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20100330

ANC Minister caves in to rebellious ratepayers…

The Transvaal Agricultural Union  of South Africa  says the country’s 3-million taxpayers should take the example of the more than 280 ratepayers’associations countrywide – declare legal disputes  with corrupt local governments; thus allowing their rates to be legally diverted to supervised trust accounts – and this money can then be legally used to fix failing infrastructures with their own contractor-experts – without any ANC-officials getting their greedy hands on the money or the contracts.

Bronkhorstspruit 8000 rioters Mpumalanga Bronkhorstspruit JacoMaraisBeeldMarc232010The TAU – which represents about 10,000 commercial food-crop farmers -  warns that if the taxpayers don’t start organising to take on their corrupt government with every legal means possible, the “United Nations may soon have to feed tens of millions of famine-struck South Africans:  the corrupt ANC-regime is destroying all excess food-production.” the TAU warns: adding   “the era of absolute despair is not yet here, but it may be nigh…”

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“Township people also withhold rates”, says ANC Minister in a peace overture to defiant Magalies ratepayers…

 Only a day later, the ANC’s Minister in charge of local and traditional government matters, Sicelo Shiceka, started making ‘peace-overtures” to ratepayers’ assocations, now telling journalists that ‘white ratepayers’ associations are not entirely to blame for the withholding of rates to municipalities – township-people also do it’.

  • Only a month earlier, the same Minister deeply angered white ratepayers by threatening to take action against ‘ white ratepayer associations which had created "a parallel government" and were undermining the ability of municipalities to deliver services.” He claimed that he had only recently discovered “that over 280 ratepayers' (associations) in South Africa - which unfortunately are white organisations - have created a parallel government. They take the money instead of paying service to municipalities and put it in a trust account. That undermines the ability of municipalities to deliver services." National Taxpayers’ union

The chairman of the national taxpayers' union, Jaap Kelder, said what they did hower was entirely legal: by law, ratepayers were allowed to divert their rates to a special trust account under their own management once they’d declared legal disputes with their local municipalities, he said;  adding:

“Hundreds of associations are now hiring companies to deliver the services that the municipalities are failing to deliver. Of the 325 associations, 70 had declared disputes with their municipalities, while in 40 towns ratepayers were withholding payments. The withheld funds were put in a trust fund and residents would then use it hire companies to deliver services. "People have been laying complaints with municipalities for years, but were ignored. They have been paying their accounts without getting the service," he said. He challenged Shiceka to use his powers to get municipalities to deliver efficiently.

He spoke after meeting members of the Concerned Ratepayers' Association (Corpa), which had been withholding rate payments in the protest stricken Madibeng/Brits/Magalies/Hartbeespoort Municipal areas in North West province.

The ANC-Minister finally sat down yesterday with the local mayor Sophie Machika and Corpa leader Jaco Deckerns agreeing to ‘work together in addressing the backlogs and to avoid the legal route. "We agreed to get into a discussion... It's doable and we are excited about it," he said.

Life-threatening health-problems from badly polluted drinking water, lack of sanitation:

Deckerns meanwhile refused to disclose the amount of money ratepayers had diverted to their legal trust account. “Should the municipality keep to its word, Corpa would start paying,” he said. Greater-Madibeng was recently hit by numerous protests, with residents demanding better service delivery and specifically demanding the removal of the mayor for failing to deliver. The most life-threatening problems in the municipality were a lack of clean drinking water and sanitation and poor waste management.  He als promised to meet other municipalities and similar associations throughout the country in the next months. He said problems “would be attended to at a local level and that he did not want the involvement of political parties”..http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=168501&sn=Marketingweb_detail

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‘WE ARE IN TROUBLE” -- warns John Kane-Berman, SA Institute of Race Relations:

SA farmers warn that ANC regime corruption causes collapse of food production country facing famine The commercial farmers’ union TLU cites John Kane-Berman of the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) as warning in his latest Fast Facts in March 2010 that “… the writing is on the wall for South Africa”.

The TLU asks: “Why it took so long for so many experts and observers to come to this conclusion is mystifying. The writing has been on the wall since before the 1994 ANC takeover. The method of that (violence-driven) party’s ascent to power should have been a warning of what was to come, but as we have said many times, nobody appeared to be listening.”

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Picture: malnourished child in Red Cross Children’s Hospital near Cape Town: The UN may soon be faced with having to rush food-aid to millions of starving South Africans because the corrupt regime is destroying all means of excess-food production, warns the Transvaal Agricultural union.

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‘So where is South Africa now and what can be done to save the sinking ship?’ asks TAU…

The TAU/TLU points out that ‘the evidence of country-wide decay is now so palpable that declarations about turnaround strategies and redresses and task teams to get things right float over the population like the morning mist. The reality is horrible and inescapable. We quote Fast Facts:

Thuggish police; and endemic corruption; and hazardous public hospitals and potholed roads.. ‘

“From the thuggishness of the police to moribund public schooling, from the endemic corruption of the ruling party to the chronic incompetence of the civil service, from assaults upon the judiciary to official cowardice in the face of violent trade unions, from hazardous public hospitals to potholes in the roads, from failed land reform to declining life expectancy, from poisonous rivers to rampant crime and killer drivers, we are in trouble. What makes all of this worse is the contempt with which the government routinely treats the public, even as it filches more money from our pockets”, continues Kane-Berman.

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The TLU agrees with him, adding: “We are not a failed state, but that is where we are heading. The ANC-comrades don’t notice this because they are forever busy with parties, launches, summits, lekgotlas, conferences, grandiose occasions and overseas trips. Even if South Africa can pull off a soccer World Cup where tourists don’t get mugged or raped to the extent that South Africans do, or where they don’t disappear into potholes or down manholes, we all know that when the party is over, the country will resume its downward slide”.

Foreign investments paralysed over wild statements of nationalisation of farms and mines…

The TLU says that it will be publishing regular bulletins in the run-up to the World Cup 2010 “highlighting this slide (into failed statehood) so that South Africans know what they are up against, and so that the rest of the world knows exactly what has replaced apartheid. South Africans also need to know what to do.”

“Millions of us will no longer stand aside and watch our beloved country sink under a swamp of ANC corruption and incompetence, of local government disarray, of crumbling health services, road disintegration and the very real threat to food security.

  • “Whatever else happens, when there is not enough food to go around, we will be on the ropes.

“Wild statements about the nationalization of farms and mines have rendered foreign investment paralyzed. Denials that these statements are “not ANC policy” carry little weight. What else will be nationalized – housing, clothing factories, the florist shop? Who is going to tell the shouters and the headline huggers that enough is enough?

Foreign journalists used to hail the ‘liberation-struggle comrades’, but now refer to their leader as a buffoon

“Foreign journalists who once lauded the coming to power of the liberation struggle comrades now refer to their leader as a buffoon, a bigot and a serial sexual exploiter. It was this very press corps that lambasted the previous (apartheid-era) order, which said South Africa was a “threat to world peace”, which exhorted the United Nations to pass resolution after resolution against the country that they now pity -- because of its leadership and kleptocratic officials!

SA may soon need massive food-aid from United Nations to stave off famine:

“Another type of United Nations role may be played out in a future South Africa under the present government – the country could become food-dependent on the outside world as millions continue to pour over the country’s (porous) borders while the government looks the other way,’ warns the agricultural union – which represents about 10,000 commercial food-crop farmers throughout South Africa.

  • “While our doctors, our scientists, our teachers, our engineers, our agriculturalists, our tradesmen, our IT specialists and our administrators eye foreign job opportunities, who will alert a government which doesn’t seem to care? And who will replace these (skiled) people?”

“The front page of Johannesburg newspaper The Citizen carried a recent report that Azapo president Mosibudi Mangena declared “Verwoerd built better houses”. (Citizen 22 March 2010), while a previous Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Ms. Mamphela Ramphele is on record as saying that “Bantu (apartheid-era) Education was better than the mess we have now”.

“It is too late to hark back to the past, but the past has some lessons for South Africa. The Financial Mail published a special survey in the sixties entitled The Fabulous Years: 1961 – 1966.

  •  Verwoerd’s hugely successful socio-economic upliftment programme for blacks:
  • “This is a nation which under Verwoerd had the second highest economic growth in the world (7,9%), an average inflation rate of 2%, was accommodating new labour in the formal sector at 73,6% per year, and enabled the living standards of blacks in the industrial sector to rise at 5,3% per year as against those of whites at 2,9% per year. Verwoerd had launched the greatest programme of socio-economic upliftment for the non-whites that South Africa had ever seen”.

Writes the TAU: “read in the context of the recent Azapo and Ramphele statements, it is not outside our remit to publish here what was, and what could have continued to be, even under a black government, if rational thinking had replaced political ideology and if merit had replaced jobs for pals. Times have changed, and the world moves on. South Africa moved on, but that it is moving towards destruction cannot be accepted.”

Food security is the responsibility of the government:

“Food security is the responsibility not only of South Africa’s commercial farmers – it is the responsibility of the South African government to ensure that these farmers continue farming:

  • without harassment,
  • without their numbers being decimated by farm attacks and murders,
  • by allowing them free tenure of the land of their forefathers, and
  • by not appearing to condone loose cannons within the ruling party’s ranks to cry for the nationalization of productive farmland and even game farms.

“In the end, if South Africa descends into yet another African cesspool, it will be the ANC who will pay the ultimate price. Nobody wants to see one of the world’s most beautiful countries go the way of the rest of Africa. It is time for those concerned to stand up and be counted,” they warn.

Ratepayers are now fixing the mess made of municipal service-delivery by corrupt, uneducated ANC-officials:

An example of taking the bull by the horns has been set by more than 280 ratepayers’ associations throughout South Africa that have sprung up as a result of poor or no municipal service delivery. Sick and tired of raw sewage in the streets, of deep potholes and garbage pile-ups, town and country residents have diverted their municipal taxes to trust accounts and have fixed the problems themselves. Official outrage at this move has been like water off a duck’s back for the ratepayers who have spent years writing, cajoling and pleading with lazy, incompetent and corrupt municipal officials to do something. “No service? no payment!” say these associations, and it has worked --  at least insofar as the repairs and service deliveries are concerned.

Why not apply the same strategy on a national level?  Surely the wholesale stealing of South Africa’s public money is reason enough to hold back taxes.

  • “After all, it’s our money and it’s being pilfered. At least a start could be made to work out how to hobble the profligacy of our government free-loaders at the expense of national service delivery - from hospitals, to national roads, to forged passports and ID documents, to policing, to absent teachers and violence in schools, and to those whose only role as members of Parliament is to attend a sitting once in a while, fitting this in with a busy schedule of overseas trips and weekend functions to discuss yet another “turnaround strategy”.

We must think about this. None of the arrogant and contemptuous official behaviour outlined by Mr. Kane Berman would be possible without the financial wherewithal to support it. We as taxpayers are actually financing the destruction of our country. Why carry on? This is the question.”

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