Helen Zille has given a dramatic demonstration of the dangers and follies of Twitter. She has shown us in exemplary fashion why politicians, including herself and Donald Trump, should never tweet: she has written a superb, even definitive, article in Politicsweb entitled, ‘Why South Africa became a Criminal State’.
Its theme is that corruption is deliberate African National Congress (ANC) policy, and has been so since the ANC came to power in 1994. Here is my point. Her article is 1 401 words long (8 560 characters, including spaces). On Twitter, you were only allowed 140 characters, about 23 words, now increased to 280 characters. If Zille had put any of the points of this wonderful article onto Twitter, by now she would have been pilloried.
Her article appeared on 11 August. Nearly a week later, I have seen no outraged comments against it even though she condemns Black Economic Employment (BEE) and Employment Equity (EE), which the ANC elite and every woke white journalist praises to the skies. If she had tweeted any such thought, she would have been denounced as a racist, right-winger, closet supporter of apartheid, paid stooge of White Monopoly Capital, and so on. There would have been furious editorials against her in our newspapers. The Democratic Alliance (DA) might have disciplined her and insisted she made a grovelling public apology. This is because Twitter by its nature reduces every argument, good or bad, to a series of cretinous grunts, which can be interpreted however you wish, especially if you wish to interpret them badly. The 1 401-word article allowed Zille to develop her arguments to devastating effect, and back them up with facts and instances.
Zille points out that the ANC’s recent exploitation of the Covid-19 tragedy for personal gain, where rich comrades make huge sums of money from corrupt deals to supply protective medical equipment, is in line with official ANC policy. Ace Magashule is correct when he says there is nothing illegal in his son, Tshepiso, making a big profit from the suffering of poor, sick South Africans, enabling him to buy a BMW X7 worth over R2.5 million.
What BEE was intended for
This is legal. This is ANC policy. This is what BEE was intended for. This is fully consistent with the ANC National Democratic Revolution.
She pointed out that official corruption began the moment the ANC came to power. Its chief intellectual, Joel Netshitenzhe, wrote in 1998 (during the Presidency of Nelson Mandela) that the ‘National Liberation Movement’ should take over all the ‘levers of power’ – in other words, capture the state.
So ‘state capture’ was official ANC policy, and the Gupta brothers could argue they were just fulfilling the National Democratic Revolution with their captures. I wish the DA had admitted this a long time ago. Until quite recently, some DA leaders were peddling the lie that Jacob Zuma alone had corrupted the ANC. Zuma was different only in that his corruption was so unsubtle. I cannot see much difference between Magashule’s son’s BMW X7 and Zuma’s son’s Porsche 911 (except that, in his case, a young mother died when he crashed it into a taxi).
Nor can I see much difference between the Gupta’s capture of the Optimum Coal Mine and the BEE coal procurement that has helped to wreck Eskom and plunge it into debt, and devastate the environment of Mpumalanga, while making some ANC cadres very, very rich.
The Employment Equity Act (EEA) of 1998 (promulgated under Nelson Mandela) aimed to make the racial composition of every profession the same as the composition of the population at large. 92% of the population is black, so 92% of teachers must be black. The stated purpose, to redress the injustices of the past, was a joke. It would compound the injustices of the past, and has done so.
Real purpose
The real purpose was to enrich the ANC’s friends and relatives and politically important allies, including the powerful teaching union, SADTU. Education is the most tragic example of the ANC’s contempt for ordinary black people. Most black children were condemned to SADTU-controlled schools with black affirmative action teachers. They have been a disaster, wrecking the lives and prospects of poor young blacks. The ANC and SADTU know this. The ANC elite would be horrified at sending their own children to schools where 92% of the teachers were black. SADTU teachers feel the same. Both deliberately send their own children to private schools or model-C schools where most of the teachers are white, appointed on merit. President Ramaphosa, worth over six thousand million Rand, praised SADTU, but sent his sons to St Stithians and his daughters to Roedean.
Here’s my message to Helen Zille. Congratulations on an excellent article! Now, two things. First, stop tweeting. Second, tell your party that racial affirmative action, employment equity and Black Economic Employment are no longer its policies. Tell them to adopt the policies that would most help the poor black people of South Africa: equality of opportunity, appointment on merit, and discrimination in favour of those in need regardless of race.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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