Iām Alec Hogg and hereās the Rational Perspective for Monday, the 2nd of March, where we are actually sitting in Cape Town. Well, some people have to have this kind of life, donāt they?Ā It was interesting to see this morning that President Jacob Zuma is back at his support of the sometimes indefensible that is offered to him by those people close to him.
Weāll get into that in a moment, but over the weekend, a very worrying fact came out of Moscow, where Boris Nemtsov, the strongest political opponent to an embattled Vladimir Putin ā the president there ā was assassinated in broad daylight. He was shot four times in the back, by drive-by shooters. Yesterday, 21,000 people turned out to express their disapproval of this. Of course, the likely result is that people are going to blame Putin, who has Russia in his grip as though he had it in an iron glove.
This incident got me thinking about our (South Africaās) relationship with Russia and the fact that President Jacob Zuma has a loyalty that sometimes stretches beyond the factual developments. Heās very close to Vladimir Putin. He likes the man ā clearly. The two of them come from a similar background in the intelligence agencies and that loyalty was again reflected in a response to criticism that Jacob Zuma made in the State of the Nation Address when he said, āonly three percent of JSE-listed companies are held in black handsā. Clearly, that isnāt the case. The reality is that itās 23 percent, which is held through various institutions that the JSE itself has been able to track down.
Whatās more disturbing about this is that the President is listening to people who are telling him things that clearly are not accurate. If you say three percent is held by blacks, then people think that 97 must be held by whites. Consequently, you get all kinds of racially charged issues that really donāt need to be raised. My view on these things is quite simple. When Iām in a hole, I stop digging. This is Alec Hogg with the Rational Perspective.
