Thomas Johnson - The Blog

I've often said the middle class sit in their wonders of motoring engineering, sealed off from the world and don't see the poor, unemployed and homeless. But if they're observant, they don't need to walk for a change, as Institute of Race Relations' Michael Morris did, to see them. Instead, in their middle class bubbles, they choose to ignore the signs, and in Morris' case, the specific graffito that sparked his musings that "whites must face our [South Africa's] history ". The IRR-affiliated  Centre for Risk Analysis' quality of life index that whites have the highest standard of living of South Africa's population groups is already known and evident. It's in the low poverty level for that group of 1%, and less than 10% (8% in 2014) of whites are unemployed . So what are they and IRR especially complaining about? All South Africans - not only whites - are dissatisfied with the incompetent and corrupt ANC government and dismal s...

Premier Alan Winde wrote an op-ed in Daily Maverick about the auditor-general's (AG) purported "standards" that's allegedly preventing the Western Cape from meeting their service delivery objectives ( Service Delivery Must Take Precedence Over Compliance ).  His predecessor Helen Zille said much the same including in her DM column. This is either misinformation, ignorance or deliberate lies about the role and objectives of the auditor and audit respectively. Ironically, while the DA-run WC complain about the AG, they crow from the rooftops about the number of clean audits the AG gives them, showing their hypocrisy. A further irony is not even the ANC - corruption central - complains about the AG. What does that say about the DA's sour grapes. I don't understand them. It appears like his predecessor, Winde and WC staffs don't understand what an auditor does. Zille complained about staff allegedly quaking before the AG's "wrath" (sic). Wh...

There's been much commentary after the DA's recent implosion. RW Johnson , Jon Cayzer , Richard Poplak and one or two others gave good, fair assessments. DA apologists and supporters like James Myburgh acknowledge the party is in trouble but for different reasons.  However, the DA downplay concerns like DA MP Emma Powell  did last week (see here ). She attributed Zille's sudden, unexpected entrance into the race and election as FedEx chair, which caused Mashaba's departure and was the final nail for Trollip and Maimane and resulting furore, as observers not understanding its internal politics, ie it's so simple and we're overreacting. So within the party and among its supporters there's tortuous rationalisations, excuses and even blunt denials to explain away the worst crisis and crisis of confidence the party has had since 1994. The latest to offer a revisionism and apologia is James Myburgh, publisher and editor of Politicsweb (see here ). He'...

Emma Powell doesn’t get Richard Poplak’s assessment of the DA  in Daily Maverick . He did not comment on their governance in Western Province and Cape Town per se, which the IRR’s CEO Frans Cronje called a well-run bubble based on isolated examples, ironically, one was the police, a national competence. Poplak detailed, in his wordy style that’s not to everyone’s taste, how the DA gutted their hitherto liberal values, most of it under Helen Zille’s leadership, and their right-of-centre shift. Even erstwhile DA supporter RW Johnson thinks so (see here ). But Powell’s response is about the metrics, as she understands it, of good governance.   She doesn’t answer Poplak except saying he doesn’t understand internal DA politics.   It’s the card hustler’s trick of misdirection. To be clear, the DA is better, if not far better, than the ANC. But that’s only because the ANC is negligent, incompetent and corrupt and set a low bar. The fact is any political party ca...

Helen Zille lost her review application in the North Gauteng High Court for the Public Protector's finding her colonialism tweet was unethical. From her layman's and as the aggrieved, losing party's interpretation of Judge Malebo Habedi's obiter dicta ("personal observations", "irrelevant ruminations"), which he's allowed to do, one would assume it's as she says - he let his biases and conflicts of interest get in the way of his job (I'll get back to that). Last week Pierre de Vos, who's no friend of the PP, never mentioned any of Zille's issues in his analysis of the judgement . He said inter alia: the "judgement contains much of interest for people interested in the judicial review of bodies exercising public power, in general, and of the reports of the public protector'; 'the court proceeded to consider – and reject – all the arguments presented to it by Zille’s lawyers. To try and understand the reasoning...

When I heard Herman Mashaba resigned from the DA attributing Helen Zille's election as FedEx chair and the conservative faction behind her (the majority of DA members that voted for Zille after her sudden candidature), I said another resignation, especially by a senior black member, would put the nail in their coffin of any hope they had to still be an effective party and opposition, particular for black votes that ironically Zille's win scuttled. (Talking about confused, as eNCA's headline on Mashaba's resignation said, 'shooting themselves in the foot'.) Over the past couple of days I said Zille's win was a huge mistake, that her alleged "strategic and organisational" brilliance was overstated, that she made the blunders that led to DA where it's now and she shouldn't be there (check my comments). I said her running was opportunistic, egotistical (with Zuma and Malema she has the biggest ego of all local politicians) and an indication ...

Over the past two weeks I've commented on conservative white males' violent reaction to climate change, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests and teen activist Greta Thunberg. On October 14 IRR fellow John Kane-Berman (JKB), who also contributes to the right-wing site Politicsweb (disclosure: I contributed to PW until our paths diverged), wrote on their site The Daily Friend that the international media's " Covering Climate Now" campaign is "propaganda, not journalism ". I commented, but the site was revised this week and comments have been removed, an odd decision for a group that claims to defend- "the true champions" - liberal values. I said the overwhelming consensus is human-caused climate change is known with empirical certainty. NASA (JKB and IRR have heard of them, right?) states "97% of actively published climate scientists agree humans are causing global warming and climate change . Most of the leading science organizat...

The world is interesting. I'll talk and write about a book I read, a film I saw, something in the news and media or what's happening in the community. But I can go on, forgetting my interests are not necessarily shared by others. In that case they might find me verbose and a bore. One time I expounded about economic development to an intern and master’s graduate in economics, a subject I had expertise in having a post-graduate degree in economics myself. After a few minutes I saw the panic in her eyes as she tried to extricate herself from my one-on-one informal lecture. But, as often happens, I couldn’t stop or didn’t know how to stop without looking like a fool. Other times my audience, usually of one, might change the subject, show signs of restlessness or moving off or I get the point and stop, the words petering off . Don’t get the wrong idea, this doesn’t happen all the time but often enough. For articles it’s a simple matter for the reader to stop reading o...

In my  previous post  I wrote Helen Zille and IRR et al are not true liberals.  I continue with this theme. In an article first published in Rapport where she’s a regular contributor, Zille wrote of South Africa’s “ culture of unaccountability ”.   Quoting her “lodestar” political analyst and writer Francis Fukuyama, she said a “democratic society must get three key things right: the rule of law; a capable state performing its functions reliably and efficiently; and a deep-rooted culture of accountability, a deceptively simple formula [that’s] how devilishly difficult it is to achieve” Indeed, for her it is because as I said before, despite presenting herself as having an “innate understanding of good governance, a liberal principle, in key areas she herself failed” in her role as premier of the Western Cape.   I mentioned two examples but there are others. As she indirectly says, the test of liberalism is defending freedom of speech, accountabil...

This is the text of a letter I wrote to Michael Morris[1], the Institute of Race Relations' head of media, to his op-ed in Daily Maverick. I read your response to Ismail Lagardien's critique of Helen Zille[2] on Daily Maverick today.  I thought of writing but they rarely publish letters[3] from Joe Soap. And like most of South Africa's media, fear and resist the free and robust exchange of ideas in readers' comments (to another article, the editor noted they're neither left nor right leaning , however, restricting free speech is typical of both the far left and right). While I disagree with Lagardien’s generalisation, as the socialist I suspect he is, about "liberal" economics, I agree Zille has moved to the right. I've been saying so since c2011 when my concerns about her matured, long before it become de rigueur and when she was considered an oracle and darling by those who criticise her now that she’s no longer premier and "opinionista...

"Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka fired auditor KPMG in 2017 for its role in state capture. This earned her almost heroine-like status among some in the business community for taking a strong and courageous stand against corruption. Now the same board has fired Deloitte, arguing that engagement with the firm is ‘unsatisfactory’ and there is reputational risk associated with it. It is hard not to believe this is the case. Except that something just doesn’t feel right." ( Deloitte firing may reveal more than Sygnia would like , Daily Maverick 14/06/2019.) Is Sasha Planting, author of the piece, an accountant? She wrote: "Bear in mind an auditor’s job is not to detect fraud, comment on a business’s model or even its viability. It is simply to provide a reasonable assurance that the financial statements are accurate. In order to do this, it has to trust that the information on which the accounts are based (contracts, leases, stock take reports and so on), and which is provid...

This is the adapted text of an email I wrote Western Cape (WC) Premier Alan Winde and MEC for agriculture Ivan Meyer today: I've been following the WC's government's statements and reaction to the murder of farmer Stefan Smit. While this like any other particularly violent crime is tragic, the media's and WC government's reaction is excessive considering in 2017/18 20 336 people were murdered in the country with Nyanga police station's area having the highest of all stations (see here ). Of total murders, 2 930 were women and 985 were children , with 370 women and 279 children in the Western Cape ( here ). How many farmers were killed in the province? According to AfriForum , there were "17 farm attacks" to May 2019. I don't know if that includes murder. But does murder of the most vulnerable members of the community  –   children  –  get the kind of attention farmers do? Is the DA, WC government, media, AfriForum, white right-wing, etc go...