S.Africa: The ANC’s suit-on-the-chair trick

(:E-:N-:R-AZ:C-30:V)   

When I started work at a stockbroker’s office in the City of London in 1973 there was a strict dress code. Although a lowly clerk in the general settlements office and later promoted to a clerical position in the coveted private clients department, where at least the partners in the company remembered our names, we were expected to be properly dressed at all times. None of this jeans and sneakers nonsense that goes on today.

So, with my father’s financial help, I went off to Austin Reed in Cheapside to look for an off the peg suit. They were very nice but rather more geared to a market twenty years my senior. So I found a shop called Cecil Gee and eventually bought a person two piece suit with a faint window pane design on it. Far more my generation I thought. I bought it with the money my father had donated and wore it to work. It didn’t go down well with the bosses who thought it made me look like a mafia character. The Godfather had just been released and the cut of my new suit together with the slimness of the trousers suggested that I would have been a perfect hitman for the Corleone family.

Realising that a poor choice of clothing could be far more influential in any future career I may have in the City of London’s financial markets than any raw talent I had for the job I went off to Hector Powe and bought a far more sober blue two piece suit with a discreet pinstripe. It worked wonders.

Within months I was ‘promoted’ to the coveted position of a blue button on the floor of the London Stock Exchange. It was still a clerical role but I wasn’t desk bound and under the watch of a beady eyed partner. Plus I could slip out of one of the exits from the building and drop into Slaters Bar in Throgmorton Street for a midday beer without anyone noticing.

When I left the stockbroking company and joined what was called a discount house (not cheap fridges but the intermediary between the Bank of England and the entire banking system) the sober suit worked well. I also decided to buy collarless shirts from a shop called A J Neale near Liverpool Street station and wear detachable paper collars.

This was hugely pretentious of me but it did mean one could wear a vividly striped blue shirt with a neat cutaway collar which made the tie knot sit more prominently. Since this was the accepted dress code for all the senior honchos in the City at the time I couldn’t really see the point of dressing down if I wanted to advance my career.

Besides, the paper collar came in handy if I met an attractive young woman in The Jamaica Wine bar. All I needed to do was to flamboyantly tear off part of my paper collar and ask for her phone number.

Because I was well dressed with a detachable collar on my shirt and well shined Oxford brogues the company I worked for thought I might make a good trader and put me on the ‘new business desk’.

This was almost unheard of for somebody my age because back then I had no self doubt and would cold call public companies saying I would like to meet with the finance director and discuss a potential relationship. This worked remarkably well which saw me being head hunted to another company with a decent salary increase to do the same for them.

It was when I was at that company that I discovered the use of ‘suit trickery’. A colleague of mine had his suits made at a place called Huntsman in Savile Row. When having a suit made it was quite common to order two pairs of trousers because as an office worker they were unlikely to last as long as the jacket which spent a lot of the time draped over the back of an office chair.

My colleague had a far better idea; he ordered an extra jacket. When I asked him the reason he looked at me as though I was a backward child. “My dear chap”, he said “if you have a jacket draped over the back of your office chair everybody assumes you must still be around the building… it’s the perfect cover for a quick mid-morning snifter”.

President Frogboiler’s ludicrous National Dialogue suggestion is the ANC equivalent of hanging a suit jacket over the back of your office chair. It’s all about making us think that the ANC is still in the building and attending to business. Meanwhile they’re out looking for more run businesses to destroy and plotting how to milk yet more cash out of the economy to enrich the relatively few favoured cadres.

Every day brings fresh news of ANC corruption on a biblically epic scale. As Prof William Gumede of the Wits School of Governance stated, under BBBEE conservatively around R1 trillion has been moved between under 100 well connected people since 1994 thus locking millions more citizens out of opportunity and condemning them to an endless cycle of poverty and despair.

Whenever SARS eventually nails one of the crooks the amounts mentioned are in the tens of millions and amongst the assets seized by the Asset Forfeiture Unit are the obligatory collection of luxury cars such as Bentleys, Maybachs, Porsches, Ferraris and the ever popular Mercedes G Wagon (an essential fashion accessory for any self respecting crook).

The luxury car dealers selling to people they suspect must be crooks are quite literally laughing all the way to the bank. Quite why those who knowingly sell luxury goods to people they must know have come by the means to pay dishonestly aren’t regarded as accessories to a crime boggles the mind.

Can things get any better? Highly unlikely since Frogboiler seems to have no problem with corruption within the ranks. Even the deputy-president (and possible President in waiting) is tainted and that’s according to investigative reporting by a source that is often considered to be protective of the ANC.

For a National Dialogue to work it would mean that both sides need to listen….that is how a dialogue works. Since Frogboiler’s favourite phrase when signing off on unpopular legislation is “whether you like it or not” that doesn’t sound too promising.

There has been plenty of advice from the private sector, political opposition and academia over the past few years as the wheels have really started to come off and it has all been dismissed as ‘opposition to transformation’.

Perfectly sensible advice on how to get the economy going and create desperately needed jobs is dismissed as ‘people hankering after the days of apartheid’ or ‘ANC critics being violently against transformation’.

Last weekend City Press carried the story that Inkwazi, the presidential jet, is a ‘ticking time bomb’ due to ‘technical maintenance shortcomings’ which could have led to engine failure at any moment. This should come as no surprise since, under the ANC, we no longer have any functioning SA Defence Force or the equipment it needs to defend the country.

Meanwhile in Parktown North where I used to live (and in many more of the once prestigious northern suburbs) there has been no water for six days. Bearing in mind that some of SA’s largest corporate HQ’s are in some of the affected areas, how you can possibly get by with no water supply for six days is anybody’s guess.

This is all down to ANC mismanagement and corruption over too many years and a wilful refusal to accept that things are going wrong and that urgent action needs to be taken. But the ANC mindset is that admitting you have made mistakes weakens your political standing so rather lie and deny all the time.

Calling for selective sanctions on key SA politicians as the US appears to be doing might satisfy our desire for revenge but it won’t solve our immediate problems. The only thing that can help South Africa now is a change of government and a massive injection of foreign cash to fund what needs to be done. Neither of those seem even a remote possibility so expect things to gradually get worse.

Source: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-ancs-suitonthechair-trick

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