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Cape Town - The release of the latest unemployment figures by Statistics SA sparked robust debate in the comments section this week.
The unemployment rate stands at its highest level since 2003, prompting Cosatu's expelled general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi to remark that SA is teetering on a knife edge.
User Theo Martinez hit back at Vavi, saying he was partly to blame considering his position while leading Cosatu. According to user Mike Heyns, "It is not about the unemployed increasing, it is about the number of taxpayers decreasing!"
Comments hit fever pitch after Sanral said "E-toll payers are winning all the way". User Mike Heyns, who holds two positions among this week's 'cream of the comments', went to great lengths to explain the distinction between a 'discount' and a 'rate', and why the difference matters to road users.
Solidarity's decision to take Eskom to court over its affirmative action policy created a buzz, as well as the Rooibos tea industry's uncertainty over how it would share benefits with the Khoi and San communities.
Below is the weekly dose of top ten Fin24 user comments - selected for their wit, value-add to the topic at hand and contribution to healthy debate in a country so much in need of constructive dialogue.
Top ten user comments on:
Vavi: SA teetering on a knife-edge:
1. Theo Martinez - Dear Vavi, it is the Cosatu-supported ANC (even when you were there!) whose economic policies have led to this slaughter. It is the trade unions' annual wage delirium that is partly to blame for our current debt that will seriously come to haunt us soon.
It is Cosatu that is against liberalisation of markets and labour regulations to allow small companies and traders to grow. Easy to talk now when he is out of the alliance, but who was screaming pro-Zuma songs before Polokwane? - READ STORY
2. Donald Ceronio - The only alternative is to save what you can in order to start a business and become a master yourself. Become self-reliant. Buy everything cash. Start a family medical savings plan instead of taking out a medical (aid scheme). You can arrange this at your bank. They give you a card that only works at hospitals with a pre-arranged set of rules and limits and when you have more than (for example) R200 000, it pays out the rest.
Start a family insurance savings plan. Same thing. Yes, it's going to take a while and maybe you will or maybe you won't benefit from it straight away, but your children and their children will. Rather save and buy self-generating electricity capacity. Save and buy a home water collecting system. Take as much power away from the puppet masters as possible. - READ STORY
SA's unemployment rate hits 12-year high:
3. Mike Heyns - It is not about the unemployed increasing, it is about the number of taxpayers decreasing! If 5.5 million taxpayers (2013 - earning higher than the threshold) had to look after the rest of SA, that brings it to around 10 people per PAYE taxpayer? We're probably closer to 12-plus at the moment.
Yet they still increase taxes, spend money as if there is no bottom to the pit and import engineers from Cuba? - READ STORY
4. Robert Large - To all those of you who go on about over-population and over-breeding by the black population, you are totally wrong. The simple fact that has been proven all over the world whether black, white or yellow, is that only once a family moves into the cities will the birth rate drop. Only once they are in the cities is there any hope of a decent job.
In the country you need children to work the fields or be sold for lobola and to look after you in old age. So all you racists out there please understand that only urbanisation driven by a growing economy will change this over-population and this holds for ALL people in the world. Paradoxically the more squatters we have in the cities, the better it is for the country in the long run. - READ STORY
E-toll payers winning all the way - Sanral:
5. Mike Heyns - PLEASE EVERYONE!!!
The definition between a "discount" and a rate is that rates must be approved by Parliament and gazetted accordingly. Not impossible but a lengthy, costly exercise. On the other hand, you have "discount". That is the same as a "promotion" or "sale". In the Ts&Cs they can withdraw the offer whenever they wish for whatever they feel like! So, SCAMRAL, please tell me why you insist on a "discount" and not lower rates? Not that I have any inclination to pay it anyway! - READ STORY
6. Grant Willemse - Everywhere I read, I see comments about how it is illegal for "them" to withhold your licence disc for outstanding e-toll fines. Government has now proven that if we, the public, don't comply, they will just go ahead and pass another law to TRY and force us to do so.
Like back in medieval times, when the king needed more money, he would just raise taxes by another 10%. Couple this with the whole Eskom saga and we're truly going back into the Dark Ages. I thought our government was a government for the people? The last time so many people were opposed to and stood against one single thing, was when the people of this country were fighting apartheid. – READ STORY
Group to take Eskom to court over affirmative action:
7. Lee Mak - Affirmative action is a reality and necessity to redress, same as gender equity. It is simply immature for people to make disparaging racial comments because they don't agree with such policies. Solidarity is just being unreasonable.
The issue of incompetence and failure and corruption has nothing to do with colour or race. Many people black and white have flown many companies to the ground through poor management decisions... we saw with the airline industry - low-cost carriers coming and disappearing.
I don't see gender equity policies as racism or sexism or onslaught of the matriarch, I can't deny that women were denied work opportunities and advancement due to their gender and (this) needs to be redressed, which means I might be overlooked for a certain position (which could) be given to a female. It's a reality. - READ MORE
8. Silver Wolfe - I hope they win. Not because I don't want to see people of colour doing well (we're all human here and I'd want for anyone who put the time and effort in to do well) but because I want Eskom - a utility by the government and for the people - to be run correctly.
That means it needs to have the correct skills to get the job done and it needs to be managed in such a way that it is not a corrupt part of the government system. AA and BEE should never have been implemented the way they were. Using numbers to determine equity simply doesn't work if the people who make up those numbers don't have the skills.
What should have happened (and something I have been saying since 1994) is that skilled people should have been given shadows, that is: someone watching them, learning from them, taking notes and so on. This is how you "gain skills" - from proper learning. The imbalance would have gone away in time and with proper training.
But no, we wanted numbers, numbers, numbers and part of the reason Eskom is failing right now has to do with that. The folks who make up the numbers don't have the skills. Plus, the education system can hardly give them the skills, because the education system is in a shambles. Fix the education problem and the need for BEE and AA will go away. - READ MORE
Rooibos industry unsure on Khoi, San benefit sharing:
9. Berthold Willemse - Let's look at many of these so-called boererate... buchu, being one such example. All these "boererate" are actually Khoisan traditional medicines. Look at Hoodia, for example, which is marketed globally as a means of curbing appetite; the Khoisan have used these medicines for centuries, if not millenia.
Early European settlers would not have survived in SA without Khoisan knowledge of the local shrubs and so forth. Ask any historian worth his salt, and he would echo my sentiment. - READ MORE
10. Gideon de Klerk - It's the same old story again. My knowledge about anything counts for nothing if I do not have the commercial acumen, entrepreneurial spirit and accompanying efforts to make a commercial success of it. Entitlement to the success of others doesn't actually give me rights to it. - READ MORE
Disclaimer: All letters and comments published in MyFin24 have been independently written by members of the Fin24 community. The views are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of Fin24.
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