Former president F W de Klerk has implored the African National Congress (ANC) to abandon the ‘wrong ideological road’ it is following and which will risk inflicting ‘catastrophic consequences’ on the country.
In a speech marking the 30th anniversary of his ground-breaking address at the opening of Parliament on 2 February 1990, De Klerk said: ‘On a number of occasions in the past, I have warned that South Africa was at a crossroads: well, it is now abundantly clear that the crossroads are behind us; that we took the wrong turning several years ago and that we are now rapidly heading away from the high road of non-racial constitutional democracy.’
De Klerk went on: ‘We are on the wrong ideological road. The ANC majority is determined to follow the road to the NDR (National Democratic Revolution) and to socialism, regardless of the catastrophic consequences.
‘The most serious manifestation of the ANC’s commitment to the NDR and socialism is its determination – apparently at any cost – to amend section 25 of the Constitution to make it possible for the state to expropriate property without the payment of compensation. Now it apparently wants to remove the role of the courts in determining the amount of compensation for expropriated property.
‘There is an absolute correlation between recognition of property rights and economic wellbeing, investment inflows; political and civic freedoms; human development and good governance.’
De Klerk said: ‘I implore the ANC to turn back. Return to the road of the pragmatic policies (which were) followed between 1996 and 2007, and which have enabled so many other countries to achieve sustained economic growth and social development.
‘Abandon ideologies that have brought economic collapse and tyranny wherever they have been implemented. Return to the road of genuine non-racialism and reconciliation.’
He noted that the policies pursued until 2007 ‘reaped huge benefits: the economy grew at more than 5% between 2005 and 2007; unemployment declined; and Trevor Manuel balanced the budget and halved the national debt to only 23% of GDP’.
De Klerk acknowledged that, since his 2017 election, President Cyril Ramaphosa ‘has taken some significant steps to restore the integrity of key government institutions and to restructure State-owned enterprises’, and ‘recommitted himself to the implementation of the pragmatic National Development Plan –and to economic growth fuelled by increased levels of investment’.
But ‘doubts persist’.
‘Most seriously,’ he warned, ‘we are on the wrong road with regard to race.’ Policies that had the effect of stereotyping and dehumanizing people were ‘extremely dangerous’.
In addition, the dogged pursuit of demographic representivity across society ‘is limiting the economic space in which minorities can operate to their diminishing shares of the population’, and this ‘has very serious implications’.
[Picture: Richter Frank-Jurgen, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53727341, cropped]