From today, I will spend more than R1000 on a full tank of petrol for my car for the first time in almost two decades as a driver.
The rough calculation on my 60-litre fuel tank, for which I paid just over R900 before last night’s latest increase, shows I will pay R1020 a tank. That’s an extra R1 a litre - R60 more a tank than last month.
I have joined millions of others in accepting that from here things are going to go downhill very fast and that I must buckle up for the rough ride.
The new dawn is turning out to be a nightmare for us all. Except for the politicians, of course.
We were warned we must tighten our belts, but I didn’t think things would get so bad so soon. I have now heeded the call. First to go was alcohol, a waste of money, followed by eating out and entertainment.
Don’t believe Cyril Ramaphosa and his deputy, DD Mabuza, when they deny we are in a recession. This recession is real. I see it in my cup of green tea and I feel it in my empty pocket.
Then I wake up and read that Ramaphosa and Mabuza’s official residences in Pretoria will be renovated for a whopping R8million of taxpayers’ money - in the middle of a recession.
I am defeated.
The configuration of the government and the cut in spending will, hopefully, happen in our lifetime. My hunch is that Ramaphosa has realised that this will result in him losing power in the ANC. Political patronage runs deep and any attempts to dislodge people from the feeding trough will make him so unpopular he will be out of the Union Buildings before you can even say “VhoMatamela!”
South Africa’s slide into an economic crisis, which until recently we thought was reserved for other African states run by corrupt dictatorships, seems unstoppable. Job losses are the order of the day, the cost of living increases daily in the backdrop of soaring food and petrol prices and other economic ills nobody in the government seems to have a cure for.
Cosatu says workers spend 15% of their salaries on transport while the salaries are shrinking.
Government will, typically, blame fuel increases on the rand depreciating against the dollar, but the truth is, politics plays a significant role.
For a long time, the country has been on a slippery slope because the politicians were too busy looting or aiding the theft to notice. Corruption has sunk its fangs deeper into the economy so that it will take more than just political change to pull it out.
The cancer has spread. The already overburdened consumer, taxed to the bone, will be forced to drop things such as insurance, medical aid, data and other essentials.
Life has become an extreme sport. I would buckle up if I were you.