Were anyone to ever refer to it fondly, the Medium-Term Budgetary Policy Statement (MTBPS) would be fondly known as the Mini-Budget.
If you are sitting in the executive cock(up)pit of SAA, today’s Mini-Budget represented yet another budget bonanza for the ultra-profligate.
Already in recession, the SA economy has been booted into deep depression by the C-19 pandemic.
The economy is expected to contract by 7.8% this year, while unemployment shoots up.
In global terms, economic despair is the one thing we are really, really good at.
Yet the budget contains another massive cash injection for parasitic parastatal SAA: R6.5bn to pay its debts and interest – plus a further R10.5bn to implement its business rescue plan.
It is, of course, an open secret that the SAA barmy bonuses reflect a defeat for Finance Minister Tito Mboweni, who failed to stop the fools in the ANC from allowing him to just kick the national disgrace of a national airline into a remote hanger, lock the door and throw away the key.
Instead, money which could be so, so, so better spent elsewhere – cash which we don’t really have in the first place – is being tossed into the flaming jet engines of SAA, to keep thing fuelled until they next demand a bailout.
And they will.
I am not sure whether they are running any flights. But why should an airline have to transport people or goods to deserve R17b?
This is, after all, an Alice in Wonderland world.
If you replace “an Alice in Wonderland world” with “a shit-storm of note”.
One positive note – if you are a true believer in an Alice in Wonderland world – is a determination by Tito the Tax Tyrant to cut the state’s terminally-obese wage bill by freezing the wages of public servants.
I will believe he can succeed at that as soon as I see pigs fly. (Or SAA planes.)
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Hundreds of people have been queueing in the city of Yiwu in eastern China in recent days to get an experimental vaccine for COVID-19. Although the vaccine is yet to complete its clinical trials, it was reportedly given to hundreds of thousands of people in the past few months, and is now being offered under an emergency use licence to the general public.
Around the world, as first waves pass and new waves close in, a coronavirus vaccine has become a focus of hope. For China, quick progress on the vaccine is a matter of both domestic and international politics.
This was not simply a public relations move in a game of one-upmanship with the US – which refused to join Covax. Instead, it forms part of the Chinese authorities’ overall approach to the vaccine, which is informed by the need to tread a path between managing international tensions and presenting the strength of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led system domestically.
Despite a new flare-up of COVID-19 in the eastern port city of Qingdao, China’s official line is that the country has already achieved “strategic success” in beating the virus. There is some truth to that. China’s proactive, stringent control measures have received significant praise, including from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Our own ongoing research, which has been systematically collecting and analysing Chinese government and CCP policies responding to COVID-19, found that the Research Front Team was among one of the few internal groups which actively made policy documents publicly available. From the start of China’s response, the vaccine was visibly high on the agenda.
In August, China’s National Medical Products Administration issued five policy documents highlighting concrete principles and standards for vaccine development. This was another display of the speed of public administrators in pushing ahead with a vaccine by addressing the need for a balance between acting fast and ensuring scientific ethical standards.
‘Full victory’ hangs on a vaccine
From a political perspective, China’s vaccine progress has both domestic and international dimensions. The CCP’s official line is that it has made “major strategic achievements” against COVID-19 – a term used consistently across official Chinese communications. A vaccine would top off this triumph.
This clear message of success is combined with a discursive technique commonly adopted by the CCP: time-based cognitive framing, in which periods or points in time are used to develop a favourable narrative while smoothing away inconvenient details.
At a ceremony in September to commend people who had contributed to the pandemic response, CCP general secretary, Xi Jinping, set out milestones that form the contours of the official account. He said China took: “One month or so to initially contain (the virus) … around two months to keep new daily domestic cases within single digits,” and “about three months to achieve decisive gains in the battle for Wuhan and Hubei.”
China has left the emergency phase of its response and entered a “normalising prevention and control” phase. At events such as the commendation ceremony and an exhibition in October organised by the CCP Propaganda Department, this shift in phases is portrayed as evidence of the “strength” of the Chinese system. Logically, the vaccine is the next step.
Drowning out critics
Such domestic policy and political considerations are tied up with international ones. The Trump administration has promoted a sharp change in US policy toward China and rejected elements of the current global governance system, including the WHO.
Meanwhile, despite an ongoing inquiry by the WHO into the global response to the pandemic, some countries including Australia continue to call for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, keeping the spotlight on China.
Faced with this challenge, the CCP seems to be trying to drown out rather than engage with difficult discussions. The vaccine is a useful theme to focus on while squeezing out room to discuss China’s initial response.
The US rejection of the WHO’s attempts at international vaccine cooperation offers the CCP a valuable source of rhetorical righteousness. It can use loud platitudes about China’s support for the current institutions of global governance and back up its claims with money and technology. By focusing on its willingness to cooperate on a vaccine, the CCP gains twofold. It can shield itself from accusations of culpability – and win praise for its global-spiritedness for being willing to step up, contribute and collaborate internationally while the US refuses to do so.
The CCP is all too aware that as the pandemic continues, it sits at the crux of potential controversy – all while international animosity towards China grows.
Instead of seeking to lock horns with views that challenge its narrative, it is trying to remain entirely aloof from them and focus squarely on projecting an image of international cooperation.
Anton Harber, the veteran South African journalist, editor and journalism professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, has a new book out. So, For the Record: Behind the Headlines in an Era of State Capture is a deep dive into the conduct of the media as mega corruption and state capture engulfed and eventually brought down President Jacob Zuma’s administration. Politics editor Thabo Leshilo asked the author to provide the highlights.
What prompted you to write the book?
For one thing, it is a great story to tell, complete with all the ingredients of a thriller: brothels, spies, brown envelopes and honeypots, all laced with intrigue, deceit and backstabbing. My interest, though, came from a concern that our community of journalists was not dealing properly with the series of journalistic fiascos at the Sunday Times, the country’s biggest and most powerful newspaper.
I was on a panel commissioned to conduct an internal investigation at the paper in 2007, after a similar series of journalistic disasters. Our far-reaching recommendations were not implemented. And so, perhaps inevitably, the paper went off the rails again in 2011-6 with another series of stories that boosted those trying to capture state institutions for corrupt purposes. The paper had to retract and apologise for these disastrous stories.
As journalists, we hold those in power to account and demand full transparency from them. But we also wield public power, so I think it is crucial that we hold ourselves to account when we mess up. If we don’t, the politicians will step in and that would be a disaster.
Media self-criticism is not just important to improve our journalism, it is a political, professional and moral imperative. That is why I thought it important to take a deep dive into what happened at the Sunday Times.
The other reason is that this same period saw some of finest and most effective investigative journalism in this country. The #GuptaLeaks exposé in particular contributed to bringing down a president. The email leaks provided the evidence of the extraordinary and malign influence the Gupta brothers– who stand accused of having captured the South African state for their enrichment – had over the president and his family.
Taken together, I thought these parallel tales would provide insight into the highs and lows of journalism, showing its importance and value, but also its limitations and problems. I hope to enable a better public understanding of the work of journalists and the media, as I think that there is confusion over what we do and don’t do in our newsrooms.
This was not just a Sunday Times issue, but it was about the nature and state of our media, and hopefully I offer some insight into that.
As someone who was involved in the 2007 report, knew all the characters well, and who had been part of judging panels for the Taco Kuiper Award for investigative journalism, which recognised the Sunday Times for one of these stories and then withdrew that recognition, I had a rare personal perspective on events.
In a way, the book is a personal account from an insider, and I hope I bring to bear an understanding of journalism derived from 40 years of practice, including my own fair share of journalistic blunders.
Why do your findings matter?
I hope that I show how good journalism nourishes and feeds citizenship and democracy, but also that it is an imperfect profession working in imperfect structures in an imperfect society – and we need to face up to the reality of what this means.
Journalism can do some good, and it can do a lot of harm, and it usually does both. We have to try and understand how to try and do more good and less harm. This is particularly important at a time when the work we do is facing the triple onslaught of political, financial and disinformation storms.
An important element of the story is how state structures, such as the State Security Agency and Police Crime Intelligence, deliberately and malevolently interfered to distort and harm our journalism for their own purposes. The question to ask is:
what was it about the Sunday Times that made this newsroom fall for these tricks, when others didn’t?
We have a lot to fix in this country, and as journalists we can start by trying to fix our journalism and our media.
What are the implications for the media?
What I highlight is that this is not a problem affecting one newspaper. The problem runs deep in the structure and history of our media. Hopefully, those reading my book will get a better understanding of this and be better equipped for a discussion about what needs to be done to make our media and our democracy work better.
We are facing an onslaught of disinformation, enabled by social media, and we cannot counter it unless we rebuild journalism so that it is a valued and trusted part of our society.
How can media houses and journalists fix the problems you identify?
First we need to understand the problem and its causes. That is what I explore in the book. Part of this is to see that this is not a problem for media houses or journalists alone. This is a social, political and economic problem that can’t be solved by the media industry on its own. We have to work with the private sector, the public sector, the philanthropic sector, civil society and the state to ensure we have a media that meets our society’s needs.
We cannot deal with the issues of professionalism and accountability without solving the problems of the fundamental economic structure of the industry. To be a quality industry, we need to be a strong one, and to do this, we need to find a new way to restore its financial foundation.
We are in the extraordinary position where philanthropically funded journalism appears to be more sustainable than the traditional advertising-driven model. This is an inversion of what we always accepted as reality. We are caught in a bind: we need citizens to value us enough to pay for our services in some form, but we don’t have the resources to produce the journalism that would show that value. We first have to recognise that this is a national and societal problem, not just a media one, and then we can tackle it.
ZA Confidential 