There’s a pattern I’ve seen time and again: when government policies fail – and they often do – the people behind them never take the blame.

In South Africa, the usual suspects are wheeled out every time the economy groans under mismanagement. First, it’s the white farmer. Then it’s “Western imperialism.” And if that doesn’t land, there’s always apartheid to dust off and parade around.

Curiously, these same officials who rail against Western countries have no shame in begging those nations for aid. One minute, they denounce the West as the root of all evil; the next, they stretch out their hands for loans and bailouts. It would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so tragic.

Yes, the West has its sins. But the hard truth – the kind many refuse to say aloud – is that most of our hardship is self-inflicted. South Africa’s wounds are not just old scars from colonialism; many are fresh cuts made by our own hand.

Introspection

There’s something in human nature that struggles with introspection. When things go wrong, the impulse is to find someone else to blame. It’s always easier to say, “That rich man stole from me,” than to admit, “Maybe I made the wrong choices.” Socialists are the masters of this. They’ve built entire ideologies around resentment and finger-pointing.

Let me say this as plainly as I can: South Africa is not failing because it’s cursed or because some foreign power has cast a shadow over us. It is failing because of the weight of its own government. It is a state that consumes and consumes but gives little of worth in return. It takes the people’s labour, bleeds their businesses, and offers corruption and chaos in exchange.

And yet people defend it. They sing its praises. They vote it back in. All the while, it grinds them down.

To understand how a country could do so much damage to its own economy, you first must understand how a free one works. Not in theory, but in practice. So, let’s talk about Sipho.

Sipho’s story

Sipho is a maize farmer in Mpumalanga. He’s good at what he does. But selling maize isn’t enough to live on. He needs food, clothes, tools, a roof over his head. Luckily, he doesn’t have to grow everything himself.

Thanks to trade and money, Sipho can do what he’s best at – farming – and use his earnings to get the rest.

With the money he makes, he can help his family, support a neighbour, or donate to a nearby school. He spends some on food, transport, maybe a few repairs around the house. That money goes to the butcher, the taxi driver, the handyman. They, in turn, spend it elsewhere. The money moves; the community grows.

He might also reinvest in his farm by buying better tools, lease more land, or hire extra hands. That creates jobs. It raises productivity. There’s more maize on the market, prices drop, and suddenly people can afford more food. One man’s work becomes everyone’s benefit.

Even if he does nothing with the money except save it, it still moves. His bank lends it out to someone starting a business or buying a home. It keeps circulating, building, multiplying.

Just by trying to meet his own needs, look at what Sipho did:

  • He created jobs.
  • He boosted supply.
  • He made food more affordable.
  • He supported the poor through charity.
  • He provided capital for future growth.

And he didn’t need a grant, a permit, or a single line of legislation to do it.

No coercion. No bureaucracy. No force. Just honest work, and the freedom to keep its rewards.

This is how real economies grow. Not by committees in Pretoria, not by World Bank conferences, and certainly not by printing more Rands. Growth happens when people are left free to produce, trade, and keep what they earn.

Enter the state

Now let’s bring government into Sipho’s world and see what changes.

First, taxes eat into his profits. Not just income tax, but fuel levies, VAT, property rates, license fees. Every step of the way, someone is there to take a cut. Sipho finds he has less to spend, less to save, less to hire with. His workers suffer. His land lies fallow. Prices creep back up.

Then come the regulations. Sipho now needs permits to expand, must fill out stacks of paperwork, comply with land reform quotas, tick BEE boxes, and wait months – sometimes years – for approval. The joy of work turns into a slog through red tape.

Let’s say he pushes through. Maybe he’s resilient. Maybe he’s just stubborn. Even then, inflation hits. The Reserve Bank floods the system with money to fund government spending. Prices rise. His fertilizer costs double. His savings lose value. What he could have done with R50,000 last year barely scratches the surface now.

And if he dares to protest, to push back, to work outside the official channels? The fines come. The threats follow. The state has no patience for disobedience, even if its own hands are stained with theft and waste.

Where Sipho once had freedom, he now has permission slips. Where he once reinvested, he now retreats. Where he once grew, he now struggles to survive.

This is not a broken system. This is the system working exactly as it was designed—to feed the state, not the people.

What the state cannot do

The truth is hard for many to accept, but it must be said: the goals government sets for itself – growth, jobs, welfare, stability – are better achieved by individuals acting freely than by any ministry or department.

You don’t need a department of trade to make trade happen. You don’t need a ministry of finance to make saving and investment work. You certainly don’t need government to create jobs. People do that on their own, every day, when they aren’t being strangled by taxes and rules.

A free man builds more than any lawmaker ever will. And he does it without coercion, without plunder, and without promises he cannot keep.

Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay

The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.

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contributor

Econ Bro (@EconBreau and @EconBreau2 on X) is the online name of Nigerian Austrolibertarian economist and apprentice at the Mises Institute, Bryan Nduonofit, whose work has also appeared under the name Daniel Agbake. Under the organisation name “The Freedom Institute” he teaches individual liberty, personal responsibility, private property rights, free markets, and sound money to mostly young people across Nigeria. Econ Bro is an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.