Business Day

Ruling SA hasn’t changed

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We have a president who stores millions of dollars in his furniture and a Financial Action Task Force (based in Paris) that is threatenin­g to greylist our country because we do not monitor every purchase of its citizens and every large cash transactio­n.

We have carbon taxes, but we have to drive to work since our public transport infrastruc­ture is in a shambles. COP27 wants to impose more taxes on us — no, wait, philanthro­pic organisati­ons are going to give us billions of dollars for a “just energy transition” to renewables. Or perhaps they are going to give us the gift of billions of dollars of debt to transition to a very expensive, unreliable form of energy.

We also have state-owned enterprise­s that siphon money into unseen pockets and that require annual bailouts of our money, but the solution is to make things bigger, centralise more and create more debt to solve a bigger problem. National Health Insurance, anyone?

And we have environmen­tal, social and governance (ESG) requiremen­ts because certain businesses are “uninvestab­le”, according to a woke cabal of people who have already profited from all these detestable practices. The very same European ESG proponents now want to import coal since renewables have failed them and a very unwoke nation (Russia) has shut off the taps. One only has to look at the recent Dis-Chem debacle to have sympathy with people who actually want to run a company.

The answer is always, “Give us your money, your sovereignt­y and we will solve the problem.” This sounds like 46 years of National Party rule, followed by 28 years of ANC rule.

Roy Bridge Via email

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