Please can someone explain why our priorities are out of whack?

Something I don't understand.

People will buy (expensive) cars that they don't need, go on extravagant holidays, spend money on new cell phones, buy the latest toys, and then complain that electricity is expensive and water is expensive, etc.

For 5 decades, governments and utilities have made us think of 50 cent per kWh electricity and 5 kL of "free" water. And now it's out of control at R2 per kWh (+ 20%?) and R4 per kL (plus Sewerage Charge) to just get going.

And so what I don't get is that when I spend R20,000 on my water system, and I my wife and I continue to drive our 20 year old cars, whilst my colleague buys a new R200,000 car, he says, "Wow: 20K is really expensive just for this water system", and I think "hey: what about the R200,000 car you are driving?"

Also people plan for retirement in 10, 20 or 30 years time, but aren't concerned about being alive next week. If I want to be alive next week, I should ensure that I have adequate water, electricity, food, etc, backup systems in place.

Please can someone explain to me what I am missing? Why are people concerned if I pay R2 per kWh for my electricity when they were paying 50 cents per kWh (this 10 years ago when I installed my PV and battery system), and now if I pay R50 per kL for my 10 kL of water when I could be paying R4 per kL? Why this fixation on "out of context" costs. Yes, perhaps it is expensive to pay R50 per kL when I could be paying R4 per kL, but I (will) have water.

My colleague drives his car for one hour a day. That works out at R170 per hour to drive his car. Plus insurance, petrol, maintenance, etc. Lunacy.

Looking forward to understanding why our priorities are so completely out of whack.

Is South Africa a "failed state"

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml on Feb 17, 2011:

"Between 1940 and 1945 Winston Churchill was probably the most popular British prime minister of all time. In May 1945 his approval rating in the opinion polls, which had never fallen below 78 percent, stood at 83 percent. With few exceptions, politicians and commentators confidently predicted that he would lead the Conservatives to victory at the forthcoming general election.

In the event, he led them to one of their greatest ever defeats. It was also one for which he was partly responsible, because the very qualities that had made him a great leader in war were ill-suited to domestic politics in peacetime."

Is it possible that a liberation movement in 2016, 22 years after the end of "a war", could find itself in the same position as Winston Churchill found himself in 1945?


Nelson Mandela knew how to make the transition from war to peace, and from tribal leadership to democratic politics, but his party have not heeded (t)his lesson and so they find themselves losing the very thing that they strove for for almost 100 years.


I try to stay away from politics and so ask that the political commentators write some essays on what has happened to Africa's liberation movements, and why in many cases, they have failed to live up to their peoples' expectations. I'm sure that this can be done in a trusting way and without attacking any individual or agenda.

Letter in Cape Times: 3rd February 2016: Aim for Zero Inflation

Letter in yesterday's Cape Times:

Title: Aim for Zero Inflation

Recent letters and articles by economists in the Cape Times and in the business section explain that the only lever that the Reserve Bank has to control inflation is interest rates.

Another lever is controlling banks' reserve margins. Banks are allowed to lend a multiple of the actual funds they have in cash or on deposit or in other investments. Increasing the banks' reserve margins forces banks to slow down their lending and, importantly, does not affect borrowers, especially business borrowers who need money so that they can expand, employ people, etc.

Furthermore, in the South African environment, it is the government which is creating most of the inflation with its very high price increases. Think electricity, water, rates, petrol, diesel, transport, sewerage, waste, taxes, red tape, etc, which all push up inflation, yet aren't caused by the consumer. These inflation pressures are caused by the government wanting to do everything itself, rather than by a government creating an enabling environment for business to do business. The Reserve Bank can maintain its independence by criticising government spending!

And yet another lever is for the Reserve Bank not to print money for the government to spend on things such as over-inflated budgets, corruption and unnecessary expenditure. If the Reserve Bank stopped printing money then inflation would slow down, and we might even have deflation, supposedly a "bad" thing, but actually a good thing as our money in the bank and our earnings become more and more valuable, rather than less and less valuable.

Two more tiny points: One is that the Reserve Bank controls the definition of inflation and every now and then it changes what is in "the inflation basket". The Reserve Bank should ignore the effect of government-induced inflation! And, secondly, the Reserve Bank sets the upper limit on what it deems to be "prudent inflation". At the moment the upper limit is 6 percent. Nowhere have I read that the Reserve Bank sees inflation as a "bad" thing and wants to reduce inflation, or that the upper limit should be increased to 8 percent. In fact, the Reserve Bank has a range of "good" inflation, ie between 2 and 6 percent.

The Reserve Bank should state that it wants to reduce inflation to zero percent. Then things won't increase in price any more and our costs will actually start going down!