ANC’S TWIN TOWERS

Last night the African National Congress elected Jacob Zuma as its President during its 52nd national conference. Reactions to these developments have been deafening, ranging from rage to raukus laughter to jubilation.

So now, reality. What is reality? Reality is that JZ, as he is known, is now the ruling party’s most senior leader, its captain, the big dawg, you know. He rules, so to speak. He will rule from Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters in Johannesburg, while President Thabo Mbeki will run the country from the Union Buildings in Pretoria. A good friend of mine has just asked me “how did it get to this?” “Democracy” I said. Which is what it is.

THE PAST
JZ has always had groundswell support, especially in his stronghold KwaZulu Natal. People have always trusted him, they looked up to him as a leader of the ANC, and most of all, respected him. Thus he came into the race with a huge following already.

DEMOCRACY
Mzansi had been in a struggle for democracy for many years, years before the even the National Party took to over power in the 1940s. Injustices had been going on for ages before that, hence the formation of the ANC in January 1912. The underpinning force of democracy is that majority rules. Period. What most people want is what goes, regardless. In a democracy it’s not necessarily what is right, but what those who cast their votes want.

FOOLS
One of the things I have heard from many people is that people who have chosen to follow JZ are foolish, that the man himself is such, owing probably to the fact that he has no formal education because his rural Nkandla parents were so poor. This is the same man who can now speak fluent, self-taught English, was elected Chief of Intelligence of the ANC in 1987, was partly responsible for the CODESA negotiation process, and is credited with bringing the IFP to the negotiation table during the violence of the early 1990s. It would seem, according to this logic, that 2329 ANC voters are also foolish, with 1505 being intelligent (those who voted for Thabo Mbeki). Mbeki himself, by extention, must be foolish for appointing this fool to the second highest office in the country in June 1999.

MORE FOOLS
In June 1999 Trevor Manuel, a guy with no formal economics qualification (he was a civil engineer) took over the reigns at the national treasury. Immediately there was an outcry, critics pointing out these “shortcomings”. Over the years the man has done a very good job in his ministry, and has become the darling of the same critics. Bill Clinton, we all know his shortcomings, well, you know what I mean…he led one of the US’s most successful economic periods during his time.

JUSTIFIABLE PARANOIA?
Are JZ’s critics justified in their paranoia? Are we really going to see the economy fall apart? Will women be even more vilified (Mzansi hates its women – we rape them, beat them up, maim them, deprive them of love, keep them suppressed in every way)? This is already happening in Mzansi, it’s not a futuristic projection. Will gay people’s rights be revoked via Constitutional amendments? Others have said we will become a communist country, or that socialist policies will be pushed harder. Is this at all possible? If so, are these bad things, to concentrate more on poor people?

IN FUTURE
Who knows what a Zuma administration will look like. I bet you not even Zuma himself knows. The ANC rules in government, which means ANC policies are most likely to become law if passed by the ANC itself. That JZ or Mbeki is heading the party should not matter when it comes to this. Or should it? Is JZ so powerful as to change ANC, or indeed the country’s policies all by himself? I don’t know.

THE FAR FUTURE
So what of the whole NPA/ corruption charges thing? Is JZ already on his way down? Well he has survived two post-apartheid court trials already. A third could really bring him down. In such a case, who would take over after him? The most obvious in line is his new Deputy Mr Kgalema Motlanthe. What about the country’s reputation, would it be negative if he was to be charged and convicted while being ANC president? Possibly. But life would not end there. Many previous prominent ANC members have been convicted for financial wrongdoing by the new justice system, the likes of Rev. Alan Boesak come to mind, Tony Yengeni, Shabir Shaik, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela etc. Even SABC CEO Dali Mpofu has been sniffed in 1992 for suspicion of fraud against his organisation the ANC. Others include John Block, and Linda Mti who lost their jobs due to fraud cases against them.

Despite all this, we are still here. The sky didn't fall on us, and this so-called "Zunami" didn't sweep anyone away. Not yet anyway.

THE POLOKWANE FACTOR

Polokwane is abuzz with activity this week as shop owners, B&B managers, hoteliers and others, constantly run about trying to take advantage of the ANC conference happening there.

I was meant to be in Polokwane over the weekend myself. Nothing connected to the conference of course, but personal functions. It didn’t happen for various reasons. I got worried as the days drew closer though, about traffic and so on.

It seems a lot is happening at the conference, with voting delayed for about 3 hours when there was a computer problem. That has been solved. Voting continues.

Over the past few weeks I have had countless conversations, as I’m sure you have too, with people about this ANC conference. In particular we speak about issues relating to the new leadership that is proposed for the ANC, including the possibility of President Thabo Mbeki being replaced by his Deputy Jacob Zuma as party president. I’ve heard comments such as:

“Zuma is not an intellectual.”
“I’m worried if Zuma wins, that is the end for Mzansi”
“How can you ask me which side I am on when you know that JZ is our leader?”
“We cannot have a corrupt man in power”
“Thabo is also corrupt. This truth will come out eventually”

And others. I guess this is what one would call grassroots comments. It seems natural to me that each time we have a potential change of leadership a lot of words are exchanged between concerned parties, some pleasant, most probably not. I personally expect it. What I do not expect are adults who behave as children at such points in time, going at each other relentlessly and viciously. Last week I told a friend of mine about the big arms cache at the OR Tambo airport, and joked that I hoped it wasn’t meant for shipping to Polokwane. We have gone through the whole violence thing and going back would be catastrophic.

So we wait.

How we can all discover ourselves in health

Yesterday I had such a good chuckle to myself while I was driving. Listening to the radio I heard an advert come on, and the CEO of Discovery Health Mr Adrian Gore was saying how easy it is for people to dismiss health insurance as an expensive cost they don’t actually need, when they are prepared to pay so much more for luxuries. He then hinted that Discovery has 2 million members, which I thought was quite a lot.

Just for my own amusement I then took out my calculator and multiplied half a million people by R1 600, which may be a reasonable monthly premium that the average Discovery member pays on their medical aid. Of course the real figure is much higher, but R1 600 was enough for my purpose. Guess what? My calculator returned this message “too large value entered”. Gees! Like, how much money IS this? Bringing out a more powerful calculator – which probably has more brain power than the idiot who captained the Titanic – I got a number back that read 800 000 000. Eight hundred million rand per month in revenues. At least. The company made R1.1 billion operating profit in its latest financial year, up 34% from the previous one.

Make what you will of these numbers, but that is a fair reflection of how much Discovery makes in monthly revenues. I have no clue how Discovery, or for that matter, any other medical aid scheme make their money. I assume they invest most of what we submit to them via debit orders every month, since only a small percentage of us claim back in hospital, sick, or operation fees etc. These schemes, interestingly referred to as such, basically “administer” money on your behalf, in case you need it. And you obviously can’t claim all of it back. The only time they can lose money is either through fraud or if they make very bad investment decisions, like putting your money through a pyramid scheme for example. It sounds to me like a financially awesome business to be in.

Here’s a quick suggestion for Discovery and other high-end medical aid providers. There are 47 million people living in Mzansi. Given that Discovery is the biggest of the lot, bigger than five or more of the next ones below it combined, you can do the sums and see how many don’t have medical aid. Like the Post Office Bank and the Mzansi initiative that were launched to bank the underbanked, medical aid schemes need to strive to give access to at least some of their essential services to those who really need them most; poor people. These folks need doctors’ fees, maternity support, medicines for their health, ARVs in some cases, etc. They are not asking “subsidised” gym membership or access to the latest movie showing at the cinema.

Imagine spreading just R20 million of R1.1 billion worth of health care among 30 million people, even 20 million individuals. Imagine that.