Much of the problem is that most of our politicians are committed communists and haven’t a clue about free market economies.
I thought President Ramaphosa’s acceptance speech to his colleagues in the National Assembly and, by extension, to the country was gracious and considerably more positive than the noises we heard from his predecessor.
Mind you, he was coming off a low base and anything would have sounded better than Zuma. The general consensus seems to be that we should give Cyril the benefit of the doubt for the moment and hope to hell he can achieve success with what is on his plate. The comment that he wanted to be a president for all South Africans and not just those who voted ANC will, with any luck, define his presidency.
Not that he has an easy task ahead. With unemployment at over 27% and economic forecasts of an even slower growth rate for the country, it is hard to see where job creation will come from.
According to Eunomix Business and Economics Ltd, SA’s performance on a range of economic and social measures deteriorated more over the past twelve years than any other nation not at war.
We now rank alongside Colombia, Jamaica and Latvia, which probably isn’t the sort of company we want to keep. Over the past 25 years, the ANC has managed to kill off the mining industry, with the AngloGold announcing it will sell its last gold mine and Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman indicating his reluctance to invest another cent in SA. As market analyst Magnus Heystek comments on Politicsweb.co.za, this is almost certainly because of uncertain mining policies, militant labour unions and escalating electricity costs coupled with unreliable supply.
As Heystek further points out, ‘new listings have dried up, as have daily volumes on the JSE. Ten years ago the JSE had more than 700 listed companies, today the number is around 350’. So will Cyril, a former trade union leader, be able to tame the unions? If he doesn’t then we can kiss any chance of economic growth goodbye. Our friends in China must be rubbing their hands with glee.
Add to all this gloom the fact that tax revenues have already shown a steep decline and it becomes apparent that the President will need some sort of Harry Potter magic wand to turn things around.
Much of the problem has been due to the fact that most of our politicians are committed communists and haven’t a clue about free market economies. Rather like the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the ANC has bought votes over the years by handing out welfare grants. This is all very well if the amount of money coming in through taxes exceeds the amount being handed out in welfare grants, but that system is beginning to crumble. We have considerably fewer taxpayers in this country than we do recipients of tax payer money – but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to the ruling party. Their simple solution is to raise taxes and make the ‘rich’ pay more. The problem with that, as the UK government found in the 1970s, is that the super-rich make alternative tax arrangements, which means that the government has to keep dropping its definition of who is rich to keep the money flowing in.
This is why the idea of ‘white privilege’ has been enthusiastically endorsed by the ANC and promoted by the various media propagandists who pretend to be impartial. Providing you can focus on one sector of the community, revile them and get 80% of the country’s population to agree that they should pay what are now deemed their ‘ill-gotten gains’ into the country’s coffers, then you can’t go wrong. Until the money runs out, that is.
I haven’t a clue of the break up by age of the 6.5 million registered tax payers in his country but my own family and friends’ experience tells me this: the well-qualified youngsters are taking themselves off to a better life overseas having had it made clear that their pale skins will be an impediment to any career advancement. Their parents are probably planning to sit things out because the prospect of emigration past the age of 60 isn’t particularly attractive unless you already have a bolt-hole arranged. That means my generation will probably snuff it in the next 10-20 years, which will leave an even larger gap in the tax revenues.
The culture of entitlement, which my friend Chris Hart lost his job for mentioning a few years ago, is a very real problem in SA. As is the official ANC narrative (also parroted by media propagandists) that economic freedom cannot be achieved while white monopoly capital is allowed to continue. Since I have yet to meet anybody who can explain either of these terms to me, I can only assume that the party faithful are equally clueless but just happen to like the sound of the message they are hearing.
Last weekend, that ANC shining beacon of probity Ace Magashule gave a memorial lecture in honour of Walter Sisulu in Bloemfontein. He said it was unacceptable that the economy was in white hands (not for much longer, chum, with the way you guys are going) and that Africans were slaves in their own nation. After having a good go at the colonialists who caused all the trouble in the first place, Magashule predicted ‘we are heading for troubled times, and we are surely coming for what is ours’. The sooner this guy is wearing an orange suit the better. As I said, President Ramaphosa has no easy task ahead.
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