Alec Hogg: As I witnessed in Caledon yesterday, SA has many unsung heroes hiding in plain sight

Key topics:Caledon’s overcrowded Home Affairs offers high-quality service despite chaos.“Mammie” and team feed 150–200 hungry people daily, showing local kindness.SA’s economic failures and political blunders deepen poverty and public despair..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Alec Hogg.Our district’s main Home Affairs office is in Caledon, a scruffy little town built in the Victorian era around its famous natural hot springs. My visit to Home Affairs was similar to the last time I went a year ago: overcrowding worsened by chaotic processes, but redeemed by surprisingly high-quality service at the business end.Home Affairs is located in Haw Street, named after mid-1800s local public servant Charles R. Haw, best known for laying out and naming a fishing village near Hermanus—‘Haw’s Town’, now known as Hawston. Little else is known about Mr Haw.Similarly anonymous outside of Caledon is a middle-aged lady known as “Mammie”. who is as close to a modern-day angel as you’re likely to find.I came across this remarkable woman after observing a scene pictured above on the corner of Haw Street. Hundreds of people quietly queued for a sandwich, coffee, and some hot food handed out by two women. They pointed me at the door to a small shop where a smiling face greeted me from behind a counter.Monday to Friday, she told me, the three of them feed between 150 and 200 people; her daughter cooks, and she manages the logistics. They’ve been doing this for several years, and the numbers keep growing. “We’re doing God’s work,” she explained. As angels do.Scenes like this motivate rational thinkers to keep shining lights on the insanity visited upon our nation by those who govern us. Because in the same way that a fish rots from the head, a country flourishes or suffers in direct proportion to the wisdom of its lawmakers. And we’ve got some doozies. For more than a decade, Pretoria’s economic ignorance has made South Africans progressively poorer. And still they persist—doubling down on destructive policies through collective dimness, cheered on by puppet masters and useful idiots. If you thought education was expensive, try ignorance.The quietly desperate Haw Street queue reminded me of the consequences of derangement — a malady among elites cocooned from the real world. It’s an affliction known to every French schoolkid courtesy of the notorious Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake” line. Pity that part of European history isn’t as well known here..Read more:.RW Johnson: Exhuming lost heroes for electoral gain.Then again, perhaps home grown examples will one day dominate schoolroom discussions. There’s already lots of material. A little digging into annual reports illustrates how ridiculous things have become.Mcebisi Jonas, the central character in SA’s blundering over Trump tariffs - ie the ‘special envoy’ who isn’t - hardly needs the gig he anyway is unable to do.Deep into the fine print in MTN’s 2024 annual report, we see the former ANC politician put his connections to good use. The non-executive chairman of the multinational telecoms group enjoyed a 28% increase last year, raking in R7.3 million for his services.Apart from a retainer of over R300 000 a month and R200,000 per board meeting, Jonas earned more than R1 million for attending the group’s strategy session—up from the R694,000 he was paid for showing up the previous year.The ANC is accusing DA MP Emma Powell of a “harassment campaign” against the non-performing envoy - accusing her of being “part of a cabal that has actively lobbied for Comrade Jonas to be replaced by a white businessman.” The mind boggles.“Comrade” Jonas, Emma Powell, man of the moment Lt. Gen. Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi and, of course, SA’s hapless president feature in yesterday’s quite brilliant Politicsweb piece by SA’s longest-serving political columnist, William Saunderson-Meyer. I spoke to WSM yesterday.There’s plenty more to read, too, with RW Johnson’s excellent assessment of what is motivating Donald Trump’s attack on another Powell, this time the Fed chairman Jay.

Alec Hogg: As I witnessed in Caledon yesterday, SA has many unsung heroes hiding in plain sight

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