FESTIVE SEASON ITS THE TIME FOR GIVING

It’s festive season and its the season for giving and also being generous. I’m sure we have all noticed the Christmas decorations go up and shops gearing everybody into the festive season, if not I don’t know where you’ve been you probably were just too busy to notice and are probably going catch on late to this fever, and marketing ploy.

December is that time of the year whereby we get to meet up with the family, long lost friends (good friends) and people in general. After a long tiring year one deserves to have a break, most of the working class probably are getting their bonuses or their 13^th cheque’s and are probably feeling like they have won the national lotto. This is where I come in to share some advice a sort of survival guide for these holidays and ask that consumers should tone it down and go easy on the spending this festive.

Someone once told me that “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail,” and I think this is very true because if one fails to save up in preparation for the festive season, one will start to find themselves without money or in debt with financial Micro lending outlets or ‘loan sharks’ .

 This will result in you soon ushering in the New Year with an uphill battle and your name being blacklisted by Credit Bureau, this is why it is advisable to plan ahead. 

 The festive season is the time to wind down and regroup this also means we should save during this time because there is nothing more saddening than to see children not going to school because of reckless expenditure over the December holidays. 

It is a common trend to see events of this nature occur in South Africa and especially around the more poverty stricken communities. This is just a little heads up for the December holidays your survival guide for this festive.

Money talks and the poor walk the plank

I am sure we are all familiar with the term walking the plank, if not - this is what pirates used to do to punish sailors or crew members that they had taken over, the crew would be tied up and forced to walk off the boat and plunge into the sea to their deaths.

It has become abundantly clear to see that in South Africa, if you have money you are somewhat above the law or certain things do not apply to you. There are many cases where this is quite evident, whereby the judicial system is put under light. A question asked by many is, is the justice system skewed against the poor?

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest JP court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal” 
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

The poor keep on getting poor while the rich get richer, with the huge inequality gap in South Africa, and the fact that South Africa has over taken Brazil to become number one in the ranking table.

The gap between rich and poor has grown to "unprecedented levels" in the past 30 years in spite of the "remarkable" progress made towards ending poverty, says the report, released by Oxfam.

The really question is, is everyone equal in the court of law? Many public figures have been caught drinking and driving or on the other end of the law, but have never been caught. On the other hand if it were to be your average Joe Soap that would be a different story e.g. I’m sure we all remember the story of the senior traffic official Brain Mc Bride who was caught for drinking and driving and never was taken to task.

With the ever growing inequality gap between the two, this has a major effect on your normal tax payer and sees them taking a huge hit whilst the rich earn more.

The Oxfam report said that multibillionaire US businessman Bill Gates, with an estimated wealth of $67-billion (R727-billion), could afford to spend $1-million a day for 218 years.

         IS POWER FAILURE GOING TO FAIL YOU?

It’s only a matter of time until your area or neighbourhood is left in the dark. Power cuts or load shedding as it’s better known, affect us more than we think. These power outages don’t just switch off the geyser so we don’t get hot water in the morning or can’t go to school or work because there is no iron to iron our clothes. Power cuts in actual fact impact us upon an economical level whereby local businesses and large manufacturing company’s such as Daimler Crystler South Africa, Mercedes Benz South Africa and not forgetting Volkswagen South Africa in Uitenhage, you also can’t make mention of these big manufacturers making mention of the mining sector. Power cuts, if not prepared for, can bring the economy of a country to its knees, this may also in future lead to big companies downsizing to cut the loss of profits made during their slow productive period during the blackouts. This worsens the country’s rather poor employment rate.

On the other hand, with a weakened rand South Africa’s economy cannot afford to have  any more blackouts as this amounts in billions of rands being lost. The evidence of this can be seen in 2008 where billions were lost in revenue, and business information systems crashed due to these incidents. However Eskom states that it is under a lot of pressure and cannot keep up with the current rate of usage of electricity, but, we must bear in mind that the percentage rate of electricity  will see households and business paying through their noses for electricity as it will be raised to 16% by the year 2015.

Medupi Power Station, this is supposedly Eskoms back up power station. It has taken authorities such a long time to build up and with copious amounts of money being spent for the development of this project which is still not complete, even to date.

                     

The crisis in our country is not getting any better and business need to go out there and get themselves backup systems to store information or documentation, they also need to have operating generators for when days get dark literally and figuratively.