If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. But that’s not how SA operates. No, we prefer to import a bigger, shinier, state-funded excavator and keep going until we hit the water table. 

Cue trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau, enthusiastically waving around the R100bn Transformation Fund as if it were a winning Lotto ticket. Except, of course, the only winners will be the well-connected cadres who know exactly where these empowerment schemes are headed. It’s a fantasy playing to the ANC’s rapidly shrinking black middle-class voter base. The rest of us? We’re just here to foot the bill. ..

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