I got to thinking about the Sudan over the weekend; why Thabo Mbeki is there, and why anyone might care. My column for the Daily Maverick this week was the inevitable result: Tintin Mbeki in the Sudan

Last week, the Financial Mail led with a lengthy cover story on the oil price and its implications for the South African economy. It contains some very enlightening facts, such as a chart which shows that for every ten units of fuel South Africa uses for a unit of production, the United Stats uses only nine, and both China and the world average operate more efficiently, at eight units. Ours is a much more energy-intensive economy than even the United States. (So why exactly there’s a windmill on the graphic is beyond me.)

Our consumption of oil since 1980 is up by 60%, compared to 20% in the US, and minus 20% in many European countries. In an energy intensive economy that actually grows (unlike, say, Europe), this is to be expected, and in itself is a positive sign. But the article is right to point out that both of these facts put us at a comparative disadvantage when global oil prices rise.

What the article neglects, however, it to consider consumption as a function of price, which in South Africa is controlled by the state. Our fuel, like our electricity, has been kept cheap compared to competing economies, which means that we can — or could, until recently — afford to favour energy over other resources such as time, labour, or high-technology, to drive production. (Much of this is because our fuel tax is comparatively low. Still 27% too high, of course, as pointed out in a previous post, but much less than in many other economies.)

What is disappointing is that instead of a focus on how businesses can reduce fuel as a component in production, or a discussion of price, price controls and how they might affect both suppliers and consumers, the article spends much of its time talking up the alarmist scenarios of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, known as ASPO. Price deregulation is relegated to a short sidebar by a different writer, which predictably notes that lifting price controls in a steeply rising market is likely to be a political non-starter.

ASPO is an outfit born out of “Peak Oil” alarmism, a group of assorted environmentalists, socialists, economic illiterates and special-interest lobbyists, who have been whingeing for decades about a looming peak in oil production. I’m pleased to see at least one oil company CEO, Tony Hayward of BP, has taken on ASPO president Kjell Aleklett, in a wager reminiscent of the famous bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon, on a similar subject: the scarcity of natural resources. Simon won that bet handily, and I’d urge Hayward to take Aleklett’s complaint about the low prize pot (or rather, barrel) at face value. Double up. Go all in. Maybe set something up so others can buy shares in the bet too.

Fair enough, the ASPO alarmists, headed in South Africa by one Simon Ratcliffe, have been asked to inform the Thabo Mbeki presidency’s scenario planning exercise about their whacky, apocalyptic prophesies, so perhaps their arguments deserve to be better known, lest they become deluded government policy. But one would expect a finance publication to be a little more critical in its assessment of ASPO’s claims.

The Peak Oil paranoiacs say that much of what they predicted appears to be coming to pass. Well, that’s not quite true. They predicted that we’d run out of oil and have a crisis. Or more accurately, that we’d reach a production peak and then have a crisis. Price never really featured in Peak Oil alarmism until the oil price began its most recent run-up, when it became a convenient “told you so” data point.

The obvious response to their argument has always been: it doesn’t really matter if we’re running out of underground oil, if it becomes more costly to exploit, or if Americans are too stupid to use their own underground oil resources.

If scarcity does not increase, the case is trivial. There’s no problem. If it does increase, however, prices will simply rise. If prices rise, consumers will be forced to become more efficient, and more uneconomical resources such as tar sands and alternative forms of energy will become more profitable. Canada’s vast shale oil deposits, previously hard or impossible to mine, are being exploited at full steam (if you’ll excuse the pun). Even at the current meagre recovery rate of about 10%, they are second only to Saudi Arabia in their bounty. If the extraction technology improves, they could double proven global oil reserves. Their exploitation became economical only recently, so this kind of expensive production wasn’t even considered by the Peak Oil doomsayers at the time. Their simplistic argument, if I recall correctly, went something along the lines of “if it takes more than the equivalent of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel, it cannot be economically extracted”. Better technology, higher prices, economies of scale, or other forms of energy, never entered the static, linear systems in their muddled little heads. But then, perhaps that’s because they won’t profit from finding and producing energy. I sure hope they’ve sold their shares in the stupid companies that are flocking to Canada for a piece of the action.

So, the price mechanism works its magic once again, and the “crisis” is a non-event. Scarcity is the very reason the price mechanism exists; without scarcity, it couldn’t exist. Price has always managed to distribute scarce resources to where they are most productive. It has always motivated people to find alternatives, or find better, more efficient ways of doing things.

But that’s not what the ASPO people say. They posit two “scenarios”. The first is “business as usual”, in which all of us are complete idiots and sit around ignoring scarcity and rising prices until we starve or kill each other (or both). As if we aren’t smart enough to economise or seek alternatives. Every day, you can hear people talking of ways to save fuel, including fairly extreme measures like moving closer to work, or working from home. Why would fuel be something unique? Why would consumers be insensitive to price rises until there is “a big oil shock”?

Shocks are only likely to occur in regulated markets, where producers and consumers are not able to adjust to surpluses or shortages, because of artificial restrictions, prices, taxes or other market distortions imposed by the state. Last year, the oil price took a breather, to the consternation of market watchers, who found it hard to comprehend a market so badly distorted by regulation, subsidies and outright extortion by governments.

The other ASPO scenario is wholesale restructuring of the economy, central-planning style. A vast web of quotas, rations, subsidies and taxes should be created, all with draconian legislative force. Combined with “a huge investment” in energy austerity and alternative energy sources, this, ASPO says, will solve all our problems and make us live happily ever after. Why it considers expensive fuel a “crisis”, but shrugs off a “huge investment” as just some bitter medicine we’ll have to swallow, is never quite explained. And what happens if our “huge investment” turns out to be misdirected, is never considered. No, the socialist panacea prescribed by Dr ASPO will cure all our ills. After all, the government knows what is best, and can make our commercial choices for us, since we’re too stupid to look after ourselves.

Let’s assume the underlying assertion that supplies are on an irreversible, long-term, downward trend are true. They may well be (beyond the trivial fact that no resource is infinite), though that is far from the only reason prices are rising, and anyone who makes firm predictions on when critical depletion would make oil unviable as a source of energy is either brave or stupid or both. But that oil will one day be too expensive to profitably extract is not an unreasonable expectation. That this will inevitably be followed by “societal and economic disintegration”, however, as Ratcliffe once told MiningMX.com, does not follow.

The fact that ASPO’s preachers make only two prophesies is very revealing. Both are extreme. One is designed to put the fear of god into policy makers and the voting public, so they’ll buy the other as their only salvation. ASPO looks suspiciously like a lobby for all those companies that today can’t make an honest buck selling alternative energy solutions or more economical equipment. I hope the government treats them with as much skepticism as it would treat the oil industry: as just another pressure group, lobbying for preferential treatment for their vested interests.

If the presidency accepts ASPO’s doomsday scenarios as likely, and formulates policy accordingly, I sure hope you’re in on Tony Hayward’s bet. Spare cash will come in handy in a socialist utopia.

The fairest and surest way to resolve this “crisis” is simply to set the market free. Deregulate prices, even if they rise as a result, and even if they put inefficient companies out of business. People will make a plan. They always have. The world didn’t end when the horse became obsolete, or electricity replaced gas. It became better, healthier, more productive. Let alternative solutions to high-priced fuel fight it out on a level playing field, where nobody is forced to use anyone’s solution, no solution is unfairly advantaged or held back by subsidies or taxes, and no nanny-state restrictions are in play. May the best solution win.

When the depth of the country’s electricity crisis became apparent in January this year, I noted with some amazement that Alec “The Bolt” Erwin, the minister in charge of public “enterprises”, told us it wouldn’t harm our economic growth. He seems to believe in the notion that if the collective decrees it, so it shall be. Why he didn’t just exclaim “fiat lux” we’ll never know. Surely, this would solve the perception problems South Africans seem to have in the dark?

I, on the other hand, called him an idiot who learnt nothing in economics lectures. I thought those who don’t believe Africans can run a competent government would claim vindication. I predicted severe inflation, and said that we’d be lucky if GDP stayed in positive territory. We can forget about poverty alleviation and job creation, I wrote elsewhere. Privately, I said, “by this time next year [meaning January 2009] we’ll be in recession”, but I couldn’t find anyone who’d accept even an even-odds bet on it.

Some commenters accused me of being overly negative, and several called me an afro-pessimist. I am pessimistic, yes, but it has nothing to do with people or geography. On the contrary, I have good reason to have faith in the ingenuity and productivity of free people, even in — or especially in — adverse conditions. My pessimism has to do with economics and government.

Maybe I was negative, but lo, just a month later, the first signs of the massive impact on growth in the mining sector became apparent.

Now, four months on, South Africa has double-digit inflation for the first time since our liberation. The central bank has jacked up interest rates by a massive 4.5 percentage points already, and its governor, Tito Mboweni, has just threatened a staggering further hike of two percentage points, which would bring it to 13.5%.

Our economic growth has crashed to not much more than 2% — thanks in part to a staggering 22% decline in the mining sector. The proximate cause? Power cuts, of course.

So now we face that dread curse of inflation that doesn’t buy growth: stagflation. Even the unions now argue that we’re heading for recession.

In response, finance minister Trevor Manuel seems intent on jumping off the same rhetorical cliff as The Bolt. He told parliament not to worry, “The slowdown we are experiencing is of a short-term nature.” He describes the causes of this deepening economic crisis as “short-term turbulences”. There will be growth! Fiat auctus!

Is delusion of competence a contagious condition? Is this what Thabo Mbeki means when he said that cabinet takes “collective responsibility for the decisions taken over 14 years”?

My initial response to Mbeki’s apology was, “Well, off you go then, the lot of you! One takes responsibility by resigning.” I had not considered that all Mbeki meant was that cabinet would get its collective story straight, and collectively play God, because what they say is all that matters. The rest is just racism or neo-colonialism or afro-pessimism or negativity or sensationalism or media hyperbole. Reality is created on command. Truth is what the government declares it to be. Hence its attempts to censor the media and establish its own party-run newspaper.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this to say I told you so (though I did). I’m not gloating that I know more about elementary economics than our minister of public enterprises (though I do). I’m the most modest person I know, after all (though besides that I have few failings).

I’m just wondering who dared disobey the honourable Alec Erwin’s command that growth would not be affected. I want to find the faithless exploiters of our collectivist misery, and expose them to public denunciation. Put them in the pillory and throw stuff at them, counter-revolutionary traitors that they are.

Fidel Castro, the dictator and oppressor-in-chief of communist Cuba, has resigned as president. At last!

For some years now, pundits have been speculating whether Fidel Castro really is still alive. A case in point is the Wall Street Journal’s resident funny man, James Taranto. Despite clear indications to the contrary, Taranto speculated in August 2006 that his condition might improve to such an extent that doctors may soon be able to pronounce him dead. The following January, he noted a headline that began, “Castro Reportedly in Grave…”, and bemoaned the fact that the next word was “Condition”. He wished the adjective were a noun.

I share Taranto’s disdain for Castro. Having overthrown the corrupt Fulgencio Batista almost 50 years ago with promises of liberation, he instead murdered hundreds of opponents, jailed thousands more, and established an oppressive, communist tyranny. The pretence of a glorious revolution for freedom and democracy didn’t last long. However, the cult of El Lider Maximo, as he became known, took on heroic proportions. First, the Bay of Pigs betrayal was spun into a glorious victory by Cuba over the evil Americans. Not long afterwards, the legendary stand-off between him, as proxy for Nikita Kruschev, and John F Kennedy cemented Castro’s reputation, and the secret deal that ended the Cuban missile crisis cemented his political survival and longevity.

Surprisingly, Cuban communism survived — but only just — the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the real Cuba, described by people other than leftist propagandists led by the nose by state minders, remained rather less romantic than the fantasies of useful idiots would have it. Still, Cuba remains an icon of hope for people who love 1950s automobilia, or pine for the glory days of Soviet anti-capitalism. People like Thabo Mbeki, for example. Apparently, we have a lot to learn from Cuba. I’d agree. We can learn how not to run a country, or an economy, for example.

Here’s hoping Cuba rouses itself from its torpor and shakes off the bonds of Castro’s mind-numbing personality cult. Here’s hoping they reject the regency he has installed, in the person of his brother, Raúl Castro. Here’s hoping that when they do, they also renounce the destructive communist idealism of which El Lider Maximo was one of the last hold-outs. Here’s to the fall of Fidel Castro.

Update: Corrected an error, introduced by careless editing, which made the last sentence of the second paragraph refer to the wrong antecedent.

Mike Naicker is a white oke, but don’t call him that to his face. He hails from the capital of India, Durban, and has a YouTube riff on South Africa’s electricity crisis:

It’s very funny. But it’s not funny. Here is Bloomberg’s take:

Gold is above $900 an ounce and platinum has never been higher, yet traders are selling the South African rand faster than any other major currency because President Thabo Mbeki can’t keep the lights on.

Rather go to Mike Naicker’s excellent site. It’s less depressing.

The electricity supply crisis that has South Africa’s economy in a mortal grip has been predicted for years. Though these pessimists had only basic arithmetic, elementary economics and common sense as qualifications, they can today claim vindication. That years of regular blackouts and would be this country’s lot, however, was known both within and without Eskom since at least the mid-1990s. If our central planners had analysed things closely, assuming only moderate economic success post-1994, they could have foreseen this even in the 1980s. Doesn’t “power rationing” sound awfully communist?

In many ways, the crisis caught South Africans completely unprepared. In early January, I wrote a column dismissing low-wattage fluorescent light bulbs as an ineffectual and expensive eco-fetish, and that even if some people prefer them, governments should not force such a choice on consumers by doing something stupid like banning incandescents. That column now appears spectacularly ill-timed. Even if the arguments remain valid (which they do), they’re rather beside the point now. I had not considered a catastrophic failure to meet electricity demand very likely. In short, I was too optimistic about the promises and competence of the government. I was naïvely willing to believe the repeated lies we were told by the Eskom fat cats and government bureaucrats that they had things under control.

The government failed its citizens in the most irresponsible, negligent and incompetent manner possible. Eskom directors got paid millions in “performance” bonuses. The shareholder that employs them — government — seems to think telling the media now and again that there is no crisis constitutes due performance.

The shortage of electricity, even if it turns out to be mild in the long run, has the potential to cause extremely grave consequences for economic growth, job creation, poverty reduction, price inflation, small-business survival, and investor confidence both here and overseas. Everyone except the idiots who caused the crisis says so.

Yet nobody has been fired. Our politicians didn’t even feel it necessary to shift the blame by some token dismissals of powerless and innocent underlings. They seem to think that saying sorry will make everything alright.

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I’ve been wondering what the point is of blackouts during off-peak times. Nevermind that it isn’t the slot I was told to expect, but why would my power need go out between 9pm and 11pm on Monday? Surely demand can’t be that high so late at night? Why get outages between 10am and 3pm? Peak times are mornings and evenings, not so?

So to answer the question, I’ve watched the power usage charts over at Power Alert for a few days. Here’s what I see:

This represents national power usage. Brown indicates critical levels. What can one conclude from this? One shouldn’t presume that the chart is drawn to scale. But it does show that power usage is constantly at critical levels, not only during peak usage times, but all day from 7am to 11pm.

And what does that tell us? That this problem isn’t new and sudden. That it’s been brewing for a considerable time. Eskom may claim unscheduled service outages at power stations, but that’s because, by Eskom’s own admission, they’re running them as hard as possible.

And from that, we can conclude that when Thabo Mbeki told us in May 2006 that “there is no crisis”, noting that supply (37GW plus 2GW peak capacity) exceeded projected demand (35GW), he was lying. Don’t tell me he didn’t read the reports. He has apologised, yes, but for what? For being wrong? Sure, the government was wrong, but as Andrew Kenny writes at Fin24, it had no excuse for being wrong. He knew what economic growth was. He knew what Eskom’s supply and demand projections were. Anyone with grade 4 arithmetic could figure out we were headed for a crisis, even then. The idea that private sector companies would build generation plants without being able to price their product for a reasonable return on investment was self-delusion, and to sell the idea, he and his ministers simply lied to us. (Aside: Kenny makes a good point about Alec Erwin. He may believe a hammer and sickle are the tools of the economist’s trade, but he wasn’t in charge of public enterprises in the 1990s when this half-baked plan was cooked up.)

“Whatever needs to be done to make sure that the economy grows and new investors come into the economy is being done on the energy and other sides,” he said at the time. Lies.

“The Honourable Member is proceeding from the wrong assumption that our government has failed to meet South Africa’s electricity capacity needs,” he told an opposition parliamentarian. Lies.

Erwin and President Thabo Mbeki have played down the impact of the blackouts (reported Fin24 in August 2006), saying the outages would not affect
investment and would not derail efforts to lift economic growth to 6% from below 5% now. Lies.

In May 2006, after the first blackouts hit Cape Town, Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu told Donovan Jackson, writing for Mining and Manufacturing Systems Magazine: “Your assertion that planning did not anticipate the demand is not correct. … The recent events in the Cape is not (and should not be seen as) an indication that South Africa has run out of capacity and therefore cannot meet the demand.” He added that the problem was impossible to foresee. Lies.

“I don’t think we are facing a crisis, we firmly believe the long term plans make it very comfortable for us to meet our needs,” said the deputy director-general in the Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs, Nelisiwe Magubane, in February 2006. Lies.

In January 2007, the office of Public Enterprises minister Alec Erwin told Reuters in a statement that he was “confident that South Africa as a whole will not be plunged into darkness”. Lies.

“You don’t have permission to access /energy_in_africa/975198.htm on this server.” Lies.

“We don’t believe there is a crisis in the energy sector in South Africa. There are challenges that don’t amount to a crisis,” said Sandile Nogxina, director general of the Department of Minerals and Energy in June 2007. Lies.

So what about the other promises? Health care? As a surgeon in Nelspruit pointed out in a blog post to which he linked in a comment on this site, that’s lies too.

Gautrain? Well, we’ll see about that. The tunnel boring machines hired at huge expense don’t work too well without power either.

Without any shame, without any loyalty to the people that elected them, the ANC government, from Thabo Mbeki on down, simply lied to us to cover up their own failures.

So where is the truth in all this? Well, Thabo Mbeki did tell an election rally (reports Reuters) that providing these basic services was “central” to maintaining freedom. And that much is true.

But isn’t that anti-campaigning? “Failure is not an option. We failed. Vote for us.” Huh?

Why on earth would anyone still believe that the ANC can deliver basic services? Why would they think, as Richard Catto apparently does, that merely electing a more populist leader for the same party of central planning, national socialism and crony-capitalism will make all the difference? At best that leader, Jacob Zuma, has shown a singular inability to manage just his personal affairs. What would make him any better at planning government service delivery?

Has anyone been held responsible? Has anyone been fired for incompetence, for lying, for failure to deliver? Is that really what happened to Thabo Mbeki in Polokwane last month? I don’t think so. Do you think anyone will be fired? I don’t think so. Will the ANC, which is the source, as ruling party, for the policies the president implements, take responsibility? I don’t think so. And even if they say they do, can we believe them? I don’t think so.

Isn’t it time to fire the liars, for a start, and then revisit the notion that government is capable of delivering services? Isn’t it time we rely on the energy, innovation and hard work of ordinary South Africans to make a better life for themselves? Ordinary South Africans earned their own liberation. They got together, across party lines, to overthrow Apartheid. Isn’t it time to look beyond struggle credentials and loyalty to the ANC, and look to a future in which South Africans can reasonably expect to prosper? We may already have missed a window of opportunity, in terms of global economic health. Now we can’t even afford the economic growth we need, lest we run out of energy to fuel it. Isn’t it time we, ordinary South Africans, do something about the government that, since liberation, not only failed us, but lied about it to our faces?

The ANC’s slogan of “a better life for all” is clearly an empty promise. What is a democracy to do other than turf the useless liars out?

Updated: Added Gautrain paragraph after first publication.

It’s not funny. It’s actually pretty scary. But all the white racists who voted “no” in the 1992 referendum, which asked white voters whether they’d be okay with “power sharing” with the ANC, are vindicated. Turns out there’s not enough power to share.

All the doomsayers who predicted infrastructure decay and economic collapse, all those who fled South Africa to make a home in Australia or elsewhere, now appear to have been right. They may have been right for the wrong reasons, and may have expressed it in distasteful terms, but right they were.

“There is no power crisis,” said president Thabo Mbeki in May 2006. Yeah right, dear leader. Amandla aWethu¹, right? Sorry, Mr President, but a belated apology 18 months later doesn’t keep the lights on. (It’s worth noting that judging by the Google results this is just about the only significant apology Mbeki has ever offered for anything.)

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1. ”Power to the people!” [↩]

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. — Hosea 8:7

It felt strangely like a wake, watching the inevitability of Jacob Zuma’s election as the new head of the ANC, and proposing a wry toast. Unless he is convicted on corruption charges, which is far from certain, South Africa’s list-based proportional representation system makes him a near-certainty to become the next South African president in 2009.

That’s what you get for half-hearted commitment to market reforms and economic freedom.

Although many praise the ANC for having steered a sensible economic course, I’m far from enamoured with its record. Instead of freeing the economy, it has largely pursued a brand of national socialism not unlike that followed by the racist National Party during the Apartheid years. That the intended beneficiaries of government’s policy were infinitely more fair doesn’t change the fact that government tried — and failed — to deliver services that are beyond the ability of a government to deliver. If national socialism didn’t even work for a tiny fraction of South Africa’s population, what chance would it have of providing for the entire population?

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President Thabo Mbeki has reportedly said that the government will not participate in a class action suit against several American companies over failing to disinvest during the apartheid era. This is a welcome development. Mbeki put it thus:

The freedom and democracy that we attained in 1994, therefore, represents the most fitting and profound reparation for those of us fortunate to have survived the nightmare. … In this regard, it is our view that actions that may in the short term benefit some individuals in our society, but have the long-term effect of generating investor uncertainty, would not be in the nation’s interest.

I couldn’t agree more. Business is neither moral nor immoral, as a general rule, but amoral. It operates wherever it finds space to operate, given the constraints of a legal or political environment, rather than judging that legal or political environment. I’m somewhat less enamoured of Mbeki’s notion that government-led programmes of reconstruction and development are the answer, but the broad principles, that liberty is our just reward, and suing would be counter-productive, are noble and right.

I would hope that Mbeki’s views are honestly felt, rather than a simple political recognition that for a government — especially the ANC government — to become involved in such a court case would not only be unseemly, but would fundamentally bias the outcome.

Perhaps he said it because he won’t dignify Edward Fagan, the lead attorney in the case, because Fagan is little more than an ambulance-chaser turned “king of torts” (to borrow John Grisham’s book title). Fagan dropped his personal injury clients (and lost a malpractice suit as a result) to turn his hand to the far bigger business of filing class actions against companies he claims aided and abetted human rights abuses of the past. Thus, he’s carved himself a lucrative niche, away from the usual hotly-contested class action territories of medical malpractice and consumer liability.

Even if Fagan’s claims in the case are true, there’s something rather troubling about litigating arbitrary but large settlements out of the current shareholders and directors of companies over decisions taken a generation or more ago. Where do we stop? Can I sue Spain, England, France and Germany, and their companies, because each of them at one time or another, collectively and severally, cruelly harmed, robbed or oppressed my ancestors? Can the Afrikaners sue British companies for the crimes the Empire committed against them long before they themselves assumed the mantle of the white master race in South Africa?

There are a lot of reasons to hope Fagan’s class action suit against companies that did business in South Africa prior to 1994 fails. Whether or not you believe Mbeki’s stated reasons for distancing himself and his government from the lawsuit, for the fact that he did so he deserves our praise.

“Spot the difference”, I wrote above portraits of B.J. Vorster and Thabo Mbeki, in a post describing the bid for Sunday Times owner Johncom as reminiscent of the Info Scandal of 1978. Anton Harber, former political editor at the Rand Daily Mail, former Mail & Guardian editor and current professor of journalism at Wits University, says there is a difference:

In the Info Scandal, government money was secretly channeled to a sympathetic businessman, Louis Luyt, to try and buy the Rand Daily Mail, then a leading government critic, and when this failed, to launch The Citizen newspaper. The scandal lay in the secrecy, and the abuse of state resources to try and take out a vocal opponent of government.

This time around, it appears to be an open bid by a group of individuals who are entitled to do it in their personal capacities. What is unusual, however, is that a number of them are government officials, in key places such as the presidency and foreign affairs, and senior ruling party members. It seems they seek funding from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), but this is what the PIC does it and as long as it gives them no special treatment, and makes a decision on solid business grounds, I cannot see grounds for complaint at this technical level.

Fair comment. Harber remains concerned, however, calling it a “very worrying development”. He notes some of the dangers, concluding:

Interestingly, ANC media policy currently highlights the need for greater diversity in our media, and no doubt some of them will argue that government needs a louder voice in the media and this is adding to the diversity. But they are wrong - media diversity should serve to give voice to the voiceless, those most distant from wealth and power, and not those who hold and wield the enormous authority of the state.

A few days ago, I expressed concern about the impliations of Tokyo Sexwale, a presidential candidate, owning the Sunday Times. This pales into insignificance against the prospect of members of the Sunday Times board actually sitting in government offices, like the Afrikaans media of the apartheid era.

Some will argue that this is just a transaction by some individual exercising their rights in a free market. Well, it is more than that and it has consequences and implications we cannot ignore. If these individuals want to show that they are not doing it as party officials, they should resign from government and party so that they are not conflicted between their political obligations and their business/editorial ones.

Spot the difference:

It’s a peaceful and sunny Sunday morning, and the Sunday Times is once again the bringer of what a friend calls “an explosive cover story”. Written by Buddy Naidu and Simpiwe Piliso, here’s the headline: Mbeki men in R7bn bid to own Sunday Times.

I was but a child when the Rand Daily Mail broke the news in November 1978 that The Citizen, founded two years earlier by publisher Louis Luyt, cabinet minister Connie Mulder and secretary of information Eschel Rhoodie, had been established and secretly funded by the National Party government under state president B.J. Vorster. Previously, Luyt had tried to acquire shares in South African Amalgamated Newspapers. [Update: I should point out that SAAN was the publisher of the famous Rand Daily Mail, which was at the time highly critical of the apartheid regime.]

Now, it appears Ronnie Mamoepa, the spokesperson in the department of foreign affairs — a similar role to that played by Rhoodie in the 1970s — with Titus Mafolo, a political adviser to Thabo Mbeki, and Billy Modise, former chief of state protocol, who together with delightfully-named businessman Groovin Nchabeleng own a company named Koni Media Holdings, are attempting to take over Johnnic Communications. Johncom is the publisher of several major media titles that have been vocal critics of the government and have in turn been singled out for tongue-lashings by Mbeki, assorted state officials and the public broadcaster. They include the Sunday Times, the Sowetan, and half of the Financial Mail and Business Day. Mamoepa and company have applied for funding from among others the state-owned Public Investment Corporation.

Thabo Mbeki on Friday laid into the media, saying that the government was not attempting to stifle press freedom.

“A few of these have even attempted to make comparisons with the repugnant apartheid government, which in 1977 banned a number of publications, including the World and the Weekend World,” Mbeki reportedly said.

How hollow his denial rings today. What the repugnant apartheid government also did in 1977 was publish The Citizen, denying all the while that it was funded by government money, that it exercised editorial control, or that it was engaged in a National Party propaganda and misinformation campaign. The affair led to the resignation of the state president, B.J. Vorster.

One ANC member of parliament has already spoken out against the deal. Kader Asmal is quoted as saying it is “astonishing that civil servants are able to develop time and energy for what is really a takeover bid”. He argues that at issue is the danger of control of newspapers by politically active people. Perhaps he should consider tabling a bill in parliament preventing civil servants or “politically active people” from owning interests in media companies. That goes for the stake Tokyo “Berlusconi” Sexwale’s company, Mvelaphanda, is acquiring in Johncom too.

I’ve written before about the worrying similarities between the socio-economic policies of this government and the apartheid regime — both practicing a form of national socialism or state corporatism. In this essentially political affair, the parallels with the first Info Scandal are even more uncanny. They are frightening. Who, for example, will be playing the role of P.W. Botha, who stepped into the power vacuum left after Vorster’s resignation?

Update: Anton Harber points out one difference.