Politics.za

This has been blogged before but it needs all the publicity it can get. In an interview with the Sunday Times about changing the name of JHB International Airport to Oliver Tambo Airport, Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan goes completely off the rails repeatedly substituting Robey Leibrandt instead of Helen Suzman into the conversation.

So we have a name foisted on us by a bunch of councillors
Not a bunch of councillors. Elected representatives of the people of Ekurhuleni. You might not like them, you might not approve of them. But those are the elected councillors of that municipality and this is the way they have gone about it.
If the Cape Town municipality, which is controlled by the Democratic Alliance, decided to rename Cape Town airport Tony Leon International
Don’t be absurd. Tony Leon is a midget next to Oliver Tambo.
Okay, it’s absurd, I agree. But you get my point. Let’s say they decided to rename it the Helen Suzman International Airport?
Even Helen Suzman! I mean, do you want to compare Helen Suzman [to] Oliver Tambo? Don’t be ridiculous.
What I’m saying is that if they came up with a name and went through the necessary process — the name is immaterial
It’s very material. If they wanted to name it after Robey Leibbrandt, you can forget about it, I would never agree to it. The name, first of all, must be of someone deserving, right? Don’t come with absurdities like Tony Leon.
I’m saying Helen Suzman.
And I’m saying she’s not comparable to Oliver Tambo, right? You’re saying the name is immaterial, I’m saying I would never agree to name an airport after Robey Leibbrandt. That you can put your money on.

What. The. Hell? Where did Robey Leibrandt come from?

The Sunday Times has an interesting article on Ranette Taljaard, the one time DA MP and rapidly rising star of SA politics. She tries to be diplomatic but her opinions on various topics come through clearly. Here she is on Tony Leon:

She refuses to put Leon in a bad light, she says. But since leaving Parliament, she has been “absolutely delighted to reclaim my intellectual independence. That, to me, was the biggest sacrifice.”

On South Africa’s proportional parliamentary system with it’s pseudo constituencies.

Ask any MP how easy it is to parachute into an area that didn’t elect you and where there may be four other MPs from four other political parities doing exactly what you’re doing in an alleged constituency. It’s farcical, I’m sorry. It’s a farcical system.

Ranette is now director of the Helen Suzman Foundation.

And speaking of now gone political rising stars, where the hell is Roelf Meyer?

A crack team of government officials, comprising the Director-Generals of Home Affairs, National Treasury, Public Service and Administration, the Public Service Commission and the Accountant General has been assembled to fix the Dept of Home Affairs. And they’ve been given six months to do so.

That’s a very tall order but good luck to them. Let’s see some buttkicking!

After having her job over the past few months taken over by Pres. Mbeki, Vice Pres. Mlambo-Ngcuka and Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will finally be going on a state visit to another country.

This is a strange story. The ANC mayor of the Berg River Municipality, Sanette Smit, has resigned suddenly claiming to have endured “racism, sexism, defamation and verbal abuse” supposedly from a provincial ANC leader. She’s remaining tightlipped on the alleged perpetrator’s identity having referred her complaints to the ANC to investigate although she does reserve the right to seek relief elsewhere (in other words a court case).

I’m still not clear why she had to resign as mayor though as she states she will be an ANC party member in the future. I assume it’s because as mayor she would have to interact with the alleged harasser regularly. So which ANC provincial leader would mayors have to deal with on a regular basis?

It’s a bit of a sad comment on government beauracracy when the most pleasurable department to deal with is SARS – the taxman. Today I handed in my income tax forms (which are due in 2 days) and thinking I would be standing in massive queues with the other sleepyheads who suddenly realised the 14th of July is five days away, not 3 weeks away.

Luckily when I arrived at the SARS office, SARS had set up a marquee outside fully staffed with clerks (I counted 10) processing people’s forms and giving out receipts, so there was a 20 second wait before I was served And if you didn’t want to hang around for a receipt they had people standing in the road with signs round their necks that read “Tax Form Dropoff” who were collecting forms from passing motorists who just stuck their brown envelope out the window. Now that’s service.

Contrast that to my trip to the traffic department two months ago which had 2 tellers out of the 8 windows open, and took 2 hours to process 20 people.

I always get the warm fuzzies when we receive state visits from the most oppressive government in existence today. Trade with North Korea is (thankfully) pretty dismal (a miniscule R36 million last year) and I’m hoping Aziz Pahad will be doing his part to convince the NK leadership to undertake some political reforms.

Now when are we going to start increasing those trade, cultural and technological exchanges from South Korea which 50 years ago was one of the poorest nations in Asia and is now the 10th largest economy in the world (and who hosted a pretty decent World Cup as well).

Jeremy Cronin has always been one of the more pragmatic members of the SACP, which is why even he admits the electoral chances of the SACP, should they split, are slim.

I don’t think [the SACP] will do particularly well out of contesting elections on its own, and I think that South Africa will be damaged seriously if our political system splinters and fragments.

Transport in South Africa has never really been very efficient. In Parliament Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe admitted that because of the inefficiencies of SA’s rail network more and more freight trucks are plying SA’s highways an extra stress they can not handle. When asked why Government was not spending money on upgrading infrastructure Radebe replied:

The Department of Transport does not have any budget to fix any part of the railway line, because these lines belong to Spoornet and Transnet.

Not to ruin Radebe’s artful dodge there but last time I checked Spoornet/Transnet was 100% owned by government, so instead of “engaging” Spoornet over what lines need to be fixed I suggest you “order” them to do it.

That coupled with the fact that driving in Delhi is safer than driving in SA means that Radebe should be stalking the Department of Transport non-sto chasing down wayward projects.

I don’t know if the Mail & Guardian did this on purpose in ordering the stories on their front page. First the second ranked story:

ANC: KZN name change not a priority
The African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal said that accelerating development and service delivery is a greater priority that changing the name of the province.

And then the headline story:

Welcome to OR Tambo airport
When the world’s soccer fans descend on South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, most of them will disembark at OR Tambo International airport, as Johannesburg International airport will soon be known.