Tarting up Joburg for Brics is like putting lipstick on a pig

In Potemkin style, SA is tarting up routes to be used by Brics “dignitaries” swanning around our broken land.

In Johannesburg, officials are unusually active as the city prepares to host leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and China from 22-24 August. Roads are being cleaned up to create the impression the country’s financial hub is in good shape.

Given the dire state of the city’s infrastructure, and the filth that overruns parks and pavements, window-dressing is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. Missing from the guest list is Russian President Vlad The Invader Putin, a fan of 18th-century Russian Empress Catherine.

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Grigory Potemkin, Catherine’s lover, was famed for building a fake portable village to impress her on her journeys. Potemkin sought to sustain an illusion that things were going well in Catherine’s empire, just as today’s lackeys seek to mask the state of Joburg.

Cash-strapped Joburg residents, battered by rates and tariff increases, have reason to wonder where the money comes from to fix so many blemishes.

Councillors who struggle for years to get dangerous potholes and excavations repaired, note the sudden spurt of activity. It’s as though a long-dormant conveyor belt has been switched on.

Why can’t all of Joburg be clean and functional all the time? City departments repeat the mantra that they don’t have enough budget to do their jobs properly. So much has been stolen in myriad ways, or simply diverted after being allocated.

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Consider, for example, Conrad Drive bridge between Craighall Park and Blairgowrie. Widening this bridge would help solve one of the major traffic congestion problems in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs.

The project has appeared on the city’s budget repeatedly for 13 years, but there’s many a slip between budget line items and construction. Millions allocated to the Conrad Drive bridge project have been shifted elsewhere by successive administrations.

We’ll probably never know how much is being spent on the Brics junket at inflated tender prices, including the preparations and aftermath, but it would likely cover the costs of several projects such as the Conrad bridge.

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Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher said: “The state has no source of money other than the money people earn themselves”.

With this in mind, we taxpayers and ratepayers are being fleeced to host much wealthier nations in a show which will have no tangible benefit for us. In fact, the inevitable anti-Western rhetoric will be detrimental to our currency and our economy generally.

SA’s ambassador to the bloc, Anil Sooklal, told Moneyweb: “There’s an unfortunate narrative being developed that Brics is anti-West.”

Fake news. So, too, is Sooklal’s assertion that Brics seeks “to advance the agenda of the Global South”. In fact the three biggest players in Brics – China, India and Russia – are in the northern hemisphere. So, too, is mooted new member Iran.

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While China is practising colonialism of a special kind all over Africa, Russia’s malign influence in the coup-ridden Sahel region in the north of the continent belies flowery Brics rhetoric. Economically, SA is a tiny player being used by giants in pursuit of their own interests, not ours.

We shouldn’t have to pay for this jamboree.