Ramaphosa in placatory tone
• History of dispossession necessitates ANC’s policy position of radical transformation, businesspeople told
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa tried to allay fears about radical economic transformation on Tuesday, saying it was the intensification of ANC economic policies.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa tried to allay fears about radical economic transformation on Tuesday, saying it was the intensification of ANC economic policies.
Ramaphosa told the business community at the Gordon Institute of Business Science’s forum on leadership that the policy and term that were coined by the government in 2014 were necessitated by the country’s history of dispossessions.
Although Ramaphosa seemed eager to explain the importance of radical economic transformation, he acknowledged the term had been hijacked and abused by some in the public discourse.
“We now know some highly paid PR specialist contrived a plan to use terms such as ‘radical economic transformation’ and ‘white monopoly capital’, essentially to launch a publicity offensive in defence of their clients, and we know who those clients are,” he said.
“In the way of their clients’ interests, we are presented as being opposed to radical economic transformation and that we are in the interest of white monopoly capital.”
Ramaphosa was referring to leaked e-mails involving the politically exposed Gupta family, which is said to have solicited the services of international public relations firm Bell Pottinger to align public perception with the aims of the family.
“The term is deployed to either mask or justify activities that would be best described as state capture.”
He said such efforts were insufficient to derail the party from its transformation agenda, which should be pursued with as much valour as the democratisation of SA was.
“Dispossession introduced inequality in a country where there was basic equality around the people to a large extent … but it also brought about grinding poverty in the sense that having been dispossessed of your land, your assets, asset poverty became the order of the day.”
The term radical economic transformation had been introduced to signal the intensification and acceleration of economic transformation after the ANC realised it needed to increase its pace in dealing with the issue. “It is about economic transformation and all of us can agree there should be radical economic transformation in our country. [The] addition of the word “radical” should not scare us. It is not smash-and-grab, it is not violent revolution; it is a policy positioning that you must accept the ANC will use, because essentially, the ANC is a radical movement and it cannot shed those colours.”
Misunderstandings about the newly launched Mining Charter were unfortunate as the country had to work together to realise transformation, he said. He hoped the meeting held between the ANC and the Chamber of Mines, which has rejected the new charter, would pave the way forward.
“There is a complaint from the Chamber of Mines and the industry that the consultation was not full. The [mineral resources] minister says they were consulted, so there is a clear misalignment in terms of the consultation process.”
The parties “must go back to the drawing board and they must sit down and talk about their shared interests”.
He said transformation in mining and investment were not mutually exclusive.
DISPOSSESSION INTRODUCED INEQUALITY IN A COUNTRY WHERE THERE WAS BASIC EQUALITY [THE] ADDITION OF THE WORD ‘RADICAL’ SHOULD NOT SCARE US. IT IS NOT SMASH AND GRAB, IT IS NOT … REVOLUTION