The biggest problem/challenge facing the new Kouga Council

This document reflects the personal opinion of Trevor Watkins, and is not necessarily the opinion of the Jeffreys Bay Residents Association.

The politicians in Kouga will face the same problem as the politicians in Bisho, in Pretoria and in Washington. This problem is: how to resolve the financial and social chaos that these same politicians have caused with their disastrous policies.

It is politicians and their policies that

·         Bankrupt businesses and individuals with some of the highest tax rates in the world. Ever increasing local rates and taxes are a part of this problem.

·         Stifle the economy under a blanket of incompetent bureaucracy. It can take months to get the simplest permission, document or decision out of this municipality, or any other branch of government.

·         Impose insane labour policies on businesses and the unemployed, stifling jobs growth and increasing poverty.

·         Impose excessive requirements and regulations on business, costing them time and money better spent on customers.  FICA, BEE compliance, tax returns, etc, etc.

·         Generate high inflation through manipulation of the money supply, impoverishing everyone.

·         Discourage overseas investment with exchange controls, tariffs, import delays.

·         Distort the usual market incentives of profit and loss, creating a vast culture of dependency financed through a diminishing pool of workers and entrepreneurs.

·         Fail miserably to fulfill their one actual responsibility – to enforce law and order in the country. They can’t even publish adequate crime statistics.

The best thing that the new and increased crop of politicians coming to the Kouga can do is

·         get out of the way of the people who actually generate wealth and prosperity

·         pass fewer laws, hold fewer expensive bosberaads, buy themselves fewer expensive cars.

·         Stop spending  income, which they did not create, on themselves. The new council could generate a great deal of respect and credibility by immediately voting themselves a 50% cut in salaries.

·         Do adequately those few things they are actually required to do; balance the budget, enforce the law, plan for disasters, provide a minimum standard of service to their residents.

·         Stop doing those things they are neither required to do nor equipped to do: redistributing wealth, providing jobs, subsidising particular businesses, handing out favours.

The biggest problem facing the new council will be the effects of the declining economy on the Kouga area and its residents.

The biggest challenge facing the new council will be for them to realise they are a part of the problem, not the solution. The solution lies in allowing the actual generators of wealth to do their job with less hindrance. It is the businesses, hotels, bed and breakfasts, surf schools, tour operators, retailers, accountants, engineers, airlines that create wealth, jobs, profits, and councillor salaries.  There is not a single task performed by the municipality that could not be done better and cheaper by a private company.