By Alec Hogg
A double dose of hope this morning – sparked by developments in embattled Joburg and highly prospective Namibia.
At a meeting on Thursday, the DA will motivate for the Joburg Metro council to dissolve itself soonest, and hold by-elections in all of the city’s 130 wards. In effect, re-run the November 2021 local government election. The DA is betting Joburgers will now elect a stable government, having learnt hard lessons from the political chaos of the past two years.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___The Namibian story is equally exciting. As you’ll read in the story from the Financial Times, SA’s sparsely populated north-western neighbour is poised to become the world’s next petrostate. France’s Total, for instance, is now spending half its global exploration budget in the country.
Long-term implications for SA of the Namibian oil and gas discoveries are staggering. As James Lorimer, the DA’s shadow minister of mineral resources told the BizNews 10th birthday conference this month, the Namibian geology continues right along SA’s west coast until beyond Cape Town.
Lorimer likens SA’s oil and gas as a natural bonanza akin to Kimberley’s Diamond Rush of the early 1870s and the Witwatersrand Gold Rush a decade and a half later. All that’s needed to unlock massive wealth for the nation, is clean governance and professional bureaucracy. Something coming soon to Joburg – and, post the 2024 Election, to SA as a whole.
Sterkte
Alec
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