Ajay Gupta’s lawyer also says Public Protector Thuli Madonsela did not provide a transcript of the interview with Gupta, which he was within his rights to ask for
Speaking at the Cape Town press club during the launch of her autobiography, Zille said protesting students keep ‘moving goal posts, negotiation after negotiation’
POINT OF ORDER: Is Trump an aberration or a US phenomenon?
THE release of a 10-year-old audio tape in which US presidential contender Donald Trump boasted about groping married women is probably going to be the final nail in the coffin of a grotesque political campaign that has mesmerised the world.
Frankly, it will be a relief when this gory advertisement for electoral stupidity is over in a month’s time. If Trump loses, it will constitute a minor triumph for good sense. But it will not end the debate about whether Trump is a phenomenon or an aberration.
The aberration argument runs like this: Trump entered the race on a whim with the intention of boosting his not inconsiderable ego and his business profile.
He surprised everyone, probably including himself, when he began to get traction. But the field was large and confused, the Republican Party idiotically backed a no-hoper, and the competitors at the end of the race were frankly weak. Hence, Trump might have won this particular race, but in any conventional battle, he would have been dumped early on.
The phenomenon argument runs like this: Trump might have all kinds of personal weaknesses as a candidate, but his central argument that lower-middle class Americans have been on the losing side of globalisation in the recent past is unimpeachable. In a sense, his strong appeal, despite blindingly obvious personal shortcomings, should tell us something important about the state of the US economy.
Furthermore, his attack on immigrants as "job takers", the decline of secure income for many (particularly working-class white men), his critique of trade deals and his attack on US businesses moving offshore, all form a coherent underpin, particularly if you happen to fall into the group most affected.
And this is not just an American phenomenon. The same factors were at work in the shocking outcome of the Brexit vote, all of which are themselves reflected once again in the politics of developed countries throughout the world.
In the case of the US, this "Trump is a phenomenon" argument seems, from the distance of SA, to be slightly odd. This country has endured an influx of immigrants far, far beyond anything the US has had to absorb in the past decade.
The disappearance of manufacturing jobs is a South African phenomenon too. The lack of job security is also a local problem, as evinced by union federation Cosatu’s campaigns against temporary employment.
But compared to SA, the US seems in ridiculously good economic health. Business confidence is high and corporate profits are just enormous. Economic growth has averaged about 2% since the crisis, unemployment is back down to 6%, close to the lowest it has been in the post-war period. That might not sound like much, but when the US grows by 2%, it adds $360bn to global GDP every year, roughly the same as the entire SA economy.
Car sales — that great indicator of economic performance — plummeted in the US in the wake of the financial crisis, to about 10-million a year (still an incredible number to me), but they are now back up to about 17-million, which is actually higher than they were during the booming 2002 to 2008 period.
But within these general numbers, there are interesting sub-trends that tend to bolster the "Trump is a phenomenon" argument.
Take, for example, the aforementioned car sales. Although car sales are back to normal, the number of new cars built in the US every year has been sliding drastically, from the 9-million a year that were built in the 1980s, to the 4.2-million built in the US in 2015.
And it’s not only French economist Thomas Piketty who has been pointing out the change in the structure of the economy. The average CEO in the US was paid about 100-times the wage of the average worker for decades prior to 1990. Then something changed. Now, the average US CEO gets paid about 400 times the wage of the average worker.
This increase is three times as large as the increase in corporate profits over the same period. Between 1980 and 2010, the net wealth of the bottom 80% of Americans declined from 18% of the total to 11%.
Trump will very likely lose this election. But Trumpism is here to stay, and we should all be very afraid.
THE release of a 10-year-old audio tape in which US presidential contender Donald Trump boasted about groping married women is probably going to be the final nail in the coffin of a grotesque political campaign that has mesmerised the world.
Frankly, it will be a relief when this gory advertisement for electoral stupidity is over in a month’s time. If Trump loses, it will constitute a minor triumph for good sense. But it will not end the debate about whether Trump is a phenomenon or an aberration.
The aberration argument runs like this: Trump entered the race on a whim with the intention of boosting his not inconsiderable ego and his business profile.
He surprised everyone, probably including himself, when he began to get traction. But the field was large and confused, the Republican Party idiotically backed a no-hoper, and the competitors at the end of the race were frankly weak. Hence, Trump might have won this particular race, but in any conventional battle, he would have been dumped early on.
The phenomenon argument runs like this: Trump might have all kinds of personal weaknesses as a candidate, but his central argument that lower-middle class Americans have been on the losing side of globalisation in the recent past is unimpeachable. In a sense, his strong appeal, despite blindingly obvious personal shortcomings, should tell us something important about the state of the US economy.
Furthermore, his attack on immigrants as "job takers", the decline of secure income for many (particularly working-class white men), his critique of trade deals and his attack on US businesses moving offshore, all form a coherent underpin, particularly if you happen to fall into the group most affected.
And this is not just an American phenomenon. The same factors were at work in the shocking outcome of the Brexit vote, all of which are themselves reflected once again in the politics of developed countries throughout the world.
In the case of the US, this "Trump is a phenomenon" argument seems, from the distance of SA, to be slightly odd. This country has endured an influx of immigrants far, far beyond anything the US has had to absorb in the past decade.
The disappearance of manufacturing jobs is a South African phenomenon too. The lack of job security is also a local problem, as evinced by union federation Cosatu’s campaigns against temporary employment.
But compared to SA, the US seems in ridiculously good economic health. Business confidence is high and corporate profits are just enormous. Economic growth has averaged about 2% since the crisis, unemployment is back down to 6%, close to the lowest it has been in the post-war period. That might not sound like much, but when the US grows by 2%, it adds $360bn to global GDP every year, roughly the same as the entire SA economy.
Car sales — that great indicator of economic performance — plummeted in the US in the wake of the financial crisis, to about 10-million a year (still an incredible number to me), but they are now back up to about 17-million, which is actually higher than they were during the booming 2002 to 2008 period.
But within these general numbers, there are interesting sub-trends that tend to bolster the "Trump is a phenomenon" argument.
Take, for example, the aforementioned car sales. Although car sales are back to normal, the number of new cars built in the US every year has been sliding drastically, from the 9-million a year that were built in the 1980s, to the 4.2-million built in the US in 2015.
And it’s not only French economist Thomas Piketty who has been pointing out the change in the structure of the economy. The average CEO in the US was paid about 100-times the wage of the average worker for decades prior to 1990. Then something changed. Now, the average US CEO gets paid about 400 times the wage of the average worker.
This increase is three times as large as the increase in corporate profits over the same period. Between 1980 and 2010, the net wealth of the bottom 80% of Americans declined from 18% of the total to 11%.
Trump will very likely lose this election. But Trumpism is here to stay, and we should all be very afraid.
