Privatisation
THE scuttlebutt has it that Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan is urging a 49% sell-off of Eskom to the private sector. The private sector investors would presumably then be given a role in management.
This would lead to things like employment on the basis of competence, proper training, and eventually a reliable supply of reasonably cheap electricity. (But bad luck for the cadres).
What makes such a thing unlikely, the speculation goes, is an ingrained reluctance among decision-makers to let go of anything; plus a reluctance on the part of the private sector to invest in anything as run-down and debt-ridden as Eskom.
It’s an intriguing notion, all the same – the private sector rescuing government failure – and one that loomed large in my thoughts recently as I stood in a non-moving queue to get the new, super-duper bar-coded ID card.
The queue streamed down the street from the Home Affairs office, then up a ramp into a parking
mercidler@inl.co.za
garage. It did not move in hours. Not one pace. The computers had broken down again. But the queue was lengthening all the time.
People had probably reached the second level of the parking garage by the time I gave up queuing and went down to ask the uniformed Home Affairs lady at the glass doors what the heck was not going on.
She shrugged. The computers were down. If I wanted to try again next day, I should get there around 5am. That way, I might be attended to – if the computers were working.
Here were thousands of people seeking bits of documentation to which they were entitled – birth certificates, IDs, that kind of thing – which are absolutely vital to them in their jobs and daily lives. In my case, a bar-coded ID (mine had been lost) to satisfy Fica requirements at the bank, failing which my accounts would be frozen in 30 days.
A nice pickle. The government is obliged to supply us with these vital documents, yet simply does not. What kind of contempt for the people is this?
I was rescued by the private sector. My bank listened with sympathy – saw the impossibility of getting a bar-coded ID in time – and accepted my passport and my old (not bar-coded) ID as meeting the Fica requirements. I no longer had to draw my meagre financial resources and stow them under the mattress until everything was sorted out.
But what about the thousands of others who were desperately queuing with me for their bits of documentation?
Should this lamentably nonperforming function of Home Affairs not be privatised so that citizens are able to get on with their lives?
I still have to queue for that barcoded ID if I want to vote in a couple of months. Maybe the computers will have bucked up a bit.
It’s an early start 5am and it’s too far from the beach to take a fishing rod and cast a line. Maybe it’s time for a re-reading of War and Peace. Or maybe time for privatisation.
For the worse
DONALD Trump says he’ll bring back waterboarding, if elected president, and will “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (“The Young ’Un”) rejoices on state TV as his people launch what he calls a space satellite and everyone else calls an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Russians step up their heroic bombing of civilians in Syria.
And suddenly the international scene takes a turn for the worse. A Republican think-tank in America says that if Hillary gets the Democratic nomination, they’re ready to go big with a whole raft of