New flag hot potato

The Congress of South African Trade Unions called on the government to scrap the department of sport, arts and culture’s ludicrous plan to blow about R22 million on a 100m flag monument.

“This vanity project is pointless and the idea that it will attract tourists is senseless and ridiculous.

“Many people are being squeezed by the cost of living and do not have the money to look at flag monuments.”

It is still not clear whether the department of sports, arts and culture intends to spend R22 million on a 100m-tall national flag, or whether it wants a massive flag to fly from a 100m-tall flagpole. Whatever the truth is, the plan is, even by the ANC’s “let them eat cake” detachment from reality, simply absurd. Not because it is not technically feasible – a flagpole that tall would be tricky to build and keep stable, although a giant flag placed at ground level would be easier – but because the waste of this amount of money in our current circumstances is mind-boggling.

Totally unable to read the room, the department believes the massive flag will become a tourist attraction and will help to unite the country.

Judging by the reaction so far to the hare-brained scheme, all the proposal has done is unite people in their anger at the ANC’s continued squandering of our steadily declining financial resources.

No surprise, either, that many of the negative comments centre around the probability that this is another project where the comrades can gather at the taxpayer-funded feeding trough.

Surely, President Cyril Ramaphosa, you are not going to let these tone-deaf apparatchiks get away with it?