TOM EATON: You know, that budget thing that Pravin does with all the numbers?
'Gordhan could recite the collected lyrics of Adele and we'd think something fiscally significant had just happened'
WHEN parliament gathers tomorrow, and the Speaker invites the minister of finance to address the House, and Brian Molefe stands up, and Jacob Zuma hisses, “Not yet, Brian!” and Pravin Gordhan politely clears his throat, South Africans won't understand a word that comes out of his mouth. That's because we are astonishingly bad at maths. Every year the educational surveys confirm it: if a deity told us to go forth and multiply, we'd go fourth and divide. Perhaps that's inevitable in a place where so little adds up. Consider a South African story sum: “If a train leaves Johannesburg at noon on Tuesday and travels at 100km/h, what time will it arrive in Cape Town, 1400km away?” This question is, obviously, impossible to answer. For starters, did the train stop outside Kimberley for four hours or only two hours because of cable theft? And when you say “arrive in Cape Town”, does that mean it arrived intact and under its own power or does it still count if half the train grinds to a halt ...
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