LEON LOUW: We have a new mechanism to make better laws — but it is not working
WHEN President Jacob Zuma contracted a pool company to build a fire-pool at his Nkandla mansion, they arrived, pottered around for days, got paid and left. He never followed-up by checking if the pool was in the right place, if it leaked or if the filter worked. It got worse. He did not notice that water dissolved the paint or that the walls collapsed and left a ghastly crater in his garden.Something similar occurred when Bill Gates started up that celebrated company, Microsoft. He neither bothered to see if MS_DOS worked, nor did he debug errors.That was reminiscent of the Second World War. There was no "military precision" about the D-Day invasion. It was not preceded by consideration of alternatives or research into why it might succeed. There was no estimate of anticipated troop losses or the benefits of landing. Military commanders got no feedback on what happened after the troops embarked, let alone whether they reached France.None of the above is true, of course. Yet it is tr...
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