EDITOR – At a time of increasing evidence that expenditure levels by the ANC-ruled eThekwini municipality are not sustainable (see Daily News, June 10), it simply beggars belief that mayor Nxumalo wants to spend R2,850,000 on a youth business summit as part of a Youth Day commemoration.
This sum is on top of R2,460,000 for marquees, refreshments, promotional material, sound system, entertainment and so on. In all, the mayor’s proposed youth benefit scheme exceeds R7 million. Yet R2 million of that is purely to hire a venue and to host a conference and a dinner. This is absolutely preposterous.
While not against measures to promote the wellbeing of this country’s youth, the first lesson they need to learn from mayor Nxumalo is that profligate spending is the path to poverty and penury.
Predictably, opposition to this obscene extravagance at the June meeting of the Economic Development Committee was met with the retort the parents of African children were marginalised by apartheid and therefore denied such vocational opportunities.
More than two decades after apartheid ended, such rhetoric is unworthy of comment. Nonetheless, it accurately reflects
Margaret Thatcher’s definition of socialism: A system that works only until it runs out of other people’s money.
eThekwini’s appointment with a cash-strapped destiny is assuredly being hastened by the profligate spending practices of mayor Nxumalo and his cohorts. Watch this space.
COUNCILLOR DUNCAN DU BOIS
Economic Development Committee
Ward 66 – Bluff
