I looked in the mirror this morning and realised that I am, indeed, a monkey's uncle.

Never saw it until now, which is strange. Like Idols contestants that cannot sing for their lives, yet family never tell them, my nearest and dearest have hidden this fact from me since the dawn of (my) time on this planet. Alas I didn't need any panel of judges to inform me of my clearly misguided opinion of myself, no, all it took was an article and an explanation from the powers that be.

Hear this, mortal souls.

Apparently we will be paying (at least) 50 cents per litre more for our fuel from next month and, says the Department of "whatever", part of the reason is the weaker rand/dollar exchange rate.

Being someone that basically follows the exchange rates closely, more as a force of habit than any definite purpose, I am rather surprised by that statement. Not because I am bored and in desperate need of some excitement in my life, not because I haven't been truly surprised since uncle Terreblanche fell off his horse all those years ago and not because South Africa lacks any freshness in the monumental stupidity on offer for our daily meal - no, just because (factually) that statement is as wrong as a warm blue cheese sauce served over your sushi.

Anyone who has mildly glanced at the exchange rates over the past few months will know that it's been rather stable - strong, in fact, hovering around the mid R7 to the dollar mark. A bit up some weeks, a bit down others, but generally relatively stable, and will stay like that until post World Cup. Saying that the volatility of the rand contributes to the hike in the fuel price is a bit like saying government is serious about tackling corruption within its ranks. It simply isn't true.

A more accurate statement is that this government is in need of more money to cover the giant holes left by rampant "insider trading", if you can call it that. Once again ordinary citizens will be made to cough and pay for the ravaging of state coffers and the blatant plundering of our tax money. That is the one, the only, and the be all and end all of this hike in the cost of getting from A to B.

Saying otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of anyone with a gram of grey matter.

I challenge government to give us a detailed breakdown of the price per litre of fuel and tell us exactly what goes where. How much does the raw product cost, how much are all the taxes, to which departments are those funnelled and what are they doing with it? Why do they need so much and what have they done with past funding?

There has to be accountability here and there has to be some hard truths revealed because the Golden Goose that is the South African tax payer cannot, will not, be squeezed anymore.

On a loosely related note I believe the Black Management Forum say that "lifestyle" audits are racist as those asking for it insinuate that black people cannot be rich and successful without being corrupt.

I'd like to point out to our brothers that "lifestyle" audits are not a new thing and have been carried out for years, in many countries (including South Africa) to ensure that people pay the tax they should, based on their various sources of income. I'd half expect a "management forum" to know this.

Anyway, I digress.

This morning I woke up and found myself staring at a monkey's uncle. Clearly that's what those running the show think of me.

Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.

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