Hyperbole has wings in SA

I think if I bottled my cynicism and sold it online – where users need an overdose of it to help them detect “fake news” – I could have retired by now.

Generally, when people are gushing about a world-changing product, project or person, my bullshit antenna starts twitching.

In about 1997, I sat across a table from an SA Air Force colonel who was the man in charge of the Rooivalk attack helicopter project.

Most South African newspapers carried sparkling headlines about how this aircraft – a weapons system, more accurately – was better than anything else in the world.

That unquestioning acceptance of government propaganda was a hangover from the days of “Total Onslaught”, when many South African journalists embedded with the military published whatever they were told as the gospel truth.

I will make a bet with you, I said to the colonel. If you sell the Rooivalk anywhere else, I will treat you to the biggest, most expensive lunch at the Three Ships restaurant at the Carlton Hotel. At the time, the Carlton was the last word in luxury, as was the Three Ships, widely touted as the best eatery in town.

Ten years later, I saw the colonel at an official function and we greeted each other. I did not mention the bet, because by then both the Carlton and the Three Ships had closed their doors.

The Rooivalk was not, and is not (it is flying in SA Air Force service today) a bad helicopter, but potential buyers were put off because it did not have the advanced weaponry its US and European competitors did – and specifically, the lack of a “mast top” radar dome, which would enable an attack helicopter to remain below a ridge while taking out enemy tanks.

Another major consideration for potential buyers was that South Africa did not have a track record of producing rotary wing aircraft – so there were doubts about longevity and parts resupply.

Not long after I labelled the Rooivalk a “flying white elephant”, along came a group of fast-talking scientists and entrepreneurs who claimed their “Joule” electric car was the answer to our prayers: It would make us a world leader in tech, as well as an industrial giant.

All this for a recommended retail price of about R300,000 per car, as I recall. A lot of money – much of it from taxpayers – was ploughed into the scheme.

I knew right from the start it wouldn’t work – for much the same reasons as the Rooivalk. And that turned out to be the case. It wasn’t a bad concept, but we were not good enough to execute it.

So I was not surprised to hear that the “Bloodhound” supersonic landspeed record project is in a deep financial hole.

The Northern Cape government has poured hundreds of millions of rands into it in return for “publicity” because the attempt was to have been held at Verneuk Pan.

The team is the same one that broke the sound barrier on land for the first time.

The “Bloodhound” was supposed to go 1,600km/h. What would be the point? I asked that at the time, because supersonic is supersonic.

So it would be a bit like a second pregnancy … not quite the same as the first. Many other media outlets ran breathtaking reports about this fantastic undertaking.

I believed – and have been saying for five years – that it was just a way to get a nice little earner going for a few companies in the UK. And it looks as though I am right. Again.

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