EVERYTHING POLITICAL ABOUT COLA

DECIDEDLY I have focused today’s column on two issues that are of considerable importance in the public domain.

These are last week’s strike mobilised by public sector associations (PSAs) and Parliament’s decision to appoint a select committee to investigate the E78 million for ablution facilities for the monolithic International Convention Centre and Five Star Hotel.

 The PSAs’ strike has come and gone, leaving a trail of havoc in its place attributable to violent flare-ups between the protesting civil servants and police. As a consequence, a number of civil servants ended up injured and hospitalised. In the meantime, government has moved to get a court order stopping the strike, citing, among others, political motives. As can be expected, government got its restraining order stopping the strike and this was promptly followed by the leadership of the PSAs calling off the protest action.

Motives

 Significantly, the political motives song is what everyone required to sing for their supper and has been singing since the beginning of the strike, on the strength that the protest was a ruse by political parties gunning for regime change. Although this was denied by PSAs but that was as good as pouring water over a duck’s back, hence Attorney General Sifiso Mashampu Khumalo and Minister of Labour and Social Security Makhosi Vilakati – in sync with the attraction - used the political motives argument to convince the Industrial Court to stop the strike.

 As I see it, the political motives card always comes in handy when such strikes erupt. I have always wondered if this has anything to do with the famous 1996 strike organised by the then Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) that paralysed this nation, politically and otherwise, from which the ruling class has never fully recovered if its actions since then are anything to go by. I find it odd why politics is sacrosanct yet it is political decisions, wrong ones at that, which are responsible for the strikes and many other challenges facing the nation today. It is therefore absurd to expect one to remain apolitical when it is those charged with political stewardship of this country who have failed this nation, because they are self-serving, hence their calamitous political decisions that are ruining this country.

Instructive

 Eugen Berthold Friedrick Brecht (1898 – 1956), professionally known as Bertolt Brecht, a German theatre practitioner, playwright and poet albeit he studied medicine, is instructive in this respect with this observation: “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn’t seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans (mealie meal), of flour, of rent, of medicines, all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn’t know that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and, worst of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations.” 

 Under the circumstances it is unavoidable to politicise these issues. In the three years government has refused to cushion civil servants from inflationary erosion of their income, tens of millions of Emalangeni, if not hundreds, have been wasted. On numerous occasions the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned against government’s runaway expenditure in the face of diminishing Southern African Customs Union (SACU) receipts, the latest of such warnings coming two months ago.

Justification

 As I see it, there is ample justification to politicise CoLA given the wrong, irrational and often arrogant political decisions responsible for draining this country’s coffers. Only apologists of the obtaining polity currying favours to be drawn to the feeding trough for self-enrichment would argue otherwise.

 Then there is the subject of lawmakers setting up a committee to investigate the E78 million worth of ablution facilities, costing E275 000 per unit, that will be installed in the International Convention Centre and Five Star Hotel (ICC-FISH), which by the way is also umbilically connected to government’s continued failure to pay or prioritise CoLA.

Given the context of the Tinkhundla political system, one is doubtful of the wisdom of MPs’ decision and what its intended purposes and objectives are. Under the obtaining political system some things are cast in stone and cannot and can never be changed or challenged and this particular one falls under this category.

 The ICC-FISH was embarked upon against all logic and economic value chain, but simply to fulfill that grandiose First World nation status in the misplaced belief that shiny buildings are a symbol of this vision gone terribly wrong. MPs are pretty much awake to this fact.

They also know that they do not have the political authority to do anything about this project even if they wanted. Even more interesting, they have facilitated this profanity by giving government the nod, even against their better judgment, to borrow billions of Emalangeni for the project. As things stand, if additional funds are required for the ablution facilities, they will sign off to allow government to source the money even if it is to dig this country further into a debt trap.
 

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