Education a main ingredient to spreading wealth
IN MY column of last week I referred to the real need to spread the wealth of the country equitably. I commented on the breakfast-show discussion-format beamed nationally where well-heeled people offered addwater-and-stir solutions while the rest of the population languished in hunger.
We have since had another of these infamous breakfast shows. Two oppositional solutions were posited. The expert who represented the comfortably rich kept on reminding us that he was speaking as a “white” male. The black expert kept on stressing that equity did not mean a dishing out of shares or positions on the boards of white monopolies.
Whiteness as a definition of identity is outmoded. We are all South Africans. Secondly, farming out positions on decision-making boards is a mere sugar-coated pill that doesn’t dislodge the unfairly acquired wealth of the white sector.
What is needed is education. It’s no good giving an untrained black man a farm as a politically correct gesture unless you provide the expertise required for success. Placing people on boards of directors without intense mentoring and goal-directed educational interventions adds grist to the mill of those who claim that inefficiency is race-related.
The unfortunate historically disadvantaged majority need to be lifted out of their helpless dependence – and their surreptitious roles as election pawns. I am not sure that the 19 million recipients of government grants are all helplessly disabled. There should be skills-schools to help them help themselves out of the ignominy of semi-official begging.
The students who coerced the state into a crippling policy of no fees should renegotiate the situation. The no-fees policy should be adjusted to the pay-when-you-start-earning ethic. There are no free lunches in the real world.
Africa has been a victim of the “beento” syndrome. This is where villages pay for their young to go to tertiary institutions, local or overseas. In South Africa one of these strategies is the stokvel. The idea is for the enlightened student to come back and use his expertise to uplift the quality of life in his mother-village. It often happens that these “been-tos” become so beguiled by their new environment that they never come home to deliver the expected pay-back. Business cartels should start seeing their workers as co-owners in the production process.
Allocation of tenders should be based on expertise and not racial or gender equity. At the same time, the back-log in expertise should become a focused national educational undertaking.
Being an artisan is not a lesser condition than a profession.The ethic of saving as part of the wage-structure should be encouraged. Commercial outlets are too liberal in providing plastic buying to the public. This unobtrusively increases the cost of the product. Recovery of the economy shouldn’t only start on the stock-exchange, but also on ground level.