Hello hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another episode of The Daily friend show I’m your host Nicholas larma today I’m joined by Mr Michael Morris Michael how are you sir very well thank you indeed thank you I hope you very good to have you with us yeah no uh
Storm chaos aside we seem to be having this intimate and splash of rain umberg uh and there’s lots of ominous Thunder in the background really beautifully sunny here today I’m pleased to say so I do apologize I have quite a thin roof so I do apologize if the rain gets heavy
During the uh the broadcast because you probably will be able to hear it I’m also joined today by Mr Herman prores Herman how are you I I’m I’m still slightly stressed from last night’s uh I literally only got to bed at 2 this morning because I was so pumped full of
Adrenaline and angst that I cleaned the kitchen um because I I I I couldn’t go to bed or sleep so i’ I’ve been terribly domesticated my house is in a perfect state but I’m wrecked as a person emotionally yeah I mean I don’t watch a
Lot of sports but man that was that was a rugby game um last night oh I mean to have a quarterfinal where it’s the hosting Nation who’s one of the favorites against the defending Champions and one team Pips the other to the post with one point that was very exciting very
Exciting okay um we will actually get on to that rugby game I think a little bit later but first let’s talk a little bit about thec government’s complete and total obsession with Cuba uh something which I think continues to puzzle probably foreigners quite a lot um and
To be honest a lot of South Africans too so the auditor general has been looking into the details of uh the The Exchange program that the South African government runs um with the Cuban military uh project tsano where the SF does a number of things in cooperation with the Cuban military it
Sends vehicles to get repaired uh to be maintained by the Cubans I don’t know why um and also it receives various kinds of training from the Cuban government well the AIT General’s report has found that medical training for South African troops in Cuba was 136% more expensive when compared to an
Equivalent tertiary course in South Africa and that the Department of Defense could have saved 122 million Rand if the soldiers had studied locally in South Africa but that’s not all looking into the entirety of this thing there was um a over there was an irregular spend of 308 million Rand on
The project in just the last Financial year so I mean this is a question we come back to every now and again but Herman let me start with you like why is the government so obsessed with this expensive nonsense of training with Cuba Cuba is not known as the world’s you
Know it’s not like the world’s most efficient effective military you know they’re better than some the Cuban military is not completely you know without its its strengths and and competencies but it’s also not even close to the world’s best so why are we paying all this money to to cooperate
With a very far away country that doesn’t trade much with us well in in your in the first part of your question you said why does the government do this and I think the word government there is the problem uh thec sees itself as a government secondary to its Liberation
Revolutionary identity quite often and we see this perhaps most clearly in foreign policy ironically uh where thec um is living in a world that no longer exists where they are part of a global workers Revolution um where they are part of the national Democratic Revolution where this there’s this idea that there’s this
Global fraternity of liberators to whom thec belong you see it in uh their siding with Hamas against Israel you see it in the all but in name siding with Russia in the Ukrainian conflict and you see it with this bizarre and perverse and expensive relationship that the South African governments had with Cuba
For for many many years so in a weird way um foreign policy and defense policy military policy these have become these last vestiges of a romantic notion of what thec considers themselves to be this revolutionary movement that wants to get rid of capitalism as it is this hangover a of a colonial imperialist
Past and and there’s something pathetically romantically leninist about this so there is no practical reason to send vehicles or soldiers or doctors to Cuba for training absolutely none at all you can get the same training here locally or frankly from the African Union or from programs from uh the US um
All the the the the EU I mean there are other opportunities connect what’s all the what’s all the point of sucking up to China so much if we’re not going to get military medical training from them I mean that’s a bloody good point but at
The end of the day it becomes a thing that those the decisions made in this regard aren’t a decisions ultimately made for what’s bang for buck for the taxpayer what’s the best interest of the country it really becomes uh a sort of a hangover a last pathetic
Harrah um of of a revolutionary Force that’s been in government for 10 for for for 30 years and still somehow considers itself um as part of a a global socialist Brotherhood that must bring down the capitalist West I can’t explain it any other way because even if there
Might be some corruption which is quite possible I don’t know how that would work even if there is that component of bad spending and splurging and page if it goes through Cuba it’s still connected to this sort of bonami bonami of of of the the the Socialists of
Yester year it is bizarre it is odd and it’s so blatant I think is something that is quite South Africans have sort of we we’ve become numb to the wasting of millions of hundreds of millions of Rands um and and and somehow I I don’t know this something like this in in a
Country like the UK whose politics I follow quite closely would have been enough to end the career of the foreign uh of the foreign secretary or or the or the defense minister or whatever so it it’s it’s a bit we laugh because we cannot cry but we also need to realize
That this is a 100 million or well how many millions of Rands that we really really could have used elsewhere so actually while you were talking I was thinking to myself in ter terms of rans what actually is the trade that South Africa does with Cuba and
From the data I could find it’s about somewhere around just under 40 million Rand in trade per year so that means 40 million four four Z with six zeros 40 million in 202 houses worth more there in in 2022 the South African government gave a 50 million Rand
Donation of food Aid to Cuba so it is a completely artificial relation ship that is entirely propped up basically the only thing we SE to buy from Cuba is some tobacco product basically cigars um Michael what do you make of all this I mean it is sort of bizarre how and I
Think it really does show how strongly thec is controlled by its ideological view of the world that it pursues this relationship not really to any benefit to itself or or or the with the country no exactly and and it’s it’s actually it’s very hard to to improve on
Everything that that that Haram said um you know this whole thing is just presents the ANC as old-fashioned and the feat uh we’re living in a world in which it is now quite obvious that the the the only liberationist Force to speak of is is the free market uh the
Free market comes with problems of its own those we can deal with in an open and and and and liberal and Democratic Society but this idea of these you know this this kind of sentimental attachment to Fraternal relations with liberationist um the liberationist Brotherhood as as as I think her put it
Is is really just um it’s Nostalgia and it’s wasteful and it’s actually rather silly it’s either sentimental or or indeed it’s immoral it’s it can be vile as in the case with Hamas um it’s that’s we can say that quite quite clearly and just to waste all this money uh on
Propping up this this skeleton of a piece of you know now almost ancient Nostalgia for uh a socialist world that has long since faded away is really just criminal it’s just ridiculous as Herman says any other self-respecting Society uh any Minister proposing such a thing imagine Britain sending um sending
Its troops off to to Finland or to to somewhere else for 136% more expensive training than they could get at home it or in America or in you know Germany it would just be it to be completely bizarre uh so yeah a rather tragic illustration of the
Blindness in fact of our own government to the Folly that they’re engaged in yeah and of course the fact that Cuba remains a one party State sort of openly so uh one of the few left in the world you you know I think the only other kind
Of one states are places like North Korea China and I think that might be about it and Cuba um they very few left in the world and uh you know obviously that’s a horrific form of government yeah it’s just something to to just also keep in
Mind is I I do think this is in a in a weird way also the last gasp of a generational desperation that thec has um you do have people like Mand pandor ramapa these are still you know the final generation of people who might actually have participated in the
Struggle actually seen that uh Brotherhood of Liberation movements in action having received support training whatever it so so they there might still be these last vestiges of of a memory of collaboration but the next generation of thec um will really really face a bit of
A of of of a problem do they try to maintain this Nostalgia um because that would even be more silly than it is currently but I do think that this we are seeing the dying kicks of of thec as a Liberation movement and The credibility is stretched thin as it were already now
But it it it’s becoming close to a point where thec won’t even have its memories to form an Institutional identity around purely because of a generational shift all right let’s move on to our next story um and this is where we’re going to come back to the rugby game
From last night uh the sabc is looking at another bailout because it’s in this financial trouble it’s been in management trouble um things have been really bad especially since the tenure of uh cloudy MO in who infamously among other things while running the sabc um would open morning broadcasts with a
Choir of Praise singers literally praising his name um he’s gone on to start his own political party which didn’t do very well but anyway uh the sabc is asking thec and government to put forward a uh a new provision in a in a bill to reform the way that the sabc has
Funded So currently the sabc is supposed to be funded not just through the taxpayer but also primarily through TV licenses um however only about 16% of South Africans currently pay their TV licenses and the revenue they the amount that they’re actually collecting is is massively decreasing according to the
Annual report for 2023 more than 4 billion Rand was builded for TV licenses but only 775 million was actually collected by the sabc so the sabc says that what they need to do is have a household Levy where uh all devices including radios and cell phones and such will uh you’ll
Have to if you own any of those you’ll have to pay a levy to uh government now there are some legal questions as to whether this is actually possible but it makes me think about the sabc as an organization um it is still by far the most sort of widely watched
Uh I think program in the country all the sabc channels provide an enormous amount you know lots of people listen to um I think it’s AI FM the the Zulu radio network uh sabc 1 and two are some of the most watched channels in the country especially by very poor people and yet
The quality of the sabc is just it’s just not great so I actually was watching the Ry game last night on sabc 2 and it had two commentators who from my Layman’s perspective did not seem particularly knowledgeable or professional uh they were great fun but
It really wasn’t like up to a sort of great standard it was also kind of a little bit confusing because they were doing the commentary simultaneously in English afans tuana and CLA and the commentators would switch randomly between them which was very disconcerting kind of follow the plot uh
You know also getting emotionally involved in the match uh you know getting upset at the ref for making bad calls and it was more like watching with your uncle than actually watching professional sports commentates uh but on top of that then when they cut to the sort of middle segment where they you
Know do the talk in the middle of the show and I think this is Ematic of kind of the general quality ofbc programming firstly the set looked really cheap and crappy they were being sponsored by one of those kind of dodgy sports betting firms and also the entire time the
Camera just sort of drifted around the stage and there’s really disconcerting way that made one feel ill I’ve never quite seen television like it uh except on the sabc so Michael you know I I’m very critical of the sabc I I think that it’s generally been used
To kind of help prop up the the sort of propaganda narratives firstly of the national government but now also um of this government as well and also it’s just not like great quality as as I was saying and yet at the same time uh it it
Continues to be the sort of only option uh for millions and millions of people around the country you know that being said uh if you do even go to some of the poorer townships in in in the country you will see a lot of shacks with satellite dishes so I think that
Suggests that people are desperate to get away from the sabc but I don’t know what do you make of this like how do we should we have a public broadcaster how do we fix it what do you think we need to do here gosh I mean I think it’s yeah
It’s a very it’s a um certainly a very big topic there’s a phrase that you used in our chat before the show which I thought was was was excellent and I thought that you might forget to use it so I’m going to remind you of it where
You referred to the the commentary last evening in the in the was it the quarterfinal game forgive me I’m not a great rugby fer where you said it was accidentally brilliant and and that’s really the problem is that you know where there is Brilliance it’s accidental and and it’s not it’s what we
Require is a public broadcast if we again have one and maybe that’s a separate debate I think it’s probably in this country probably quite a good thing but we needed to be not accidentally brilliant it’s got to be good consistently and to do that I think it’s
Got to have a very cleared uh separation from the government from the state um there were elements actually of the old sabc that possessed exactly these things I just think of uh the whole question of of of of of Music uh I know there were well perap not really a good example
There were some singers out and bands maybe who were who were banned in kept off but there within that there were these instances of excellence and people who were really uh employed to do their job because they were really good at it they were archists and musicologists I’m thinking principally of classical music
Which is why I was uh distracted briefly there certainly in in the pop music field I think there was some bands and some s who might have been been bad because they were singing uh things that were considered subversive but it it it’s not it shouldn’t be rocket science uh it’s
Simply a question of employing the right people on Merit you have good journalists you have a clear very very clear code of conduct we are separate from the state um constant accountability very good board that holds them to that holds them to those standards um I think it is a very
Important service for people who are listening in South Africa’s vernacular languages and that’s all of them I think it’s um it’s probably one of the few places where these langu is do have a chance of um being listened to and developing and being part of everyday
Life um given the the sort of quite domineering sort of hemony of English and every other sphere but this is one place where a lot of creativity can be employed to develop the languages and and give people a sense of their language as something that is acknowledged and part of their sort of
Daily life um but it yeah if it’s going to be merely accidentally brilliant now then that’s not going to that’s not going to be sufficient um and and so coming back to the this the story that triggered this this discussion um the one thing you don’t want to do is to
Antagonize the people who you are meant to be serving and and that is just to try and compel them by whatever means to spend money that they don’t think is worth spending um so there needs to be thorough form um and perhaps at that point come to the country and say do you
Think we’re worth keeping and how would you be be prepared to um to help us do that but yeah simply trying to impose a new tax is is a non-starter I think no I think that’s exactly right you know uh as pointed out by opposition parties
This is yet would be yet another sort of cost of living expense which right now people are I think really feeling um Herman what do you make of this I mean what’s your thoughts on the sapc I uh you know I do see the value in it you
Know it’s it’s it’s going to be difficult to have a commercially viable like vendor uh you know language station until the country’s in a much better economic space um and yet you know we do have the government does have a constitutional duty to protect all all 12 official languages um I mean
Obviously they can’t they can’t on radio protect sign language but uh what do you what do you make of this yeah no I I I I think on this point I might be a bit more libertarian uh in the sense that I can’t really see what the point of the
Sac is I I I think that um it is it is a 20th century product it is a descendant of the BBC um that was part of a a network of media that needed to connect an Empire and ensure that information spread could be thorough and the government and the
State was at that point the only viable body to implement such a structure um so so it sort of and and it had its War purposes especially I think you know during the second world war the the the the the voice um of of the Empire around the world to get people
Onto the same page um maintain a spirit of of of of positivity morale Define so so I think it’s it is to my mind more museum piece than than than a a practical component I I don’t think we have to scrap it overnight but I just
Think um the I don’t see the problem to which a state run broadcaster is a solution um in many ways it is just an opportunity for patronage and graft and propaganda now I will cave at what I am saying to some extent I do think that we
Are dealing with a country of some extensive societal disintegration families of are uh you know fractured fragmented and elderly people most often suffer um and I know radio um has become a weird social protective buffer for many many older South Africans from actually across all uh uh demographics um from the middle class
All the way down uh when you’re an elderly person your eyesight is going you can’t watch television you can’t read newspapers anymore quite often the only sense you have left is hearing and then radio becomes a sort of a companion um so I don’t think it is too easy to
Just dispose of it and we have to also deal with the fact that many elderly South Africans won’t be able to if it was a fully privatized service perhaps from the get-go afford a subscription service to a private radio or something if we were to have an explosion of
Netflix’s in South Africa that said um the I can’t see why that burden of let’s call it subsidized Media or subsidized broadcast for a societal good can’t be picked up through an obligation to private companies were they to compete in the market if you were to say look we are shutting down
The sac we are auctioning off assets we are opening um the channels the airwaves for competition forbidding but part of what you must offer as a participant Market is free services a bit like mnet open time um that you could you know there was so there are
Ways of solving the problems that I think a century of broadcast media have invisibilized but we are just aware of them from a social perspective enough to know that just shutting down and not getting something Place thats for societ social socioeconomically deprived people who really are emotionally sometimes quite vulnerable
And dependent on connected to the world through these things there are more creative ways of ensuring that my problem with the sabc is it was it’s more so today now um in terms of an Avenue for corruption and patronage than propaganda because I think it is lost a
Lot of its propaganda appeal just by losing credibility where under apart the SI was of course perhaps less corruption but definitely more prop propaganda so my fear with a state broadcaster is that it opens itself up to these two abusers and but I think there is a role
For government to ensure that there’s an open market but there is something of a societal social obligation to ensure a broadcasting Access Network um to people who really can’t afford it um to fulfill that social good to ensure that there is a connectivity especially in a country
Where our society are as fragmented and fractured as they are Michael any final thoughts on this before yeah I I I go quite a bit way quite a bit of the way in in agreeing with you there Herman but I still think the state can have a role in these
Things I’m I’m not necessarily one who believes that the giving stuff to the private sector is automatically a solution uh the private sector I think has to be watched as closely as any state does because it’s prone to exactly the same abuses um but it is just a
Question of finding a sensible way of doing it and I think that’s certainly something where you could have collaboration with private players um and and and and perhaps the the very notion of you know a huge State Corporation in 2023 is is uh is is somewhat an acronis um I think the BBC
Is probably quite a good example but there I know there lots of people who CR criticize the BBC but it does you know it’s it’s got a pretty solid um institutional tradition of behaving in a certain way um it and being accountable and and and so regardless regardless of
What one thinks of its news side its entertainment side is consistently the among the world’s best what I would add to that is it was pushed in that direction quite often by competion from ITV and sky so the state I think we’re in agreement that the state can play a role but then
It comes back to the bang for buck you cannot just shift the burden of a billion rounds of failures to the poorest people in the country yeah exactly exactly and I think also um you know what uh what is what who you know who decides what’s good for people you
Know I’ve often felt this about languages that become EXT in you know it it maybe there’s there’s a kind of sadness that goes with it but you know should somebody step in and prevent that you know can we redirect history because it makes us uncomfortable perhaps not um so yeah so actually you
Know on that last point just before you move on um I I I actually agree with you but I my my sort of support reason for why the exist is that the government does as I say have a have a constitutional duty to protect those those 12 official languages um and uh
You know even though I think that we maybe shouldn’t have 12 official languages we should have like four and then a bunch of recognized minority languages or something like that but that burden could be shouldered differently it it in the long term possibly but uh right now I’m not sure about that anyway
Um we’ve gone very long on this one but uh it is an interesting disc discussion so I think Le on the sbc’s and the news we should have to come back to it very briefly let’s go into our last story for today um government employees pension fund which is Africa’s largest pool of
Retirement savings um says that it’s going to start looking at using its 2.7 trillion Rand in assets to push for transformation in the financial sector uh the chair person speaking to the media said they were seeking to level the economic playing field in South Africa because the country’s story is
Incomplete and that they want the public Investment corporation to in uh direct the funds of its 1.2 million members uh towards more transformed entities the chair B said quote we are saying it is important that we should leverage the strength and the might we have as a fund the majority of
Our members are black people government employees and pensioners let us use the size of the fund to ensure that in the companies and industries that the pic invests we should seek Investments That endorse the transformation that I’m talking about in particular the financial services sector well he did go
On to then become a lot more bellicose and saying we’re not withdrawing from working with untransformed asset managers or investing in companies that don’t Advance be be but we’re not ruling out withdrawing from these companies if they don’t uh begin working with us to transform the racial makeup of the
Economy briefly Herman your thoughts um I think what’s interesting to me is there’s there’s a trimor of nervousness running um through many of these entities you see it now here you see it with the black Business Council coming out gunning for the IR a week ago
Um there’s there’s a there is a shift coming in terms of wether race based policies like be being so vulnerable built into their DNA for corruption and patronage and abuse and cism as they are whether that is sustainable and I think we are sensing a shift in where the
Country is in that regard that’s why these things 10 years ago this wouldn’t even have been necessary to say or to for the guy to be bellicose about this it would have been accepted wisdom yes of course you should um support black entrepreneurs that’s way to go the
Problem however is is that reality has come ainting where people understand that where we free market uh uh capitalists are often accused of seeking trickle down economic uh uh uh upliftment where we say make the life of the rich easier and they will make the lives of their you know potery of surfs
Easier where that’s a parody of what the free market is where it gives the opportunity whether you are rich or poor to participate to the best extent of your judgment this is a perverse trickle down economic transformation where you can isolate a politically connected lead that share a race with many many poor
People in South Africa but because they share that race not because they are having a tough life they will be benefited and somehow by creating a billionaire here a few thousand people will benefit and suddenly be be less malnourished the trickle down socioeconomic upliftment is perverse but it’s ending that’s exactly what’s so
Crazy about this it’s saying uh here are mostly black middleclass people and we are going to take their retirement savings and use them to prop up super wealthy black asset managers I Michael any thoughts on this vo yeah exactly it’s exactly that you know the irony is when they talk about a
Transformed economy we we understand veryy well and I think as Herman says increasing numbers of South Africans do too that it’s an economy that’s growing that’s got more jobs that has greater access for people to participate and so that is that is what a transformed economy is it’s not an economy that is
Shuttled by or or hamstrung by all kinds of dictates on race and localization and whatever else it might be the government comes up with it’s a kind of economy that is a strongly free market one that is growing that is generating profits and generating income for people in
Pensions pensions fun Pension funds um which is exactly what the members of of of of of of this the gpf PF funds are seeking um so that’s what a really transformed economy is it’s and is not the one that they’re looking at or or suggesting exactly anyway we are long we
Are going over time now so I think we’re going to call it there but thank you very much guys and we hope that you find the show interesting we’ll be back tomorrow on the daad FR show Cheers everyone
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