The latest one involved a Durban man driving into and knocking down a 29-year-old petrol attendant, causing injuries to his spine and hand. In a related incident, a man from Pretoria stole R2 570′s worth of petrol at a petrol station on Hans Strijdom Avenue in Waterkloof Ridge.

Now Morgan (from the FRA) tries to empathise with the consumer, stating that “People are doing this because they have no choice…”. I applaud him for his desire to see the situation from another’s perspective, but there is always a choice. Each incident has a unique set of circumstances. Given that there are only “about 10 similar incidents” a generalisation is especially foolish. Even if there were a greater sample to draw from generalisations only serve to neglect certain elements in a sample.

This is not to say that there weren’t cases of people being hard-up. For the purposes of my rant however, I’m going to take a look at the above 2 incidents in a sample of “about 10.”

First, let’s take a look at the man that stole R2 570′s worth of petrol:

• He arrives and asks the attendant to fill up his white Corsa and the six 25-litre cans in the boot.
• He promises the attendant a large tip if he works quickly and takes a walk to the shop.
• When he returns he gives the attendant a cooldrink, some biltong and R10, and asks him to fill up six more containers that were in the vehicle.
• He pulls a Houdini by asking the attendant to get him 4 of the cheapest cans of oil and speeding off when the attendant’s back is turned.
• After a manager from a nearby Exel station in Muskejaat Street in Waterkloof Ridge reviewed the footage he was able to confirm that the same man had stolen petrol to the value of R1 400 from them in February.

This illustrates that the recent price hikes had nothing to do with the man’s petrol theft. He’s just a small-time opportunist. Assuming that the two robberies are his only two (a dangerous assumption) I think it’s possible to induce that he is using the petrol he steals and that it is likely that the fuel he stole in February (R1 400) lasted until mid-May (when he committed the next robbery). That amounts to about R467 per month that didn’t have to come out of his pay.

His theft doesn’t sound like an act of “How will I be able to get home tonight?” desperation but of simple pre-meditated “I didn’t feel like paying for petrol anymore” robbery.

In the incident where the dude hit the pump attendant the attendant fell on the bonnet as the guy tried to speed off (it’s not said if the attendant was trying to stop the guy from driving off or if he fell onto the bonnet because the motorist hit him). The attendant then fell off and was used for traction by one of the vehicle’s tyres.

What kind of man just drives off when he’s hit someone? And all this for a tank of petrol?

Seriously, if I wanted to live in a winter rainfall area I’d be Capetonian.

For those that don’t know, Niemand is a South African rock band whose members are all Christian. I’ve received two mails from Joe in light of the ‘Xenophobic attacks’ in Johannesburg. They are truly powerful and one of the few non-humorous mails I feel are worth forwarding.

Hi Guys

We have just returned from Jeppe Police Station in town where approx 2000 refugees are crammed into the backyard. This is just one of many stations swamped.

Thank you for the incredible response in terms of donations and volunteers.

You have once again proved that people just want to know how they can help to make a difference and get involved.

Seeing as Government has not responded on ground level with any plan to resolve this crisis, it is up to volunteers and donators to feed these people. The police who are already stretched beyond their limits are doing their utmost to care for these people in terms of toilets, food and blankets. They are overworked and with no end in sight, the situation can only worsen.

It just started raining.. That is going to be a big problem for all these people who are outside in this cold weather.

For the few of you upset by this initiative, I apologise if one of these mails slips through to you. On that point, when we arrived at the police station on Wednesday a child had just passed away. That child did not choose to be there.

There are babies, children, pregnant woman, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants and criminals all bunched together, they are all being treated the same. We are not there to pick sides or say who is who. The fact of the matter is that there are surely those who were attacked for good reason, but blind hate has been poured over many, many innocent and legal foreigners as well.

The circumstances around the xenophobic attacks are so complex, that anyone trying to pin it down to one thing is being presumptuous. The fear, frustration and hate that broke out into violence like this can be traced back to many factors. People are unsafe, unemployed and leaderless.

We are not there because we feel that illegal immigrants should be allowed in this country. We are not there because we have a political angle on this or because we don’t feel that foreign syndicates are a problem. Our reason for getting involved is purely because we came together on Monday night and as a band decided that seeing a man being burnt alive in our city is not acceptable.

No matter who he is.

We don’t have the time to discuss this with people who say that many people are murdered, why jump at helping the foreigners?

My only answer to that is that I personally have removed myself from what is going on in this country for long enough. For long enough have I avoided the news because “it’s always bad.” We have become so detached from our reality that it took the photograph of a man burning alive to make an impression on me. So if it takes the attacks on foreigners in this way to ignite us into action, so be it

On a practical note:

Feeding people is great but we feel that actually moving people out of danger and back to their countries is the only way to resolution. We can’t force people to return home and we can’t do it on our own. So because the Mozambican government has an initiative to move their people we are working with them. We are still volunteering with food and relief and the response of people that want to help has been overwhelming. We will use RAOK as a rally point for initiatives and resources. We will make and take suggestions and do what we can where we can.

We have to start somewhere. We have to start sometime.

We have to snap back to reality. Get out of our Playstation, DSTV, Facebook lives that only amount to us trying to escape boredom.

There is more to life.

We started moving the first Mozambicans last night in cooperation with the Mozambican Consulate General in Johannesburg. Please keep everyone on the ground in your thoughts and prayers.

We will send out updates on needs as they arise. Currently there is a desperate need for:

• Purity
• Water
• Toilet Paper
• Nan 3
• Blankets
• Black bags
• Cups and paper plates

Please do not call us, we don’t have the capacity to take all the calls coming in. Mail us at istell@niemand.co.za if you want to volunteer or donate.

Thank you

Joe

The mail is an abridged version of a larger letter that is available here. I think the edited letter is much more focused on addressing those opposed to providing aid to the foreigners affected by the attacks. The message is a little diluted in the full letter. I still think that Joe’s full letter is a worthy read and an honest statement of personal belief that more South Africans should read.

It’s not a one-sided South Africa sucks so bad or a South Africa rocks so hard view, but a realistic (if passionate) take on some of the major problems in the country backed by a desire to enact change for the better.

I disagree on a few technicalities but in principle I think Joe and I would see eye-to-eye on many issues. The letter will cause many people to shift uncomfortably in their seats like so many other emotive pieces on the Internet. I guess the only difference here is that it’s closer to home which means it’s that much easier to get out there and make a difference.

Here‘s a typical report blaming every problem in South Africa for the violence. It’s not entirely wrong and probably represents a popular opinion of South Africa at the moment. What people don’t see is what is being done, what we are doing to help.

Feel free to weigh in.

I say “initially” because Carte Blanche has opened a nice big, juicy can of worms tonight with their insert entitled “Eskom’s darkest hour.” For those not in the know, Eskom is South Africa’s only electricity-providing utility.

Now to be fair, I don’t regard Carte Blanche as a shining star of investigative journalism. Sometimes they’re just another hype machine, but sometimes they deliver blogworthy stuff ;-D.

My stance today is that while there is likely a major skill-shortage in Eskom (and various other businesses/sectors in South Africa), that is not what has lead us to the point where rolling blackouts are an every day occurance. Once again it’s profiteering gluttony. Capitalism gone mad. Now don’t get me wrong:

1. Capitalism is not necessarily bad; and
2. The skill-shortage caused by government’s aggressive affirmative action (AA) and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies was an attempt to force change too fast that blew up in their face.

That said, dear reader, please hear me out.

Carte Blanche showed tonight how aggressive affirmative action policies caused a major skills defecit at Eskom. All Seffricans (or Saffers, or whatever we’re called/call ourselves nowadays) know by now that this resulted in not being able to bring mothballed power stations back online in good time as well as not being able to exact repairs on Koeberg’s reactors. In fact, I believe that the CEO of ESKOM went so far as to say that the lack of expertise causes delays in repair to normal power stations and substations as well.

But beyond all that, they showed the empty coal stockpiles of two of our coal power plants. One was at Majuba and the other was near it (but the name eludes me, see [1] for a list).

So regardless of skills shortages and all the blame so liberally piled on BEE and AA by the White population (as always, I feel that I am only qualified to generalise with regard to whites), there simply isn’t enough coal to power at least two of our plants. So what are we going to run the 3 coal plants on that are being re-commissioned?

Carte Blanche drew attention to the fact that Eskom has been blaming the recent continual rainfalls for making the coal wet [2] and hence causing a coal shortage. It seems that, in fact, that was a cover story for not having coal at all [3] [4].

Two men in the coal transport industry (both white, to racialise things) who operate(d) a BEE compliant company outlined how Eskom wasn’t willing to pay enough money for the transport of coal. Evidently Eskom paid middle-men R0.46 per tonne per kilometre and the middle-men in turn paid their sub-contractors R0.40/T/km. Besides the fact that these prices made for an unattractive business venture, they were not adjusted to take rising fuel prices. Coal transporters went from showing small profits to not even covering their overheads.

So here’s my take on it. We all know the stories of Eskom’s top management getting fat bonuses [4]. Few of us know that the cost of coal has increased thanks to the increased demand [5] [6]. This is so much so that the actions of the Chinese government to prevent an increase in electricty costs has caused a similar electricity crisis in China to the one we have in South Africa.

There is a rule in business that states that a cent saved is worth more than a cent earned. This is because savings basically have a 100% gross margin whereas earnings have to cover the costs of generating those earnings first. Essentially Eskom mothballed a few power stations which allowed a greater downsizing of their staff because it was running “inefficiently.” This obviously saves on overhead cost which increases profits. Furthermore it’s a little known fact that the two greatest costs of operating a coal power plant is the coal (shock, horror) and the labour. Evidently the fuel (coal) is the greatest cost driver of the two. So in order to save on overheads, Eskom let the stockpiles deminish (probably with the intention of keeping them at some optimal level) and refused to pay contractors more than R0.46/T/km to transport the coal.

Since top-management performance bonuses are dependant on profits while grunt performance bonuses are dependant on operations, management gets R20m+ or so in bonuses per year while the non-executive employees see less than 7% of the total money spent on bonuses (though there should obviously more non-execs than execs).

And so the basic rules of business (buy low, sell high) have screwed us, die gepeupel (the plebs/man-on-the-street), just as it did with Telkom.

Our deputy president is also given some of the blame for her short-sightedness in not allowing Eskom to build additional plants many moons ago. But I can imagine (and this is pure speculation) how the deputy president (then minister of energy) and her advisors looked at the proposal and asked “why?” With 3 plants mothballed and the rest not operating at optimal generating capacity (evidently running a plant at 100% constantly isn’t good for it, so let’s assume 60-80% of capacity is optimal), why would Eskom need to build new ones?

Perhaps this whole crisis is Eskom trying to force government’s hand into letting Eskom move the core of South Africa’s generating capacity to a more cost-effectiven technology. Like maybe something nuclear. And maybe it is just a consequence of the short-sightedness and greed of a few who are now going to pay for the damage they have wrought. Our mines are not producing, the dairy industry will have lost roughly R200m this month.

Yep, if executive heads don’t roll over this one I wouldn’t be surprised if an angry mob invites Madame L’Guillotine to a party outside Eskom’s offices…

[1] Eskom #List of power stations, WikiPedia [Accessed: 27 January 2008].

[2] Wet coal threatens Eskom power output, BusinessReport, Justin Brown. 24 January 2008 [Accessed: 27 January 2008].

[3] Eskom running out of coal?, MyADSL & MyBroadband forums, Syndyre. 25 January 2008 [Accessed 27 January 2008].

[4] Eskom’s bloated gravy train, MoneyWeb, Barry Sergeant. 23 January 2008 [Accessed: 27 January 2008].

[5] More coal price increases on the way, says senior analyst, Mining Weekly Online, Leandi Rostoll. 25 January 2008 [Accessed: 27 January 2008].

[6] China experience it’s share of power shortages, SABC news, Reuters. 27 January 2008 [Accessed: 27 January 2008].

[7] No jokes about Eskom, please, The Sunday Independent @ iol.co.za, Karen Bliksem. 27 January 2008 [Accessed: 27 January 2008].

I’m going to cleverly avoid the topic of white women in affirmative action by picking some related topic and focussing on that.

First I was going to disagree about the choice of the word ‘obsessed’ and argue that very few South African are, in fact, obsessed about race. That only those with a roof overhead, food on the table, running water and electricity have the luxury of obsessing about race.

But then I saw a fantastic opportunity: Nitpicking about the word ‘race!’

As much as I hate nitpicking about definitions, this one is too glaring to let through. South Africa isn’t obsessed about race. We’re obsessed about skin colour. Race is a disputed term that should not be used in law when the particular pigmentation of skin is the physical trait being referred to.

When we discuss race we’re not referring to genetic traits that can be determined scientifically. We’re not referring to the different cultural groups people of the same skin colour may belong to. We’re not even talking of nationality. We mean skin colour and should say “skin colour.”

Now that said, here’s something even more controversial for the pot. Being “Previously Disadvantaged” actually has nothing to do with being disadvantaged. Previously or otherwise. It has to do with skin colour. Always has. The number of white women employed by a company never affected the average South African’s perception of it’s ‘transformation.’

Furthermore, I submit into evidence the issue of the bursary awarded to Judge John Hlophe’s son. Funny how he’s always called that first and then by his name: Thuthuka Hlophe. This upstanding young man was judged to be “previously disadvantaged” but not “on the monetary side.”

What does that mean, exactly? It means he has the right skin colour in addition to being qualified. He was a means for the firm to have their “racial” statistics look good.

Meanwhile there are people of the “right” skin colour that are really disadvantaged. They were previously disadvantaged and now they are presently disadvantaged. They didn’t have the luxury of going to decent schools, let alone university. They don’t even have the luxury of sending their children to decent schools so that they may one day go to univirsity/college and be able to compete with others on an equal footing. They are qualified only for underpaid, unskilled work. But they can’t be paid more because the skilled workforce that pays them can’t afford to pay them more. Forcing higher pay on unskilled labour will only cause more unskilled workers to be unemployed.

Let’s face it. There is no quick-fix to help people out of poverty. No amount of BEE or AA will address the disadvantage at which many people are facing modern life. What is needed, what was needed from the very beginning was not only that the disadvantaged be given preference, but that they also be given training. But that is not a trivial problem. It involves the school and university systems. Teachers, lecturers, and a pile of money to employ and train them all. It involves bringing quality education to disadvantaged areas, or the disadvantaged people to quality academic institutions. And all this money and time pumped into the education system and disadvantaged people will not yield results for many, many years.

What opportunities are being offered to these disadvantaged individuals to not remain unskilled?

The title of this post is a term coined at the MyBroadband forums.

Unlike most of the broadband-deprived masses of South Africa I’m not a Telkom basher. Allow me to qualify that, lest I be misunderstood. I’ve received bad service from them before and complained. But I haven’t ever delivered statements like “Telkom is crippling the small business and hampering economic growth.”

Up until recently I argued that the cost and restrictions on broadband in South Africa were necessary due to the limited market and infrastructure. In a country where everyone doesn’t even have a landline and the minority use the Internet at home how can you expect broadband to be cheap? That said, I never quite understood why the cost of normal telecommunications (fixed-line and mobile) is so expensive. Another nagging thought was that even though not everyone had access to a fixed-line service, nearly everyone in the country (including beggars) have a cell phone.

So we don’t mince definitions, I’m going to be speaking of broadband in Telkom’s terms. Which is to say, anything 192kbps and up is broadband.

South Africa’s Internet access (and broadband Internet in particular) is provided by the SAT3/WASC and SAFE undersea cable systems that meet at Melkbosstrand in South Africa. As far as I know SAT-1 and SAT-2 are still in service. Given the nature of the cable systems, I assumed that they are expensive to maintain and/or access costs are quite high.

I would also argue that the amount of bandwidth available on the cable systems is limited. That’s why Telkom needs to regulate consumer bandwidth use by using the “capping” system it employed. If Telkom allowed too many ADSL (or other broadband) subscribers the speed of the service would degrade and consumers would be complaining about the bad service rather than the expensive price.

This argument made sense to me, and still does to an extent. But an article a read recently completely changed my view of Telkom. It was printed in the BusinessReport (which is published in the Pretoria News, I think) on 24 August 2007 and is available online.

Now I feel that if the information contained in the journal article referenced in the BusinessReport article (“Another instance where privatisation trumped liberalisation: the politics of telecommunications reform in South Africa – a ten year retrospective” by Willie Currie and Robert Horwitz) is accurate, the argument above is invalidated. And it should be accurate because I guess you can get in a lot of trouble for saying nasty things about Telkom that aren’t true.

Basically, the Thintana Consortium that bought the South African government’s 30% share in Telkom in 1997 arranged it so they would be above South African law for the 5 year exclusivity period the government agreed to give Telkom to “prepare for competition.” The consortium consisted of SBC (a US-based telecoms group) and Telekom Malaysia. Evidently the authors of the article were interviewed last year and stated that SBC sent it’s whole corporate office legislative team (usually based in San Antonio, Texas) to South Africa to help draft the Telecommunications Act.

Evidently SBCs strategy was to maximise the investment of Thinthana during the 5 year exclusivity period and then sell out. It is estimated that the 30% stake was bought for R5.45 billion and was sold in 2004 for a total of R12.7 billion. This does not include the dividends or what is called management fees in the article over the 6.5 year period.

There are probably many things I don’t understand about economics and “The Big Picture” but couldn’t a billion or two USD (according to WikiPedia on 5 September 2007) of Telkom’s annual profits be spared? Maybe it’s not enough for international infrastructure development… but national infrastructure? What about decreasing line, installation and call costs so that more people can have access to a phone? All this will cost the investors some of their precious profit but maybe, just maybe, providing access to more people will increase revenue? And over time that could probably translate into profit?

Obviously not because if it were profitable to provide the South African people decent service for a decent price it would have been done already.

Some days Mbeki can really make me proud to have him as president. Why can’t he take on his staff (I suppose it’s fair to refer to the local governments as part of his staff) more often?

The problem is a bit more complicated in already settled areas, however.

I work with someone who obtained his degree in town planning from the illustrious University of Pretoria. Illustrious, because that’s where I got my degree in engineering. Of course, he’s now working as a business analyst. Makes sense? No? Well evidently the business of town planning is quite a political one and you can’t have white Afrikaner males involved there. Make a bit more sense?

Anyway, this qualified but inexperienced townplanner told a story of urban density, a theory put into good practice in Sweden. The reason I know is because I’m in Sweden, and we spoke to a Swede about it last night.

Basically what you need is a lot of people living close to their jobs and other necessary facilities (schools, shops, public transport hubs) in urban centres. What Mbeki says is true, and a definite problem, but not one so easily solved by moving poorer folks ino ‘richer’ areas and/or closer to ‘employment.’

Firstly there’s the natural South African tendency towards the suburbs. There are probably many factors that influence this tendency but I know one of the greatest is the amount of crime in the city centres. Businesses and people have been vacating the CBDs of our cities for quite some time.

Next let’s examine the concept of ‘employment.’ While I am no expert on the topic, I understand we have a bit of a joblessness crisis on our hands in the good old R of SA. And once again while I’m no expert on the topic I have a theory as to the nature of the crisis. From what I’ve seen there’s no shortage of work, especially in the professional fields. Especially if you’re black (whoops, was that out loud). Oh well it’s fair enough, I believe. I also believe that if things continue to develop as they are now (and I see no reason why they should not) there will be no need for so-called affirmative action when there are enough black professionals to fill the quota of positions because there’ll be enough work and they’ll be of equal competence and training by then. Right now, however, it (affirmative action in its current shape and form) serves no purpose other than removing employment opportunities from whites, fueling racism, and propagating self-doubt in blacks that are awarded positions when there are whites applying for the same position. Anyway, this is a debate and rant for another time, but relevant background to the job situation in South Africa.

So there’s a joblessness crisis, but more than enough work, and sometimes blacks who are not qualified for a job get the post over obviously qualified whites. (I’m not talking about ‘better qualified’ or ‘more experienced’ because in those cases it is more than fair to give an opportunity to someone who had been denied such opportunities because of his skin colour. I’m talking about cases when a candidate is awarded a job that he has no qualification or experience for.) Now why is that? Education, simply. And there’s another rant for another day — the state of education.

I’d be willing to wager that a lot of work in cities require reasonable command of English (and/or Afrikaans) if not literacy. When most of South Africa is English illiterate and computer illiterate, this poses a problem. There are adult-schooling projects and every now and again you hear uplifing stories of old and very disadvantaged blacks making it through high school. That’s a step in the right direction, but those few who do achieve it are but a drop in the ocean (meh, a terrible cliché but that’s as inspired as this figure of speech is getting).

Moving poorer black people closer to the centres of towns does not necessarily bring them closer to employment because most of them have, quite frankly, been disqualified from performing the functions a modern job requires thanks to the colourful past of the country. This does not mean that those who truly want to can’t uplift themselves… The contrary has been proven countless times by brave souls. But it takes amazing effort on their part and great humility to put themselves through school or great dedication to learn how to work something as foreign as a computer. I have not heard stories of those that don’t have a command of English. If you have an uplifting story, please share it, it would make a wonderful example.

In the end the problem is complex and vast, ranging from our depleted urban centres, to the (now denied and racialised) crime problems, to a legacy of poor education. It’s a difficult juggling act, so many issues that need to be dealt with, yet surely it must be becoming clearer that you can’t eliminate the country’s problems by tackling them from one end. Certain issues must naturally receive priority but for the most part trying to resolve one problem and not the other will result in nothing being achieved at all.

One thing the government’s affirmative action policies have resulted in is more scholarships and other funding for black students (this doesn’t mean that everyone has equal access to education yet but it’s a start). This means that in time the education problem will be dealt with. I can’t see why a higher level in education will not result in reduced crime and why reduced crime will not result in our CBDs flourishing once more.

I just fear that the government gets more impatient in feeling the pressure to show results and succeeds only in perpetuating the problems rather than resolving them. Here’s an interesting but scary video that should illustrate what happens when change is rushed (or the president is a madman, whichever comes first ). South Africans be warned that this is a 9.77MB clip.

I can only hope that more patience is shown than has been in the past because the truth is that the damage done by decades of apartheid can not be undone in 10 years.

People’s propensity for jumping on the so-called bandwagon irritates me.

I only really have something to say about Sheldean Human’s kidnapping and murder and the South African populace’s reaction to it. If you really have no idea what I’m on about and would like some background, just hit Google.

My first reaction to stories such as those of the kidnapped and recently found dead Sheldean Human is “Why her?”. I would’ve loved to quote a statistic here about how many children go missing every year but I couldn’t find a reliable resource on the Internet. It is a little known fact however that not every child reported missing makes it onto the front page in South Africa. One might even go so far as to say that the minority of missing children do. So why Sheldean? Why the two or three other missing children that get the attention they need in order to be found, their cases getting the attention they deserve to bring their kidnappers and murderers to justice?

This picture by Mynderd Vosloo that appeared in the Beeld (an Afrikaans newspaper) last week Friday (9 March 2007) said it all for me.

I caught myself getting angry at everyone who climbed on the Sheldean bandwagon. Some pushing their own (however noble) agendas.

Yet why should I be angry at those who choose what news to tell for having to choose the news? Would anger not be better directed at those who kidnap and kill children in enough numbers that there are not enough front pages in a week to do them all justice?