There is something new and exciting coming up in Erasibo within the next three weeks. Keep watching this space…

“About 60% of municipalities cannot give evidence to account for the revenue they received. And mostly these are low-capacity municipalities, which means they get their revenue from the national treasury and do not have to collect the bulk of their revenue from the citizens,” - Auditor General Terence Nombembe

This presentation shows what the Auditors Generals office found with regards to Best Practise in terms of the Audit process for Gauteng based Municipalities. It makes for desperate reading. Gauteng is the most capacitated province in the country so it’s frightening that only 21% of municipalities with the province can produce quality financial statements. Presentations for all the provinces can be found here.

One of the first things that have to be in place in any form of organisation is good financial management. Is what is going in municipalities a case of inability to govern properly or unwillingness to govern properly? If municipalities cant keep track of their funds how are they ever going to be able to deal with the backlogs they are mandated to deal with it?

What ever happened to much praised Project Consolidate and its hands on support?

Pictures: HALDEN KROG

Pictures speak a thousand words. What does this picture tell you?

Starting in Alexandra township last weekend attacks on African foreigners has spread like a highly infectious disease to other townships and areas around Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni.

This madness of the mind and soul has claimed at least 14 lives this past weekend alone. This madness reminds me of the madness that gripped Gauteng during the 1980’s and early part of the 1990’s. This madness looks the same and feels the same; I hope it does not have the same motivations behind it.

In conservations and news reports (here, here and here) I hear lots of theories about why the poor have taken to burying their axes into foreigners instead of grinding them. I hear everything from the slow pace of service delivery to the economic squeeze being felt by the poor due to rising costs to foreigners stealing “our chicks” being blamed for this madness. Does any reason justify this type of inhumanity?

How are we capable of such inhumanity? Are we surprised given our bloody history that we have this inhuman ability deep within our society? Nothing justifies this.

It’s truly appalling to realise that many South Africans don’t want to acknowledge the debt we owe other African countries for the role they played in our liberation. It’s appalling that so many South Africans view this madness as their only route to express their frustrations. It’s also appalling that so many South Africans can take part in this type of frenzy with glee.

The truly frightening consideration is that all this violence may actually be completely random and uncoordinated i.e. there is no group or groups who are behind these attacks. How do you get control of something with no head?

Right now the most important thing is to get calm restored. Are we no longer Africans?

I am an African.

I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.

The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.

The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share. The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair.

This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned. This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.

Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now! Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!

However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!

For some reason the chaps at ESKOM and NERSA have forgotten that ESKOM is owned by the citizens of South Africa. What that means is that they are accountable to us.

Well actually that’s not true, especially if one looks at ESKOMS recent misdeeds behaviour. ESKOM does what it wants, when it wants. ESKOM executives choose to focus more on bonuses and just in time coal stock piles and less on the countries well being.

Now ESKOM (with the collusion of NERSA) are hiding what is referred to as “commercially sensitive” details of ESKOMS application for a 53% tariff increase from the public. ESKOM is a public company nothing about its financials should be hidden from its owners.

I would encourage South Africans to fax their complaints to NERSA on (012) 401-4700.

Goolam Ballim, Chief Economist at Standard Bank succintly states the problem we will be faced with should ESKOM’s massive hike be allowed:

There’s going to be multiple effects. Firstly, it is going to raise the general level of inflation in the country, because clearly electricity is a core input into production, not just into consumption in terms of residential living. So it will raise the cost of living and within the broad basket of staple items.

I’d like to thank Darren at Commentary South Africa for pointing this out. I’ve copied and pasted his copy directly from his blog. This is an old news story but I think it holds up given our new political climate.

What Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwe Sonjica claimed she said:

“I was presenting a 12-minute speech and that speech did not say ‘go to bed, go to bed, go to bed’,” said Sonjica, adding that Democratic Alliance politician Leon heckled her, asking what happened when the lights were turned off.

“I was chastising Tony Leon, and I said to him ‘You go to bed, you are stupid, go to bed and then you will grow and become cleverer.’

“It was not directed at South Africans.”

What she actually said:

“Hon members, I want to conclude by introducing these tips - a 10-point plan that will go towards changing our behaviour in the consumption of electricity. “All appliances must be switched off … [interjections] … at the wall, and not the remote control. We can save about 40MW there. Switch off all lights in the home when not in use and go to sleep early so that you can grow … [laughter] … and be cleverer. — Hansard

This isn’t her brightest hour. Perhaps what the good minister really needs is a bit more sleep?

The Education department wants all South African school children to recite a pledge. The pledge goes:

We the youth of South Africa
Recognising the injustices of our past,
Honour those who suffered and sacrificed for justice and freedom.
We will respect and protect the dignity of each person,
And stand up for justice
We sincerely declare that we shall uphold the rights and values of our Constitution
And promise to act in accordance with the duties and responsibilities
that flow from these rights.
! KE E: / XARRA // KE
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika

I think its about time we started seeing things like this take place in our schools; to build a common South African identity. However at 77 words long this pledge is too long and a little bit depressing. I cant imagine too many school children pledging this with much enthusiasm.

Re-write.

South Africa is a dire need for quality affordable housing solutions to cater to the massive backlog in housing that exists.  Not every family (person) in the country can immediately own their own homes; this is where the Social Housing programme comes in. The Social Housing programme is not a well known option despite being a programme that can be ramped up and rolled out quiet quickly.

Social housing focuses on the rental market (public and private housing markets) in the country and making these available to low to middle income groupings.

Erasibo has over the past two years worked in both the public (Community Residential Units) and private (Social Housing) areas through projects we have delivered for the Social Housing Foundation and the Support Programme for Social Housing.

I’ve been waiting, trying not to write about the electricity crisis that South Africans are currently living through. According to government and its electricity monopoly we will be living with an uncertain power supply situation for longer than is acceptable and there is nothing anyone can do about it right now.

Government preaches about the Batho Pele principles; Batho Pele says that government will strive to create a better life for all South Africans by putting people first.

Clearly the people were not placed first which is why we find ourselves in this mess. Yes it is a mess. It’s a mess in the biggest possible way. We as the citizenry need to be able to trust that our public structures and institutions will always do what’s in our best interest, even if it means giving us bad news before the crisis hits so that we can make plans to deal with it.

For some inexplicable reason between 1998 and 2008 government and Eskom decided to hide the fact that we were headed for this crisis. In March 2006 the President responded to a parliamentary question by saying “The Honourable Member is proceeding from the wrong assumption that our government has failed to meet South Africa’s electricity capacity needs.”

Less than two years later we are experiencing on an almost daily basis just how wrong or ill informed the President was.

I have every confidence that South Africa will pull out of this crisis quickly. ESKOM – despite this embarrassment and its spineless executives - is a world class electricity company, government now has the urgency to deliver and the money is available. We will survive and I’m sure the South African economy will prosper once again.

However in the face of short term economic woes we are jokingly being advised by the Minister of Minerals and Energy to “Go to sleep earlier so that you can grow and be cleverer”. Clearly the Minister – Energy issues is part of her portfolio - and her colleagues were going to sleep too early and this is how we have landed in this mess. The country faces the real prospect of an economic slow down which could result in large scale job losses.

What is unfortunate about this whole mess is that this crisis has given more cannon fodder for racists fools try to back up their arguments. The internet is littered with racist drivel about how this crisis proves that black people cannot govern a country or run large corporations. Grant Walliser counters this nicely “White people need to understand that black executives at Eskom warned the government about the impending power crisis. One of the key people who didn’t listen was white. Why is this still a racial issue?”

This is not a race issue this is an ineptitude issue. Heads should roll; there is no collective responsibility on this one. We should be looking at solutions and cleaning house at the same time. Obviously we cannot trust the same people who got us into this mess in the first place to get us out of this mess.

What’s that joke again? Oh yes “will someone please turn the light off at the end of the tunnel”.

“When Eskom said to the government: ‘We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation’, we said no, but all you will be doing is just to build excess capacity,”

This according to President Thabo Mbeki, is the why the country is currently experiencing its rolling power outages. Government had so little faith in ESKOM’s intentions that they would not allow ESKOM to build additional capacity. Clearly there was a disconnect between Government economists chanting the 4% growth mantra and the engineers who needed to supply the lifeblood of the economy – electricity.

This is yet another example of the disjointed manner in which planning is done in the public sector.

The Star newspaper reports that the Eastern Cape Department of Health website has an error message with some colourful explanations for why the 404 error has taken place.

The error messages reads as follows:

PAGE NOT FOUND
Sorry….but the page you are looking for cannot be found

This could happen for several reasons:

1. The page may have been reached in error.

2. The page may have moved.

3. The page may no longer exist.

4. The page is on holiday and will be out of the office until next week or when it feels like coming back.

5. The page was considered redundant and was given a raise so it now works even less.

6. The page performed and illegal operation and was promoted to vice-president.

7. The page was on strike. We are busy negotiating with the unions now for better wages so it can come online.

8. The page is running late. This could be because the taxi’s need to collect at least another 404 passengers.

9. The page is sleeping . After all, this is African time we are talking about.

According to the Star the department claim that their site was not hacked.