Gupta machinations clear
The reach and machinations of the Zupta group are indeed extensive and, they think, subtle. Brian Molefe is placed in the economic development portfolio and Molefe is firmly in the Zupta camp, as he has tearfully acknowledged. Duma Gqubule of the Centre for Economic Development and Transformation proposes that the ANC-controlled government (the ANC is not the government) should nationalise the South African mining industry in a creeping process. Which organ of state can reasonably be anticipated to oversee the process and then manage it? That honoured by Molefe’s presence, of course!
What dream world does Gqubule inhabit? Has he ever run a company or been involved in one at a senior level? As he notes, the country’s mineral resources arguably “belong” to all. In SA they stayed in the ground until the evil colonialist, capitalist exploiters found them, used their own capital and skills to develop them — so providing a new public benefit by paying taxes, wages and salaries — and contributed to the wealth of the country by the exports and local industrialisation they created.
(Indeed those benefits over time largely educated Gqubule, I suspect.)
No doubt the Zuptas would dearly like to follow the Saudi Arabian model of rent appropriation, with themselves as the transformed owners. Of course, the cadres available for deployment can match the skills, knowledge, experience and integrity of the directors and management they will replace — perhaps Dudu Myeni of South African Airways fame, James Aguma of the SABC and Bathabile Dlamini of famed long-term planning skills as examples.
With this new array of competence the Zupta empire would easily compete in world markets while producing substantial income for the benefit of all the blacks in our country. I forget, the Guptas are black … maybe there would be trickle down to rural areas as well.
SA could indeed learn from the Norwegian model of state-owned investment companies. They employ highly qualified and skilled personnel of absolute integrity, dedicated to the general benefit of their country not to personal wealth creation and self-aggrandisement from the income of the state. The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) does a reasonable job in managing the vast wealth it controls on behalf of the government’s employees and pensioners but it does not have management control of any major company. There is a difference.
The level of funding in the PIC is obscene relative to poverty levels, Gqubule observes. What have they to do with each other? PIC funds are accumulated from the earnings of state employees and invested in the productive sector of the economy, which employs people and pays tax. What is obscene about that? The poverty in this country is a result of ANC arrogance, incompetence, corruption and general indifference to the plight of its people. If this were not so, we would not have more than 100 people dead in Gauteng due to ANC indifference, the Marikana massacre would not have occurred and we would have a properly structured education system at all levels producing effective young people to drive our economic future, not moronic post-communist theoreticians captured by foreigners.