LEBOGANG MOKOENA: Maybe maths is the problem
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With all the revelations slowly trickling out — like the misuse of Covid relief funds, and the water department unable to account for R220m in drought relief funds — we should be asking just who in our executive is in charge of the numbers.
Pride of place for the most stupendous of mathematical gaffes, however, belongs to Limpopo.
The story is that two weeks ago, Limpopo Premier Stanley Mathabatha proudly handed over 40 shacks to his subjects, each of which carried a price tag of R64000. Now, I’m no accountant but I’m pretty sure I can drum up a quotation for a shack, and it wouldn’t cost R64000.
It quickly got worse for Mathabatha. Soon, he was claiming he had no knowledge of the R2.4m used to pay for the 40-shack settlement. For the leader of one of the poorest provinces in the country, the best you could say is that’s extremely careless of him.
But then, it’s probably no coincidence that of the 27 municipalities contained within Limpopo, just one received a clean audit for the 2018/2019 financial year. Last month, auditor-general Kimi Makwetu told the Limpopo standing committee that only 8% of Limpopo’s municipalities were in good standing, 13% were in need of financial aid and 79% were a “concern”.
If President Cyril Ramaphosa is at all serious about addressing the hyenas feasting on state coffers as he says, perhaps he ought to spend more time looking at a province where the premier merrily spends R2.4m on a development, then claims he has no memory of this.
And yet, the executive has its eyes elsewhere. Though the government claims its attention is fixed primarily on getting ahead of the pandemic, you could have fooled me.
Again, maths seems to be the problem.
As it stands, SA has the fifth most coronavirus cases globally, at 566,109, which suggests it was never really ahead of the pandemic. With our hospitals battling in recent weeks, and reports of some patients being turned away, you couldn’t really claim the lockdown measures worked particularly well.
Maybe, if we had a better grasp of the numbers, Ramaphosa’s executive wouldn’t be spending so much money defending an alcohol ban that is costing the state an estimated R300m every week in lost tax revenue.
Here, figures are important: SA’s liquor industry is worth R140bn, it contributes 3% to SA’s GDP, and employs about 1-million people. Yet ...
Pride of place for the most stupendous of mathematical gaffes, however, belongs to Limpopo.
The story is that two weeks ago, Limpopo Premier Stanley Mathabatha proudly handed over 40 shacks to his subjects, each of which carried a price tag of R64000. Now, I’m no accountant but I’m pretty sure I can drum up a quotation for a shack, and it wouldn’t cost R64000.
It quickly got worse for Mathabatha. Soon, he was claiming he had no knowledge of the R2.4m used to pay for the 40-shack settlement. For the leader of one of the poorest provinces in the country, the best you could say is that’s extremely careless of him.
But then, it’s probably no coincidence that of the 27 municipalities contained within Limpopo, just one received a clean audit for the 2018/2019 financial year. Last month, auditor-general Kimi Makwetu told the Limpopo standing committee that only 8% of Limpopo’s municipalities were in good standing, 13% were in need of financial aid and 79% were a “concern”.
If President Cyril Ramaphosa is at all serious about addressing the hyenas feasting on state coffers as he says, perhaps he ought to spend more time looking at a province where the premier merrily spends R2.4m on a development, then claims he has no memory of this.
And yet, the executive has its eyes elsewhere. Though the government claims its attention is fixed primarily on getting ahead of the pandemic, you could have fooled me.
Again, maths seems to be the problem.
As it stands, SA has the fifth most coronavirus cases globally, at 566,109, which suggests it was never really ahead of the pandemic. With our hospitals battling in recent weeks, and reports of some patients being turned away, you couldn’t really claim the lockdown measures worked particularly well.
Maybe, if we had a better grasp of the numbers, Ramaphosa’s executive wouldn’t be spending so much money defending an alcohol ban that is costing the state an estimated R300m every week in lost tax revenue.
Here, figures are important: SA’s liquor industry is worth R140bn, it contributes 3% to SA’s GDP, and employs about 1-million people. Yet ...
