Current Edition >> Archives Section >> Leading Stories >> April 2008
• Johann Dannhauser
It is a grim heading for the front page story of the newspaper focusing on business and development in the Free State, but unfortunately it is true, for the following reasons:
• The extraordinary Eskom power failures this year have driven home the vulnerability of also the Free State economy and of stability in general in SA. On its own, it has also induced thousands more South Africans including skilled and economically productive Free Staters to emigrate. The proposed 60% hike in Eskom tariffs is for sure going to hit consumer inflation for a six, hurting most the 50% poor part of the population, causing further political unrest.
• The political volatility in the country, linked to the split between Luthuli House and the Union Buildings, is reverberating right down to the bottom, also in the Free State causing a widespread detrimental wait-and-see attitude in the business sector.
• The overly politicized events at the University of the Free State (UFS) the past month have had a disastrous impact on the university itself and also indirectly on the province. The forced integration on the campus and the resultant events, which were subsequently blown out of proportion has irreparably tarnished the track record of the University as a stable and neutral centre for higher learning and academic research of excellence, even by international standards. The UFS has been one of the strongest drawcards of investment in the Free State, but whatever, things would never be the same again. As to the province indirectly, the UFS events together with examples of blatant racial discrimination against whites during the same period, reflect alarming racial polarization.
• Crime is generally on the increase - what else could one expect when the country’s top cop is in the dock for corruption and some 30 000 trained ex-SAPD officers are in Iraq in search for a better dispensation? Ladies over 80 years dying in Bloemfontein hospitals as a result of violence of some sort on them, tell its own story.
• There is very little, if any, evidence in the Free State of significant foreign direct investment (FDI).
• The latest report by Creamer Media on the biggest 41 industrial projects in SA and the biggest 40 mining projects, indicate that only one of these - Voorspoed Diamond Mine at Kroonstad - is based in the Free State. This amounts to less than 1% of mega projects in the country.
• The 2006/07 report of the Municipal Demarcation Board indicates that amongst the nine district municipalities in SA fairing the worst on the scale of benchmarks they are supposed to comply with, are the five in the Free State - Fezile Dabi, Lejweleputswa, Motheo, Thabo Mofutsanyane and Xhariep. The functional audit ran on these five municipalities reflects a pathetic picture of incompetence an incapacity.
• The largest local municipality in the province, Mangaung, is experiencing serious financial constraints, while it has to endure consistent criticism on the decay of infrastructure and on general tidiness in the city. This does not augur well for the soccer hosting in 2009 and 2010.
• The continuous hike in fuel prices, reaching record heights, is having a detrimental spin-off right through the economy, especially on anything to do with transport.
• Internationally the picture ads further negative weight, with the United States as the superpower of the world taking an unprecedented knock with its costly war in Iraq and the American economy in a recession. This is causing a melt-down on world financial markets.
So the facts not only show the necessity of an incisive rethink, but indeed preparing for some new dispensation. What the latter is to be, is uncertain, but what is certain is that matters in the Free State will by far not be the same again.
All is, however, definitely not doom and gloom - on the positive side is the beneficial potential of the 2010 hosting, the slender thread of underlying good racial relations existing in the Free State, the good maize and other grain harvest expected this year in the province, the continuance of Sasol’s industrial outputs in Sasolburg, the upward mobility of the tourism industry in the province, last but not the least, the value of Christian faith.
Still, however, buckle up, the Free State is taking a dive!
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