Davos 2023: Hot air in cold climate

It’s a good thing that Cyril Ramaphosa cancelled his trip to the tête à têtes at Davos because of a growing national emergency beginning to be expressed in burning tyres, marches and worker intimidation. 

For what would the president have achieved at this year’s World Economic Forum bash, which perhaps more than any other year looks like the kaffeeklatsch that it really is as the world’s smug pomposities snuggle up on couches for a bit of gossip while pretending to solve the planet’s considerable problems?

As if the world needs more hot air after these monstrous egos have already pumped hundreds of tons of unwanted carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just by getting to the Swiss mountain town.

Would that finance minister Enoch Godongwana had followed his employer’s lead and stayed home, if only to root around in the vaults for cash to pay Eskom’s diesel bill.

But while he’s there maybe the minister could take a ride on the Rhätische Bahn, whose trains ply a fabled mountain railway while showing what a well-run, profitable railway really looks like, especially if you spend money on looking after it.

So to Parys, Kroonstad and eastern Johannesburg where protesters who remain without water, lights, work and hope have taken to the streets, keeping businesses closed and schoolchildren at home. 

They may only hope that whatever crisis talks Ramaphosa is having with his ministers are not as empty as those going on in the hotel lobbies of Davos.

Michela Wrong, the veteran journalist whose excellent books lay bare the various misrules of Kenya, Eritrea, Rwanda and the former Zaire, once told me that South Africa was the most unequal society she had ever seen.

“That’s where your revolution will come from,” she said.

So, listen up then, because Parys is burning.