The first time I ever saw a motorcade was in Harare in the nineties. That geriatric retard Mugabe (it is illegal to insult this moron in Zimbabwe – but not here, so I'm making the most of it) was apparently on his way from his residence to the ZANU-PF headquarters. This was a very extreme motorcade, two bakkies with armed soldiers, three limos a number of motorcycles. The cops pushed everyone out of the road and this failed terrorist went by. At least we don't have those here in SA. But we do have blue-light brigands who hog the fast lane on the highway going at speeds that my old Jeep could only ever wish to achieve down a mineshaft. On the way to Bela-Bela last week I saw a 6.5litre Mercedes and two huge BMWs travelling somewhere, with lights ablaze.
Where is this story going then? Well, cars like those are quite partial to fuel and their appetite becomes more voracious when they operate at high speeds. Not that fuel is ever a problem for these arrogant ANC (or ANC-aligned) incompetents. But perhaps it might become so. This headline caught my eye this morning.
THE Department of Energy is considering ways of speeding up black economic empowerment in the petroleum sector, especially downstream, or retail, as it is still largely untransformed, it emerged during an energy portfolio committee meeting on Wednesday.
They are playing a little coy at the moment but are "proposing a charter for the sector, to use licensing to effect transformation, audit transformation in the retail sector and enforce laws." Why, it's because "78% of petroleum products are sold by retailers that are white-owned and 22% by those that are Indian."
Among the challenges preventing black entrants to the sector include the lack of capacity to negotiate and manage contracts, that business education is not included in franchise negotiations, financial constraints such as high guarantees are required and the margins for retailers are low.
So the Department of Energy is contemplating allocating licences on the basis of blackness. You'll notice that this report seems to lump Indians with the poor old whites. Therefore, black can only mean African. And so the degrees of blackness become more entrenched.
But that's not really the issue here, the issue is that the granting of licences on the basis of race (read African) could limit the number of potential retailers. Which means that there will fewer petrol pumps available and people will not be able to travel. This will have to have an impact on the blue lighters who will also have to queue for hours to get petrol. Perhaps this argument is a little extreme but we've seen with mining licences that current licence holders are continuously under threat to have those licences revoked. Who says that they might make African-ness a requirement to current licence holders.
If there is an argument that empowerment has failed, such a policy would add fuel to the fire (oops that is a pun isn't it).