopped dead, with up to 28 month delays expected on processing of ordinary applications. How can South Africa hope to attract business investment under these conditions?

A few days spent in the city of Pretoria can provide some interesting information if you spend them observing people at the CIPC precincts, you quickly realize that most of the CIPC business is done outside the CIPC by foreign nationals who have connections inside.

Cost to register a new company via one of these agents is R10 000, the process takes about 8 days at the most, the application is processed inside and appears on the data base, this can include registration for VAT, PAYE, SDL, and UIF if required.

As far as company registrations go, there is nothing which money at the point of transaction cannot buy, some of the more spectacular company hijackings have shown in recent times. It appears that the term business as usual not only applies here at the CIPC but in other organs of state as well.

South African Revenue Service

Using the CIPC agents as intermediaries it’s possible to effect VAT registration in under 8 days, with no inspections no questions asked. Initial reaction from me was that the documents were copy and paste specials that would not bear up under scrutiny, and I scoffed at the possibility that SARS was complicit in such activities. Until I was told that copies of tax clearance certificates were obtained from other SARS branches for companies registered in this manner. Therefore the corruption is complete to the point of the SARS database being compromised by individual within SARS, working in cahoots with CIPC and third party agents effectively preventing any legal means to stem corruption and VAT fraud. The network of insidious commercial criminals seems to extend to every facet and level of South African Life, without exception. The thread joining them seems to be government driven and sponsored, because it is unconceivable that few isolated individuals would be able to construct a network of such proportions. The entire culture of the ANC in this landscape supports extreme corruption, seemingly out of control and driven by an almost apparent sense of urgency, as if the money is soon to run out and everyone has to steal as much as possible before it does. Bear in mind on the topic of SARS, who used to head that organisation, and what his position is now, Pravin Gordhan has much to answer for. His current position should be seen as an indication of the levels he is prepared to descend to in order to remain in favour.

E-Tolls, SANRAL and the drama around it

Current public outcry about the orchestrated theft from motorists in Gauteng who have no alternative but to use the routes selected for criminal theft by the government and SANRAL, fit into all of the scenarios I have described. The interesting twist in this debacle is the commitment by the PIC [Public Investment Corporation] a misnomer for a government front company who is supposed to manage government funds and pensions, to acquire an 85% stake in SANRAL using employee pension funds. The interest lies in the fact that government had no hesitation in gambling the pension funds of some Two million government employees on a venture they could not back out from with severe international implications. Bear in mind that this was done in full sight of the public and the world at large providing absolute confirmation of their involvement in a clearly flawed and corrupt venture.

Surely this emphatic declaration of the government’s involvement in so many equally or more flawed projects sends a very clear message to the voter population and to the world at large that they longer have the inclination or the wherewithal to continue as a government?

The removal of the common denominator via the ballot box is the only recourse that seems to be open to South Africans.