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By the time you read this I will, hopefully, be doing what one of my many bosses (and I, for my sins, have many) described earlier this year as sitting on the beach smoking zol and doing fokol.
The boss in question may or may not be correct about my either my work ethic or my love or lack thereof for the holy herb and the beach, but after a year like 2016 I reckon we, as a nation, have earned a spliff and a wallow in the ocean to wash off the year’s bad luck.
2016 has been a dire year. We may have missed junk status from the international rating agencies by a millimetre, but with the political thuggery going on in the run-up to the governing party’s conference next December, the Commander in Chief (that’s President Jacob Zuma to you) is likely to have the desire to play another game of political pinball with the economy and PG (that’s Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to you) before long. I’m not too sure for how long we’re gonna be able to carry on our economic bullet-dodging act.
Jesus did come back in 2016, at least to some of the metros, but those of us who thought that a combination of that and the Public Protector’s reports on Nkandla, the SABC and the Guptas would force the CIC to do the right thing and fall on his sword, especially after the revolt by the party elders and its Alliance partners, will be going into 2017 less than satisfied.
The Man from Nxamalala lived to giggle another day and is, as we speak, chilling at the rather well-appointed personal retirement village which we, the taxpayers, bought him, plotting some new assaults on the national fiscus and his enemies inside and outside the governing party while totting up the totals in the bunker.
I guess we could be worse off though. The CIC’s term in both the ANC and government are nearly over, and if the events that followed its Polokwane conference are anything to go by, when TM1 (that’s Thabo Mbeki to you) was given the boot after his bid for another bite at the cherry failed, even if he completes the ANC term, he may not make 2019.
Either way we’re better off than with the mad bastard in the USA. Those Muppets have swapped POTUS (that’s Barrack Obama to you) for BLOATUS, the misogynist and fraudster popularly known as Donald Trump, con artist and hate merchant who will, if allowed, send all of us to hell.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
