Thursday, April 26, 2012

IS THERE A NEED TO PRIVATISE GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS


I may not be qualified to state such but being a bonafide Swazi interested in seeing the country progressing than being privatized to selfish business people who are only concerned about making money than empowering fellow Swazis.
I have noted that a number of government organs in the country have been privatized and some are still in the process of going through such a phase. It is no hidden fact that some parastatals like CTA have been a financial drain to government to such an extent that Government is dreaming of reducing the CTA’s looting hole through privatization.
Even though the country is engulfed with huge financial crushes one should know that , asking too much might lead to the government being forced to privates most services in order to benefit tinini
According to my untrained eye government is not in the business of creating demand but it provides services for its society to function happily and by privatizing most of the services it will mean that a lot of fly-by –night businesses would emerge and create new demands for new products. We know that our local government picks up thrash , while the national government services ensures that it teaches our children through OVC fund then I smell a rat when in the end of the day government privatizes its essential services then these ‘rich’ businesses will pick more thrash and make a lot of money at government’s expense.
I don’t care what other people would say but the Swazi government is directly accountable to me and you . Even next year the country will hold its elections and we (Swazis ) eligible to vote. On the other side of the private sector the corporate CEO Is controlled by a small group of people known as the board of directors while we (Swazis)  wish to fire our Members of Parliament, all we have to do is show up at the polls (something Swazis in the Urban areas are notoriously bad at).
I have just read from some useful publication that Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Now Zimbabwe) 1964-1979, often said: "we were never beaten by our enemies - we were betrayed by our friends". The West essentially promised white leaders in South Africa that they would be allowed to continue practicing apartheid if they would stop arming Rhodesia in her war against communism. Between 1979 and 1980, Rhodesia fell into Marxist dictatorship under Mugabe and had its name changed to Zimbabwe . The World Bank provided loans to Mugabe up until May 2000. This is not an academic issue since millions face starvation because of Mugabe's Marxist policy of seizing the nation's farms. Ominously, Mugabe has turned to communist China to run farms in  Zimbabwe.
     In the 1980s the world saw starving children in Ethiopia, but what they did not realize was that this was a planned famine. The Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam undertook nationalization of agriculture and massive population resettlement program modeled on Stalin and Mao's starvation programmes in the 1930s and 40s which killed millions. Meanwhile the World Bank continued to send Mengistu millions of dollars, much of it intended for the ministry of agriculture undertaking the resettlement programme.  
     In country after country in Africa, there has been no accountability in the use of World Bank loans... Billions in World Bank loans have been embezzled in Africa and rarely anyone is held accountable and prosecuted.
     It comes as no surprise then that by its own admission, the World Bank's purported policy of strengthening African free market economies by lending $50 billion for 'Structural Adjustment programs' and other projects over the past thirty years has been an abject failure. That's because their real purpose was the exact opposite:

     The Bank's own reports in the 1980s revealed that it played a major role in nationalizing the development process throughout the Third World. Regarding these harsh conditionalities imposed by the structural adjustment loans, a 1985 confidential bank report by leading development experts concluded that 'the SAL's seemingly hard and all-encompassing conditionality is largely illusory'. The bank and some proponents of foreign aid claim that a wave of privatization swept the Third World but actually 'privatization was almost all talk'. World Bank loans either go directly to the recipient government or must be guaranteed by the government. So, by inevitably increasing the politicization of Third World economies, World Bank aid was the economic tranquilizer dart which created a weaker domestic market for the foreign multinationals to feed on. I remember two years ago , when I just ignorant of the world’s political situations but after intense reading I concluded that by end of the 1980s that by end of the 1980s the banks had successfully empowered and corrupted Third World governments with billions in bank loans. Liberal democracy and the free market had been strangled. Now for the second play: The sell off. The directive for the sell off came from the World Bank and IMF at the end of the 1980s as shown by World Bank documents signed by James Wolfensen and leaked to a BBC investigative journalist, Greg Palast. The World Bank flew in their teams who dictated their plans, an average of 111 conditions in a pre-written document, to each nation's finance minister. If he refused he would be denied any further loans and the life blood which had sustained his government would be cut. These conditions included selling off the natural resources and national industries to foreign multinationals. In the case of Argentina, they required the nation to give up its gas water and oil to Vivendi, Repsol, Enron and a few other multinationals. In 1988 Jeb Bush made a call to an Argentine senator asking him to sell a gas pipeline to Enron at one fifth of its market value. In return, a percentage of the discount would be deposited in the senator's Swiss bank account. The process has been called 'briberization' rather than privatization. 
    When making the case for such a grand conspiracy as this, it is helpful to call a whistleblower to the witness stand.  Published in November 2004, the book entitled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins ( now a New York Times best seller) is a public confession by an insider about the real purpose of Western loans to developing countries. Working in a private consulting firm, Perkins was one of the 'economic hit men' who carried out the plan detailed in the World Bank documents. Perkins describes a classical conspiracy between government and big business. The U.S. National Security Agency recruited and trained the 'economic hit men' to carry out their duties through private consulting firms and other corporations. The beneficiaries of the conspiracy were the international bankers and shareholders in the multi-national corporations. Unable to repay the loans organized by the hit men, developing countries had to surrender their national resources to their Western creditors.
    What an extraordinary scam: Destroy a country's domestic capitalism and free-markets, get it into massive debt and then with financial gun to its head, shake it down for everything its got. It is even more extraordinary for the fact that, because this piracy is conducted in international waters, it isn't even illegal! One of the questions raised in the next chapter is whether or not these agents have been acting, to some degree, on  Her Majesty's (secret) service.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

SUCCESSFUL MEN COME FROM HUMBLE BACKGROUNDS


 
…In this life of VAT, Political instability, Gossip , Anger & Betrayal we will never achieve the same things and reach the same goals

After hearing one of my ex girlfriends (amongst the many) spewing bile about my background which she claims to have known at the drinking holes in the city where yours truly was bleached with disgraceful information about my past (which I am forced to admit that 65% of such is true). At first I did not take such kindly because it is not hidden fact that I was raised in a stick and mud house with electricity reaching our tiny hours six years after the hit of the millennium.
It is for this reason that I respect her for being open to me even though she was equally shocked that I am from a poor background and had a lot of run-ins with crimes on my heydays of youth. It is good that such was revealed because it made me feel inspired to write this piece and tell teach that world that most locals are always battling with reality that most of the successful men in the country came from those stick and mud –paraffin lamped houses.
They are the same people who considered an avocado season to be a blessing because their families never stressed about putting something on the table. I mean these are the ones who have dismally failed while on throne of political power and have treated all the poor with disrespect while fattening their pot bellies on the much availed funds.
Judging from the current situation our country is facing I have noticed that there is a vast inequality of wealth distribution which has been cause by the private ownership on the real estate and production sector.
If one would have at least ten seconds and run around the country’s main cities and check who the landlord is Mr Zhasjkkr from some planet beyond earth. One trained eye like yours truly there is just kicking himself wondering what will the ordinary Swazi own in the next six months-Nada; kute, vokol; everything has been been taken by our foreign friends but we made to suffer on the unfamiliar VAT attack with earning still motionless for the good or worse (I am just confused).
Social, intellectual and economic inequalities that arise from hard work, self-discipline and superior IQ are everywhere to be seen in the country. They are a natural state whereby those endowed with such qualities will rise in social status, if they so wish, and to whom the benefits of wealth will accrue.
It is no hidden factor that our natural habitation provides no evidence as it is enscribed in the Holy Bible that “Men were created equal” and that all that we will achieve in life will always be the same. While my Government is against the proposed mass action by local unions , the ordinary neutral Swazi has been left shaking in fear of the unknown.
It is no hidden fact that while the masses are shaking in fear there is a minority group of Swazis who are not concerned of the developments but continue to sit in the country’s hotels boardrooms with a sole intention of creating a successful business and have even forgotten that the word charity exists. These generate huge wealth and their products have immeasurably improved the living standards of their porch backyards than 999 233 Swazis suffering.
It is no hidden fact that these individuals exist to make money and profit so they can meet demands of the faceless investors in order for them to be able to re-invest the capital to make more products thus at the end of the day handsomely rewards its shareholders and two weeks ago I was taken aback by the sudden closure of the country’s only multi million facility and I find it strange that someone within its hierarchy is failing to own up on the consequences which have led to the Swaziland Association Nurses withdrawing its nursing staff from the facility. I am also wondering as to why no one fueled the investigation of the death of two orderlies (with the last medical report reported missing). Government has never set up this facility to resemble a death camp where the old, weak and vulnerable would be subjected to political indifferences which would put their lives in danger. 
This is just not a funny affair where I see some of the health politicians live on the backs of others and are not concerned about the people dying of TB but they are quick to jump to the streets
I just wish to see Swaziland being a more caring and equal society which is one of compulsory equality and even higher levels of taxation to support an ever growing welfare parasite class.