Ernst Roets
speaker
479 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard May 2025
Ernst Roets’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yes, exactly. And so, yeah, so that's one part of the problem. But then, so where we are now, initially, it's the metaphor. Let me say this, because I think this is relevant. So, Cyril Ramaphosa, who's the president of South Africa now, was the chief negotiator for the ANC during the negotiations for the- African National Congress. That's it, yes. Yes.
And so one member of parliament who was an opposition member of parliament wrote in his memoirs that he was part of the negotiations. And he asked during this negotiations, he asked Robert Porza, who's, as I said, the president at the moment, what's your plan for dealing with the whites? To which he said, well, that's easy. You deal with them like boiling a frog alive.
You know, the metaphor, putting the frog in the water and just lifting it. I hear that metaphor a lot nowadays in many places. Yes, just lifting the temperature gradually and then the frog doesn't jump out. And so the problem with that is we really see that how we, something gets worse.
We hear that we have, for example, one hour of rolling blackouts and everyone complains and that's fine for a week or a month. And then it's two hours and then it becomes three hours.
So now we have times where they are up to 12 hours a day without electricity.
Yeah, we put up solar powers. So people adapt to that, those who can afford it. You have solar power. Right, so the richer people still have power. Exactly. Ironically, making the gap between the rich and the poor bigger.
So we lose about 40, almost 50% of our water as a result of leakages. Pipes not being maintained. And the funniest story was in one town, the town didn't have water. And then the municipal managers said, but remember, these pipes were built by the apartheid government. So we should blame the pipes.
So they're not maintaining the pipes, but the fact that they were built by the previous government means that the pipes are the problem, but not maintaining them.
And so we have, that's a good example where, again, people who are more wealthy can make a plan. They dig boreholes or something. Well, it's the definition of wealth. You're protected from entropy. And the people who suffer the most are poor black South Africans who live in townships, who die from drinking water that is contaminated.
Well, we have the transport system, for example. Our railways have collapsed. The port in Durban, in the eastern part of the country, last I read, it was number... Was it 405? Rated number 405 on a list of 405 ports. So the worst one in the world, which is a big deal because you need a well-functioning port for the economy to function. So that's an example. For people not to die.
Again, once again. The transports, I mentioned that the roads, the fact that the roads aren't maintained. And then we have these practical things like... policing is more than just practical. And once again, an example of the more wealthy people who are able to adapt to that. Higher private security. Exactly.
So private security in South Africa is currently double the size of the police and the army combined.
Yeah, because the police are, I mean, I was in an army.
Yes, and then what happens again in poorer communities is they resort to some form of mob justice because the police aren't there. There's a guy who rapes people in your community. Everyone knows who he is and the police doesn't do anything. So the people deal with him themselves. So you get vigilante justice in South Africa. So that, and we can go down the list, the education system.
One poll found that 80% or survey, 80% of the schools in South Africa are dysfunctional. I believe the top, I think the number is the top 200 schools in South Africa, which are predominantly the more wealthy schools, have more distinctions for children who finish high school than the next 6,000 schools combined. Mm-hmm. So the education system.
And so again, everything, one economist is a very renowned economist in South Africa. He sort of makes a joke, but it's not just a joke. He says, people ask him, where should you invest? What should you do to make money? And he says, it's easy. You should look at what is the government supposed to be doing and invest in something that is in the private sphere that is doing that thing.
Yeah, well, I'd love to talk about that. And I would also love to hear your views on that because this is, I know you have a particular interest in it.
So the counter argument would be that it's just a metaphor.
So there was a cartoon about this in South Africa. It was two farm attackers. They've just murdered a farmer and they were running out of the house. And then the radio had a news report which says, kill the boer is just a metaphor. And then the one attacker turns to the other and asks, what's a metaphor? And so that, so the kill the boer is a chant.
And what happens, and again, considering that people say it's just a metaphor, you have these politicians, many of which are more to the left of the ruling party who are already quite to the left. So they have these political rallies. The fringe of the fringe. Yes, and then they make these speeches.
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