In Part one, we looked at how a struggle vet would have fared returning to his naturalised country (Germany), where he would be currently drawing a state penion. We also looked at how well he would have done, if he had returned to one of the SADC countries. In the latter case, returning to South Africa would be a clear win. Given that he returned to Germany, we looked at other Euro contries. It's feasible that any of those woould have hosted SA liberation people in exile.
In this part, we will ponder how we got so weak, from our Rand being stronger than the Australian dollar 37 years ago, to now. This is hardly more than a single generation. How were we so utterly outstripped on several metrics? On our forex strength we have collapsed to meekness. On other civic strengths, about the only thing we could claim, until the past few months, was that we had more freedom of speech than some other ex-colonies. Given that the ANC claimed in 1994 to create a non-sexist, non-racial socialist republic, its record is dismal. We bash our women and children, murder one another, steal and embezzle ceaselessly, and have failed in the one job given to the ANC: to make people wealthy enough. Nobody, anywhere, can afford poor people. There is nothing on this planet more expensive than mass poverty.
It is not comforting that our neighbour SADC states look after their seniors worse than we do on paper. Both Namibia and Botswana are mineral rich (Namibia is soon to be oil rich) yet, looking at the table of SADC old age pension payouts in Part 1, are apparently even worse at sharing that wealth with their people than SA is with ours.
Let's have a look at the old age pensions from some of the colonies (all of which we were doing better than in the late 1960s).
This table displays state pensions in some old British commonwealth colonies, SA included. Remember, we left it, thanks to HF Verwoerd, but returned thanks to Madiba.
| Country | R Pension |
|---|---|
| UK | 21221 |
| Australia | 12438 |
| New Zealand | 11489 |
| Canada | 9528 |
| South Africa | 2315 |
We get a tenth of what Endland does. Is England ten times more expensive? No! A close friend living in Melbourne says it is more exensive than London. Last time I was there, my pension did not quite buy a six pack of beer.
Scandinavian countries are more outright socialist than Commonwealth countries, and it shows in their old age grants. We include the Netherlands, because it is close in character and region.
| Country | R Pension |
|---|---|
| Denmark | 18793 |
| Finland | 20515 |
| Iceland | 37500 |
| Norway | 31500 |
| Sweden | 14800 |
| Netherlands | 22872 |
BRICS is quite the flavour of the decade if you are in the ANC. There are now many more countries in it than the acronym suggest: 15 in all. The table sticks to the originals: Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA.
| Country | R Pension |
|---|---|
| Brazil | 4500 |
| Russia | 4600 |
| India | 315 |
| China | 447 |
| South Africa | 2315 |
It is impossible to guess how SA would be doing if it were not for our weak currency. Only one thing is sure: having worked out our entire lives here, none of our SA seniors will get any money back for our wasted tax, neither in cash nor benefits of any kind. No matter how good we thought our main line passenger trains, airways, highways, freeways and cities were, they were inherited, trashed and are gone. The perps have eaten the money, and will run. We can legitimately claim
We wuz robbed!
All we need is to digitise the justice system. Once every citizen is sure that criminals get caught and court, and that we are all treated the same against our laws, we will change overnight. We are good people, and we know fairness when we see it. We will not need a commission of enquiry to perceive we are getting a square deal. That, however, is unlikely to happen unless thousands of diep skelms get their just dessert, which is nothing less than tronkstraf en hardepad. The only way to do that is capture those dockets into the cloud where even Snowden- and Assange-style hackers cannot tamper with them. The good thing is, that is all we need: once crime no longer pays, everything else will fall into place.
Capturing dockets is dead simple technology: our thousands of unemployed matriculants will learn as quick as they learned to play Angry Birds and run Tik-Tok. If done right, my guess is, it will take a year. In other words, we will finish before the local elections.
Part 3 will be the Seniors Lib Protest discussion. Plenty of us are fit enough to join a protest march, but there surely are smarter ways for amadala to make a difference. We will play with the numbers, and see what we can come up with.