Plans for a 12% pension tax: Government has massive balls, with zero focus

Let’s take a moment to try quantify the size of the balls an organization would need to tell its underlings that it has failed in practically every public account it’s administered, and now thinks it’s a good idea to administer more public accounts.

Answer? Well, let’s just say they would have to be large. Pretty large balls.

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Should there be any contrarians out there or South African government supporters, likely being paid for doing nothing, let’s take a moment for you to list the successes of government financial administration. Seriously. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Road Accident Fund? Eskom power station builds? New Universities? NSFAS? Social Security? The entire Department of Basic Education budget? No? Nothing? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Juju and his VBS-funded fighters may have highlighted the “white arrogance” of a swimmer putting his name up for a ministerial position. Granted, that was a pretty ballsy move, but wow! To want more access to money after screwing up an entire nation’s public coffers has to be beyond Wall Street levels of arrogance.

Me? I like I bit of arrogance in my leadership though.

It’s great when one has leadership that is assertive and makes decisions. What is not great is when that assertiveness is misaligned and those balls are turned on the leaderships’ own people.

Government supporters, you’re up again. Tell me when these great balls were used internationally. DAVOS? Chinese industry takeovers? That time Trump called us a shithole country? Seriously. Let us know. I’ll wait. No nothing?

Yeah. Again, that’s what I thought.

What’s worse is that this governmental arrogance is hardly applied efficiently even on its own people.

Infinite child care grants with no requirement for sterilization. Unemployment benefits curated as social security but no requirement to clean the streets. Sometimes even free water and electricity with no requirement to tend to a veggie garden.

As this elitism oozes out of me as I make these comparisons, feel free to ponder on how this is any worse of an expectation than forcing people on where to spend 12,5% of the fruits of their labour, over and above income tax, VAT, capitals gains, fuel levy, rates, and, and and…

Seriously, explain. I’ll wait. No? That’s what I thought.

Funny though. I thought a big part of the fight against apartheid was a fight for freedom, but it just seems that with this freedom, we’ve been blessed with the ability to make money only to be told where it should go. Some metaphorical pit latrine.

The more I think about it, the more I realize just how lucky this regime was to inherit an established tax base and what they could have done with it. Unfortunately, that hope was lost to the realities we now face.

This isn’t a move predicated on making the country a better place. Perhaps it’s sold that way. It’s just another move to continually keep more and more of the electorate on the government teat – a move that increasingly carries the narrative of “do what we say or suffer”.

There’s something alarmingly similar to that narrative and those fielded in 1960-1990 South Africa.

Like I said, it takes massive balls to mess a whole nation’s citizenry around like this, even if it’s a mere proposal for now.

Imagine an SAA pilot crashing a jet because they didn’t really know how to fly, and then given command of a couple more jets. That’s what we have here with this proposal. Though I probably shouldn’t use SAA as the example because, well, y’know… These are the guys who… Y’know.

What these okes don’t realise though is that one can only milk a tax base so far until you have to turn to powered milk. Trying to feed a nation on powered milk is going to be tough.

Indeed, the system is unfair and the poor are suffering more than ever.

If there’s one thing these jackasses at the top have done incredibly well is that when put in charge of ending that unfairness and suffering, they send a delegation to Disney World to determine whether it would be viable to open a Disney World in the Free State. Oh yes, remember that happened in 2010.

It would have cost a fraction of Medupi and at least that would have been a ride we could briefly enjoy, but as far as ending suffering and unfairness… Meh.

So sure, take my retirement fund and do what you will but at some point, the meetings had to determine these ridiculous plans will have to stop taking place in Dubai, because as a consequence of idiotic policy, I’ll be surprised if we still have a functional airport to get there.

Slow your roll Government peeps. We know you don’t want to end up reducing yourself to conferences in an electricity-less 2 star hotel on some or other Winine Mandela Road, because you’ve reduced your country to what Trump identified us as.