Last week, President Jacob Zuma fell asleep one hour and 14 minutes into Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s mid-term budget speech.
I don’t know about you, but if I fall asleep at work I will surely lose my job, or at least get a written warning.
The budget speech is of vital significance as it monitors the progress of the country’s financial agenda as set out in the annual budget speech in February each year.
It is essentially a look at government’s action plan to ensure financial growth and curb expenditures.
With a credit rating downgrade looming, the minister addressed crucial topics such as managing the drought-stricken agricultural sector, higher education funding, youth unemployment, infrastructure investment, electricity tariffs, and small business growth – all while the nation’s leader was catching some zzz’s.
Never mind that the speech was delivered in the midst of chaos as the police were clashing with #FeesMustFall students protesting right outside the doors of the parliament building.
I suppose it is entirely possible that Zuma was simply scratching his ear on his shoulder, or perhaps he was sending a WhatsApp message or spending some time scrolling Facebook.
Truly a father of a nation, words such as ‘estimated’ and ‘at least’ are often thrown around when referring to the president’s alleged 22 children so it is entirely possible that he was simply exhausted from entertaining his family responsibilities.
Either way, it looks bad.
It comes across as lackadaisical.
It seems like he shows no interest in the financial well-being of the country he was elected to govern responsibly.
According to the South African Labour Guide, sleeping on duty is considered serious misconduct.
Your first offence will earn you a first or final written warning, which means that your second transgression will lead to a final warning or could even result in dismissal with notice.
The third transgression means you are out the door and now one of millions of unemployed citizens in our country.
It is completely and utterly unfair that the man holding the highest government position in the country, can get away with serious misconduct while the rest of us would never be let off the hook for it.
One could argue that because of the magnitude of his position that he should be held to even higher employment standards than the rest of us.
The worst part is that this isn’t the first time that it’s happened, and we’re also not taking any other misconduct into account here, like say, spending R215-million of taxpayers’ money on his Nkandla home.
Fair is fair mister president.
You should be leading by example.
