Thomas Johnson - The Blog

Cape Town's Parks Department performed unnecessary tree cutting at a local park during August. Two contractors performed the job, Stoddard's and Sunshine. It took a morning. I estimate work of this scope costs R100-150,000. From a horticultural aspect, the cutting was excessive and damaged the trees and their landscaping and environmental purpose. Around half were moderately cut, the remainder severely. Pruning was inconsistent - some trees were left with more growth, others inbetween and a third cut so severely that all that remains is a fringe on top.  All this is indicative of inexpert, unprofessional work and no supervision. As is typical of soft city contracts, apparently Parks did not provide a job specification. There was no supervision of the cutters and no supervision by Parks of the contractors. From the nature of the pruning and the manner Stoddard's and Sunshine performed the work, the workers' were largely unskilled.  I contacted Parks manager Jacques Cedra...

The absence of project and contract direction and supervision in the Cape Town's Parks and environmental services departments and the lack of political oversight by ward and mayoral committee councillors of these departments is creating problems for quality of service.  I will illustrate the problem - absence of contract specification and supervision - with Parks Department's tree pruning contracts but I believe it's also city-wide with contracts like invasive species control and soft - non-engineering - contracts. August is the last month to prune greenery and prepare gardens for summer. There's an old saying that when the city prunes public open space trees, it's time for homeowners to do theirs. But from what I've seen, it's best not to follow their modus operandi: over-cutting that damages trees. There's the right way and the wrong way to do it. The city and its contractors follow the principle that cutting more and more is always better even when it...

I wrote about the confusion surrounding "clean audits" in government audits (see here ). The public believe accountants and auditors are above reproach. They aren't. Like lawyers and doctors, they too have questionable and unethical practises. Commentators used the collapse of Steinhoff and its founder and CEO Markus Jooste's disgrace and suicide as a lesson on the dangers of fraud and corruption. He was described as a financial genius who built Steinhoff from nothing but then defrauded investors. He hid the Ponzi scheme - that the enterprise was built on sand - from them and auditors in South Africa and abroad for so long. But how indeed did he evade scrutiny? Jooste was a chartered accountant and knew the tricks of the trade. He did not personally prepare the accounting records and statements so others, especially senior management and auditors, must have known about irregularities but chose to remain quiet or not probe too deeply.  The auditor's motto is to exp...

 There's been the expected fulsome (definition: excessively flattering), even obsequious commentary on former ANC finance and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan's death. On CapeTalk former ANC MP and political commentator Melanie Verwoed gushed about his sharp intellect like he was Stephen Hawking.  Most commentary including in Daily Maverick is about him being a supposed corruption fighter nonpareil. Intelligent he may have been but the rest is overblown. Intelligent as a politician and office bearer he wasn't. Gordhan was part of the ANC's system of patronage, corruption and managerial neglect who contributed to SA being where it is. He personally may not have been the recipient of ill-gotten financial gains, but he was part of a system of state-wide corruption, the worst anywhere in the world, who allowed corruption to proceed unstopped. His mild, hesitant and too late resistance to singular acts of corruption in the Zuma government, for which he was then and...