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It is reported that Julius Malema, in a moment of rare clarity and cogency, has advocated nationalising South Africa's mines in order that they might subsidise the costs of tertiary education.

Brilliant.

The DA would like to know why no one has thought of this before.

In fact, we will be submitting a parliamentary question to President Zuma to establish exactly that: why does no one in government have as many good ideas as Julius Malema?

"If one mine takes over this university in terms of funding, you won't have to worry about government," Malema told a crowd at the University of Limpopo's Medunsa campus in Ga-Rankuwa.

Well exactly. It's all so obvious.

But, for those of you who aren't too clued up on the accounting behind this kind of financial genius, it goes something like this:

Each university should have a mine. Great.

Because those mines are nationalised, obviously this would be a state-owned mine.

So far, so good.

At the moment - because the evil forces of imperialism have opposed nationalisation - there is only one state-owned mine - Alexkor.

So let's use that as our archetype.

One Alexkor per university (they could even build the engineering school underground).

We have some 30 universities, so that would be 30 Alexkors. (I think I am beginning to see a problem with this.)

Between 2005 and 2009, Alexkor failed to make a profit. (It has also lost some 500 jobs, down from 700 to 100 in ten years, but that's another matter.)

Hmmmm.

So... if you subsidise tertiary education with state-owned mines... the universities will end up having to subsidise the mines?

Hang on. That can't be right.

Obviously this kind of Western mathematical logic will end up with a racist conclusion like that.

I think Malema's logic is a far safer bet: State-owned mines are the source of massive wealth. They can pay for everything. Let's attach each university to a mine.

That makes far more sense.

(Unless of course Malema meant that universities are well suited to subsidise failing state-owned mines. In which case ignore everything I have said. That is a brilliant piece of logic in the other direction.)

But why stop at universities? When there is so much else to subsidise?

Seeing as these mines generate so much money, here are a few other things we could use those enormous profits for:

• A fleet of Mabachs for the executive (and the Youth League, of course)
• A home for President Zuma (yes, another one)
• The penthouse at the Lost City (for the Minister of Police)
• A lifetime supply of Jonny Walker for future ANC general conferences and NGCs
• A Finance 101 course for the Youth League.

Excellent. We can call it: ‘Mining for Opulence', or ‘OpuCor'.

By way of conclusion, the DA believes most of the problems concerning South Africa's mines stem from the word ‘mine' itself. Obviously the name ‘mine' is misleading, especially for an organisation such as the ANC, which has its eyes on so much. Naturally the name will lead to confusion. The ANC believes its ‘mine'. The private sector believes it is ‘a mine'.

We thus propose the name ‘mine' be changed to ‘the ANC's' - mainly for the benefit of the private sector. No doubt this will clear things up in no time, and rightly so.