Johannesburg – The schools are open and the matriculation results are finally out.
It’s been a topsy- turvy 12 months.
Our broke national breadwinner, garlic and sardine king, Tito Mboweni, tried to put lipstick on our broken piggyback this week when he presented the budget.
The year 2021 is a mirror image of the pandemic-buckling 2020, though there’s hope of return to normality with the discovery of vaccines.
We had hoped the virus would disappear on the stroke of midnight at the end of the year, but we lacked the scientific basis.
The virus does not have a deadline.
It’s determined on its path of destruction and wreaking havoc thanks to our lacklustre response and our false hope.
Our country was broke even before the coronavirus made its debut on our shores.
Our economy hit junk status before patient zero arrived bearing the airborne pestilence. However, for the man on the street – the beneficiary of the R350 Covid-19 grant – junk status has been their daily reality even during the years of green shoots and plums.
The one baffling factor has been the exodus to this broke country by nationals from the four points of the compass.
Europeans, Asians, Americans and fellow Africans love this country.
I watched Mboweni present his bad-news budget during the week and couldn’t help but admire his audacity to draw a silver lining on a dark cloud.
I was, however, not bowled over by his performance given that he is a politician despite his economist credentials.
The avocado farmer is a skilled grower and producer, but when it comes to his public employment, the seeds are not bearing any fruit.
Despite his optimism, the Finance Minister akanamali.
The economy is on a negative trajectory and he is indebted to many mashonisas whose interests are burning a hole in our fiscus.
That explains his penchant to increase sin taxes to pickpocket those of us who drink and puff, as if we did not suffer enough when booze and tobacco was banned and prices skyrocketed on the back market.
However, all is not lost.
The vaccine holds so much promise and soon it will build our resistance to the virus and we will roll our sleeves and get back to regular economic activity.
The stadiums would brim with spectators and the hawkers would make a killing.
Mboweni has allocated R12.6-billion to stem the youth jobs bloodbath.
It’s up in the air whether the stop-gap measures can alleviate poverty, but considering that we have a young population wasting away at street corners and in backrooms instead of fueling the economic furnace, is a travesty.
Unemployment remains a problem and the joke is that we have a department of employment and labour.
Essentially, Minister Thulas Nxesi presides over a phantom department wherein employment is a nasty rumour to fool the unemployed masses. Many an economist and even the iconic Nelson Mandela clarified that it’s not the government’s mandate to create jobs. Your job is your business.
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