Thank NDR for recession

In your September 18 report, Cyril Ramaphosa implores business to halt job cuts. The president, whose administration has pursued a raft of counterproductive policies and legislation — from new minimum wage laws to proposed expropriation laws — is imploring the private sector not to cut jobs despite the recession.

He did so at the conference of a trade union that has gone out of its way to sabotage job creation and reduce investor confidence. The conference is titled Consolidate the Struggle for NDR and Advance the Struggle for Socialism. The theory of the national democratic revolution (NDR) holds that the wealth in the private sector arises solely from the exploitation of the poor and that the private sector and middle classes must be dispossessed before the poor can be liberated from poverty. The conference therefore celebrates the very ideological dogma that explains the sluggish state of the economy and the related high rates of unemployment.

Counterproductive policy has to be replaced with laws and policies that make SA a competitive investment destination.

All of this is within the power of the president and the government, but it will not happen unless the government and the ruling party can escape their ideological prison.

Frans Cronje CEO, Institute of Race Relations