The Reconstruction and Development Program
calls for the redistribution of wealth.
This page has my political comment
Mostly this is to document my disappointment with the way politicians
manage to get in to office with promises of the world and yet deliver
nothing.
How anybody can say that redistribution of static resources can achieve
any goal besides reducing productivity is beyond me. A political ploy
that makes me nauseous. Now if politicians actively promoted
the creation of wealth there would be more for everyone.
RDP
This was the Reconstruction and Development Program that was touted by
all the parties as a great reason to vote them into office. There has been
so little detectable benefit from this program that it almost seems that it
never existed.
The housing backlog is getting worse and I don't know how any of the
grandiose promises can be met or even explained away. I just hope that
the failings of the government gets noticed but I despair that it will
just be put down as the fault of some other innocent victim like the
removal of many of the restrictive produce price control boards.
Inefficiency
In 1997 the vehicle licensing system was changed in the Gauteng province
to coincide with the implementation of the new NATIS (NAtional Transport
Information System ?) computer system that will allow for on-line tracking of
vehicle and driver data by traffic officers.
The queue at the licensing department has got totally out of hand. To get a
licence renewed you have a queue of about 30 people and a 1 hour wait. To get
a vehicle ownership transferred you do two waits for 45 minutes with 20 other
people. This is every day so there are perhaps 1000 people in only one municipality
that waste about an hour of their time EVERY day, now that is costing
someone money.
The new license plate system has the same capacity as the previous one
(about 8 million codes 3 letters (no vowels) and 3 digits and the province code)
this ran out in 14 years in the old Transvaal province. The new system was
ready in the nick of time. The Provinces are smaller now, 9 instead of 4. Gauteng
contains most of the economically active parts of the old Transvaal province and the
urbanisation is increasing and the population is growing so I predict we have
about 12 years before we have to think of something else again. More is the
pity that politics caused the provinces to insist on differentiated license
plates even though the control is all done from the central government. The
new plates look very nice from up close but on the road they are readable
from a distance of less than half compared to the old plates which were rather stark
but functional. Frivolity is hard to understand in a not-for-profit organisation
that cannot pay its debts.
Petty corruption
I don't even want to think about this.
Crime
The Pihlajasaari statistics.
This is how we redistribute our share of the wealth.
These might be considered pretty normal
given that no one in our family gets paranoid about crime before or after
it happens. People who live in fortresses will have less successful attempts.
I will try to put in the dates as accurately as I can. I'm working from memory
here as we don't insure against this sort of thing and have no records or
most of the stuff happening. The locations are indicative of the type
of area. We must recall that this time line starts in 1975 when we arrived in
South Africa. Before this there would be very little if anything to list, nothing
that I know about. I know of many other people with similar experiences though
most avoid the smaller instances by minimising the 'temptation'.
House: Suburban
Plot: Small holding
Flat: Attached to House
Office: In a city
Car: From within, qualified by where it was
1975:
1976:
1977:
1978:
1979:
1980:
1981:
1982:
1983:
1984:
1985:
Bicycle (recovered) from Plot
1986:
Bicycle from Plot
1987:
Portable cassette player from Car at University
1988:
1989:
1990:
1991:
1992:
1993:
1994: [Democratic Election Year]
Jacket from Car at Office; Nothing from Car at Office
1995:
Car-Radio from Car at Plot; Car-Radio from Car at Plot; Keys from Office
1996:
Car from Plot; Garden-chairs from Plot; Torch from Car at Flat; Tools
(almost) from Car at Office; Nothing (almost) from Car at Flat; Nothing
from Car at Plot
1997:
Togbag, rubbish bag from Car at Office; Toiletries from Flat; Jewellery from Plot;
Car wheels from Plot; Car wheels from Flat; Clothes, TV, Food from Plot
1998:
Toolcase and phone charger from Car at Flat; Nothing from Car at Office;
Computer from Office
1999:
Tools, rubbish bag and phone charger from Car at Office; Cell phone from car when parked;
Tools from car at flat [Second Democratic Election Year]Car (recovered) from Flat
2000: [We live in hope], Hah, so much for hope. Lose change, poster,
rubbish, bag of gifts from car at office.
The pain is the collateral damage caused to vehicles when they are broken into
that costs more than the value of the items actually stolen.
In the environment we live in I consider that we have had it pretty easy until
recently. I have not itemised thefts that have occurred outside South Africa
as they often have different causes the main one is that visiting tourists are considered
to be fair game deeper in Africa. This is the common consensus of travellers into Africa.
There are reported cases of people throwing children in front of foreign vehicles
to get maimed or killed so that the parents/guardians/exploiters can claim compensation
in Dollars from the tourists who now have to make sure their insurance will cover
this sort of thing or languish in jail.
The military
There seems to be a new news scandal every month about who one should and
who one should not sell arms to. Kind of petty. If you want to pretend peace
don't manufacture arms. If you want to pretend economics then sell to the
highest bidder. Political Arms Dealing is just one more aberation in the fabric
of a rational country.
News headline 28 May 2000 " Rampant nepotism in 34.2 billion Rand arms deal"
Foreign aid
Mozabican air trafic control refused a American plane permission land because a full
manifest of the relief goods had not been made available to some or other office
in advance. This was during the worst of the 2000 flood relief operation.
Other
Sarafina.
Sarafina II
Postscript or other disclaimer.
Created before 8 February 1997 © Kalle Pihlajasaari
Last changed 29 May 2000.
http://www.ip.co.za/people/kalle/distrib.htm
Kalle's Redistribution Page
kalle@ip.co.za
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