Considering I keep on hearing these reports of doom and gloom regarding the worlds economies, it seems the politicians of our country as well as government didn’t get the message. While the rest of the world is being told to tighten their belts and prepare for chaos, our leaders are going into the recession smoking proverbial Cuban cigars and bathing in proverbial caviar. Maybe it’s a genetic preference towards saving (I’m Jewish after all) but I take offense to the spending spree.
Take for example the “Shikota” conference this weekend. The conference catered for roughly 6300 people and cost a cool five million. Now maybe it’s just me but did the conference really need to be at the Sandton Convention Centre? Did they really need to bus people in from around the country? What do 6300 people do at a conference about setting up a new political party? Couldn’t the Shikota members have just phoned the 6300 people and asked how they felt about setting up a new party? Even at expensive Telkom rates it would have cost a little less.
It seems as though the Shikota party has positioned themselves as quite elitist. They have a conference in Sandton, which is hardly the home of the masses (unless you count masses of domestic workers) although spending millions on rubbish is something the educated masses have come to accept due to our competent ANC government. Unfortunately for those interested, this is another blog post all together.
Speaking of the government, last week South Africa got their first Digital TV broadcast turned on. The government knows that the average South African cannot afford the converter required to receive digital TV signals so hundreds of millions will be spent to provide special set top boxes for free. Possibly I’m out of touch with reality but if I lived in an informal settlement would I desperately desire the benefits of Digital TV over say, running water or possibly a proper home? Hell, I would definitely require the high resolution benefits of Digital TV, so I could watch SABC1 in high def, if only I didn’t have a 27 centimeter black and white TV!
Call me a conspiracy nut but it’s all a big scheme. I’m almost certain to get one of these boxes you’ll need to provide your TV license, something many people in our country default on. I guess the SABC has realised that years and years of advertising how paying your TV license is “the right thing to do” hasn’t worked out and this is the way of extorting the future.
I guess it just irritates me that instead of providing cheaper telecoms access or running water we spend hundreds of millions on Digital TV, something that will only be useful for the rich elite with their high def flat screen plasma’s. I guess the agenda makes sense though, we wouldn’t want Jacob Zuma to watch the next elections coverage in low definition now then would we?
“But Digital TV is for the World Cup” you say to me. I’ll respond to your World Cup excuse and ask an important question: “Has anyone actually done a long term cost-benefit analysis of the World Cup to see how much money we are spending? Is this going to bring in money or become yet another ANC vanity project?
All I’m saying is that the money can be spent to solve poverty, stem the tides of AIDS and improve our economy. Give that a thought while you watch TV on your high-def flat screen.
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