Smoke signals. A letter to Julius

Private and Corporate Utilities : Newsletter 54, by David Lipschitz BSc (Honours) MBA - A consultant working at the intersection of energy and business.

Dear Julius and our fellow South Africans

In Australian news …?

https://www-news-com-au.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/widespread-violence-south-africa-braces-for-day-of-chaos-as-marxist-party-demands-national-shutdown/news-story/1f24a7bdf26c27186144d57409b0b100?amp

I learned that “the rich are at the top and the poor are at the bottom” and that this power base is “inverted”! This simple statement summarizes Communism.?

Great. Now we know why the South African Slide is happening. In the Communist world It is better for everyone to be poor together than for the rich to employ people and to help those who want to help themselves rise out of poverty.?

What they don’t say is that the Communist elite are far richer than the Capitalist elite because of two reasons: 1: in Communism, a very small oligopoly owns and runs the country; 2: everyone earns the same low wage, which causes the oligopolists to become oligarchs.?

In Capitalism, millions of people are owners and shareholders. In Communism, the people, or the State, owns everything, and “the people” are represented by the oligopolists.?

Marx and Engels must be turning in their graves! It has proven impossible for a small group of intellectuals to properly represent “the masses” without taking unnecessary rents for themselves, and without murdering the “rich” people who create jobs and wealth for billions.?

Lenin and Stalin killed millions of farmers in the countryside as it was felt that this is where revolution would come from. Farms were seized. Farmers and their families murdered. Assets plundered. Farms given to “the poor” and then an unexpected thing happened. Famine!?

The Great Communist experiment had its first major failure. It ran out of food.?

Does any of this sound familiar?

Communism in Russia and China has changed to allow Capitalism, which is tolerated until the Capitalist becomes so big and powerful that he threatens The State and The Elite, and then the Capitalist’s empire is Nationalized and we’ve seen this in China.?

The problem in South Africa is that our current leaders studied Communism in Russia in the 1970’s and these leaders are implementing original Communism, not new Communism. By the way I don’t like the new or the old Communism.?

I want everyone to benefit from wealth generation and hard men like Andrew Carnegie and Cecil John Rhodes became philanthropists who did incredible things with their money - for “the people”. When last did you hear of Cyril Ramaphosa or Patrice Motsepe endowing a university or opening a park or helping millions of people to get an internationally recognized degree?

These oligarchs have access to the public purse and to masses of?debt as they consistently spend 20% more than they earn, and put the country’s natural resources into the hands of the exact “foreign oppressors and colonists” who they hate so much.?

The EFF and ANC and unbelievably the DA and most of the old South African political parties have leaders who are leaders for life and who make decisions on behalf of their cabinet, and people. The party must tow the line. Debate is canceled.?

In a private business there is an ongoing battle between sales and production, whether its a factory or a service business. This healthy battle involves compromise, mutual respect, a desire to improve the client’s condition, sacrifice, kindness, generosity, knowing one’s corner, not giving in too easily, but giving the other side the power of veto, which is seldom used as both sides seek so constantly improve their own condition. People who have been married for decades understand this and hopefully you do too.?

South African politicians want to own their parties and they want to own the means of production.?

The DA controls the Western Cape. It says that it’s doing everything it can to relieve load shedding. But it is doing it in a way that it will own the sales organization. It says that the Western Cape will have 500 MW of new embedded Generation by 2025. A noble goal?

The Western Cape needs 5 GW today! The City of Cape Town’s responsibility in each stage of load shedding is 100 MW.?

The DA could easily allow 100 MW a week to be added to the grid meaning that Cape Town will not experience load shedding come May and winter.

800 MW of SSEG generation will save Capetonians from Stage 8 load shedding but will not save them from a blackout. To be saved from a blackout the government of the Western Cape must incentivize (not with money but simply by taking a back seat) 200 MW a week and it must allow the new gas pipelines from Kudu and Venus to be built and new Modular Gas Power Stations to be built and to be Embedded in the grid.?

If Cape Town and the Western Cape achieve this, then the amount of money that they make from electricity sales will pale in significance as compared with the amount of money made from rates, and from a new airport that will be built near Atlantis, and from new transport corridor, and from the seaboard of the Cape Flats becoming like the Gold Coast in Australia and if done properly, the 4 million people on the Cape Flats who occupy this land, will rise out of poverty.?

Communism and centralized thinking and decision making for the masses and “the people” and “our people” has never worked.?

It leads to hunger, starvation and famine. And when famine happens, just as in the Egyptian 7 year famine in The Old Testament, it leads everyone to be hungry, rich and poor, and whether the pyramid is the right way up, or “inverted” doesn’t matter as the oligarchs consolidate their power and wealth as desperate people sell their assets, then the family jewels and finally their souls, to stay alive.?

And history has proven that once someone owns you, you become their slave and they become totalitarians.?

The rich are at the top for a reason. If that reason is because of aristocracy and nepotism then this must be carefully considered to see if it is appropriate. If the rich are at the top because they have employed thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, who have the possibility of becoming rich themselves, and at the same time putting back and cleaning up their environment, then well and good.?

I still live in (South) Africa. I am a white male African, currently at the bottom of the food chain, blamed for the mistakes and mismanagement by my parents and their parents. But I am not my parents.?

I live in South Africa because of its beauty, its wide open spaces, and its people, who are tenacious and beautiful, kind and generous, caring and compassionate, unless worked into a fury that a mob becomes with an energy of its own as it destroys everything within reach.?

And there is a major difference in South Africa and the world that the big old political parties haven’t grasped yet. For the first time in history “the people” can and do own the means of production.?

What is that means of production? Is it money, wealth, cash? No, it’s making the choice to build a power station instead of buy a newer car or computer or cell phone. It’s delaying a holiday for 3.5 years whilst you work 12 months a year building your own electrical and water systems.?

And I know that the poor are saying that the rich have private generation, but this private generation is giving them jobs as Eskom can then focus on the business customers who employ millions of our people.?

The EFF burning tyres on Black Monday, the 20th of March, 2023, will do nothing for the people of South Africa, except give them a “fix” as their adrenaline and endorphins spiral out of control and they get that invincible feeling that a warrior infantry “private” person feels as they rush into battle, myopically forgetting tomorrow and their families back home. Some wars are “necessary”. Most aren’t. They make a few oligarchs immensely wealthy at the expense of the people fighting for their property.?

The EFF will be sending the wrong smoke signals. They will be sending these signals to the very people who employ them telling them to get out of their country because they know how to employ themselves. We have already seen this in collapsed State Owned Enterprises and now these Communists will seek to collapse the private economy, the last stage of boiling the frog, as South Africa becomes a fully fledged Communist Single Party Undemocratic, state, in the style of the 1920s Russia and China, not the 2020s Russia and China.?

Like I said, Marx and Engels were 100 years too early. Back then the means of production was owned by those who owned the coal mines, oil fields, and railroads.?

Today, in 2023, the poor are starting to own the means of production by owning SSEG power stations, water supply, and food supply.?

If Mr Malema, “An Inconvenient Youth”, wants to fix South Africa and win the 2024 election with a simple majority, he must mobilize his people to fight unjust laws that supports a centrist system that congeals power into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs.?

He must mobilize his people to demand that the playing fields are leveled so that the poor have the same access as the rich. He must demand that service fees for Time of Use Tariffs are removed. He must demand that his people have the same rights as business, able to invest in infrastructure before (personal) tax and before VAT.?

South Africans of all colors, nationalities, religions, and all people who choose to live in Africa must be treated as equals as African and as Africans. We are Africa, together.?

Let’s show the world that this is the place to live, to enjoy our planet and to die in ripe old age surrounded by family and friends and strangers in a spirit of peace, love, generosity, and Ubuntu.?

Amandla, Awethu, is finally achievable for the masses of Africans.?

Let’s make it happen. Together.?