Camera, lights, action – hang on, I smell a tender
We need to produce something and sell it to a ready market. We cannot only sell fried chicken
Business people who have chatted to The Bowman since the start of 2017 have confirmed that there has been a drastic downturn in the local economy.
Those businesses that have suffered the most include one-man and small businesses.
There may be plenty of feet around but not many of those feet are carriers of ready cash. The number of social grants recipients in South Africa have increased exponentially over the past twenty years: from an estimated 4-million in 1994 to 16.9-million by 2015. In recent years, a growing chorus of voices has warned that the numbers are not sustainable.
We cannot only sell fried chicken and half-cooked vinegar-infused, pale chips.
Among them is President Jacob Zuma who said four years ago that government “cannot sustain a situation where social grants are growing all the time and think it can be a permanent feature”. Despite this, social spending has not decreased. This has seen beneficiaries, locally, ‘swiping’ their SASSA card (not one issued by the Glencoe office…) at bottle stores over the festive season which is surely an insult to every taxpayer in the country. How shopkeepers can allow this is, is baffling to say the least.
So how we can boost our ailing economy? We need to produce something and sell it to a ready market. We cannot only sell fried chicken and half-cooked vinegar-infused, pale chips. The easiest thing to do is to scrap all these fancy business incentive ideas and simply turn the whole place into a giant film studio. Some years ago, outside artists, Neil and Vaughn, thought the abandoned and very overgrown municipal swimming pool on Union Street was the ideal movie set. Well, let’s go a step further and turn everything into a set.
All we need now is funding from the Guptas…
The Kremlin will be head office, of course, and we can give one of those many offices to Steven Spielberg. Charlize Theron will probably demand the fanciest office so we will stick her in the Umzinyathi building overlooking the whole bang shoot.
So what movies could we make? Fast and the Furious in recognition of the drag racers who operate in fits and starts.
Pet Cemetery to highlight and expose those fiendish dog poisoning robberies.
Gunfight at the OK Correll – the Pick and Win Supermarket Sunday shoot-out, Pale Rider – an autobiographical bit on Dundee’s love for bicycles and horses, The Shawshank Redemption – a look at the famous Dundee prison breaks over the past few years, Towering Inferno – this time the focus on the Glencoe Prison.
An Inconvenient Truth – a doccie on all the litter in Coronation Park that is shutting down the environment and raising tempers.
Gone in 60 Seconds – kind of a whole encompassing move about never ending theft. And then there will be a heavily age-restricted movie on the Nquthu teacher currently in custody – the name of the movie has also been banned but it does feature the word ‘shades’. The Bold and the Beautiful will just go on and on and that will be filmed mainly, entirely on location in the Kremlin. However, we also do an insert there on Star Wars too. All we need now is funding from the Guptas…
