While welcoming Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu’s withdrawal of the green paper proposal for a social security plan that would amount to ‘an exorbitant extra income tax’, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) says the risk of ‘reckless’ policies remains, and resisting it will require vigilance.
‘South Africans will have to keep up their guard,’ the IRR said in a statement.
The Institute said it had opposed the ‘Job Tax’ on the grounds that ‘it was unaffordable to working South Africans, that it would harm existing pension savings, and that it would fuel state capture v2.0 corruption’.
The withdrawal of the green paper was ‘a battle won during the opening manoeuvres, but a battle won nonetheless. Victories against state encroachment are rare and must be celebrated to nourish active citizenship through this decade-long drought of good policy news in South Africa’.
This was not the first time that ‘the state’s larcenous hand has been blocked from digging deeper into South African pockets’, the IRR said, citing its resistance to prescribed assets, an earlier ANC plan ‘to force private savings into rotting government assets’.
It said the ‘double victory against prescribed assets and the new Job Tax demonstrates what active citizenship means, a vindication of common sense’.
Said IRR head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse: ‘Ramaphosa loves to talk about “our people”, but even he could not pretend our people want to be taxed more and more by this corrupt administration. Lindiwe Zulu’s pretensions evaporated in the light of common-sense resistance. That is a victory to remember and build upon.’
However, Crouse added, ‘the underlying source of such reckless policy proposals, the imploding cadre network, is growing desperate. The price of freedom is vigilance. South Africans will have to keep up their guard.’