Dear Editor
When a government is grey listed by the International Financial Action Task Force (FATF) it should serve as a wake-up call. But it made no impression on the ANC.
Instead, government is misleading itself and the people about the detrimental impact of the country’s grey list status.
The FATF keeps watch over international money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Government was repeatedly warned that it will end up on the grey list and that action should be taken to avoid it. These warnings were ignored.
Improvement was mainly needed in two areas; the first was making relevant legislative amendments. This was postponed until it was too late, even though questions were frequently asked about the delays in addressing the matter in the relevant parliamentary Portfolio Committee.
On top of that, thoughtless legislative amendments were proposed without fully considering the implications thereof.
This delayed the process to such an extent that even members of the ANC were unhappy about the way in which the National Treasury and other departments handled the matter.
Grey list status essentially means that the government no longer instils any confidence, no matter how much government tries to deny it.
The fact that more persons were recently implicated in terrorist activities and money laundering in South Africa proves that the right mechanisms needed to combat it are not in place.
While the National Treasury and others are working hard to get the country off the grey list, President Cyril Ramaphosa created even more confusion with his initial erroneous announcement that South Africa would withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The implications would have been far-reaching. Essentially, South Africa could have become some kind of sanctuary for criminals and terrorists as extraditing them would not have been possible.
To make matters even worse, the President himself is personally linked to undeclared foreign currency found hidden under a mattress in his home. So, it should come as no surprise that South Africa has landed on the grey list.
The only way to get off the grey list, restore investor confidence, and get the economy back on track is to get rid of the ANC government.
Regards
Wouter Wessels
FF Plus MP
Nessie
Fun South African Fact: Travel to Tsitsikamma, on the border of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape to visit the world’s highest commercial bungee jump! Those who are brave enough can take the 216-meter jump off the Bloukrans Bridge and soar through the air towards the Bloukrans River below. Definitely a must for thrill-seekers and adrenaline-junkies!
Devil Chick
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.