>There are 100′s of towns all over the country where the
>[more affluent] people are witholding municipal fees
>because of lack of basic services. They’re protesting in
>other ways.

What is the ‘legal’ basis of their withholding ?
Have there been any Court decisions relating to withholding ?

And Samantha wrote:-

>In those small towns where ratepayers are withholding their
>rates from the muncipality and utilising them themselves to
>provide their own service delivery, things function properly
>and effectively.

I don’t understand how, when the municipal authority is the
monopolistic supplier of water and electricity, and must be
capable of levying taxes, eg. for road maintenance, how the
property owner CAN divorce himself from the tyranny of the
incompetent municipal authority ? Please explain.
———-
Related hereto, my previous post’s wrong email is now fixed:

}I seek such a competent attorney to finish an
}appeal, for which I’ve done the research, re. Ekuhuruleni LC
}who can work with email, rather than the SA-skaapie-method of
}`ry en praat’. Please contact — not labeas AT gmail.com , but
} lab.eas AT gmail.com. Thanks. LC=local council.

Waste, fraud, corruption are maddening, and should be eliminated, but doing so will never be a cure all for the problems of a country or culture or government. They are best viewed as an indicator, not a solution.

If the measure is indeed government expenditure, I suppose my point is all the stronger.

I appreciate your effort to come up with some rough, back of the envelope calculations (and I have not gone over these in any way), but I think that there might be some confusion here–surely your argument should apply to total government expenditures, not to the Gross Domestic Product?

Even if there were 25% waste, etc., in the GDP, Government would not be able to fix that–GDP is, after all, a measure of TOTAL expenditures–government, individual (Samantha and Pierre, etc.) and business.

This is, or should be, a discussion about government expenditures, and the waste, fraud and corruption therein.

PM

But I still think your claim – and that of Mr Gordhan – that “resource are not the problem” does not take begin to take account of the enormity of the problem. A million here, a billion there; all but a tiny drop in a vast ocean.

Consider some rough calculations.

1. Assume 20 million people in South Africa live in poverty.

2. Assume further that we would like to give them a lift by giving each one a guaranteed income of R9,000 a month over two years. (This is a fairly conservative figure — AZT itself can cost R1000 a month – for life.)

3. My (bad) maths shows that the cost would be two trillion rand (200,000 per person times 20 million). (My calculations may well be out; I welcome corrections.)

4. SA’s GDP is about R250 billion. Let us assume that 25% of that goes in corruption and entirely unproductive public investment.

5. That would mean R62 billion rand a year could be saved by eliminating all corruption and entirely unproductive public investments..

6. If that is so, it would take 32 years of eliminating all corruption and entirely unproductive investment – just to give those in poverty two years of income at R9,000 a month.

Even if my figures are way off, I think they demonstrate that a massive shortage of resources – coupled with the fact that what resources there are concentrated largely in the hands of a small luck elite — is indeed the fundamental problem.

To date, they have already spent R 75.9million on frivolous things including:

R 11million by the Free State legislature on 11 new Mercedes Benz for the their MPL’s

R 7 million for the opening of the Free State legislature

R 796 003 on a new Mercedes Benz, including R 15000 of extras, for the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Based on current costs this R 75.9million could have built 1407 new RDP houses or paid the salaries for one year of 589 teachers.

To reiterate my point about the fact that there are sufficient resources in this country, let me quote our new Minister of Finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan, who said:

“Money is not the problem … it is how we spend the money. This has to improve. In several sectors, budgets have grown exponentially but outputs have not increased in tandem”.

At the risk of redundancy, service delivery in this country is less hampered by lack of resources than by lack of interest and a desire to self-serve.

I did not say that authoritarianism was the “only route” to long term economic growth. I said that Vietnam was “more likely” to bring economic uplift. (It would obviously be foolish to claim that the authoritarian route was the only one: cf. U.S.A.; Botswana; Italy.)

I accept that India is encouraging. I offer three caveats though:

1. India remains massively unequal. Bangalore is the glittering facade that covers hundreds of millions living in terrible poverty. Authoritarian regimes like China and Vietnam have, so it seems, been more successful in tackling absolute poverty than India.

2. I may be wrong in this, but my understanding is that India is nowhere close to SA in terms of administrative justice, consultation, participation, etc. It is true that the Indian Supreme Court courageously blocked the removal of the poor from the pavements on which they were sleeping in the 1980’s. But the Court has been cowed into relative quiescence since then.

3. Moreover, I do not believe that India’s lower courts are nearly as quick to check arbitrary administrative action, forced removals etc, as SA courts. But I have not studied this matter, so I cannot speak with any authority

Perhaps I am somewhat naive. However, there exists in this country a wealth of resources that are being plundered or under-utilised.

For example, in my town of +/- 10 000 people, we have 3 primary schools, an intermediate school and a high school. While the primary schools appear to be functioning effectively, there are ongoing problems with our high school. Last year we had a matric pass rate of 18%. One of the critical areas of failure, was in Biology for the Afrikaans-speaking children. A post was advertised for a Biology teacher. (Although dual-medium, the school is 80% Afrikaans and an English-speaking Biology teacher is in place). The SGB followed statutory guidelines and presented the Education Department with a list of potential candidates in order of preference, with the most preferred being a coloured (Afrikaans-speaking) teacher from within the community. The Department of Education ignored the recommendation and appointed a Black teacher, from another town who cannot speak Afrikaans.

Sport at the school is non-existent, although the town has a rugby field, tennis courts and netball courts. The only thing missing is teachers who are willing to go the extra mile and coach these kids. The current teachers refuse to do any coaching as they do not get paid extra for it.

In other words, our town has adequate physical resources to ensure that the children receive an excellent, holistic education. What is lacking is political will to ensure that the correct people are in place to ensure this outcome.

We also have an outstanding state-aided hospital, with superb nursing staff, who have just been informed that the state will not be increasing their salaries or providing the back-pay that they had promised last year. We have the physical and manpower resources to run a brilliant hospital, but the lack of political will to ensure that this status quo is retained.

Those are merely two examples of where the current government are NOT utilising existing resources to improve the lives of the citizens of this country.

Our problems are immense, but many can be easily solved. It just requires the will of those who wield the power to see to it that it happens.