Time and patience for equality

I WAS disappointed with Obama’s speech on his attack on capitalism after having been at the helm of the largest capitalist state on Earth.

Even if all the factories and mines of South Africa were owned and efficiently run by one black man, Patrice Motsepe, that would still be far better than giving each person an equal share or letting the state own all the means of production.

Both were tried in the USSR and both failed dismally (state ownership before the 1990s and handing out free shares to all their citizens in their privatisation programme in the early 1990s). And now the ANC is making a right royal mess of operating our SOEs too.

People do not need free shares to reduce inequality. What reduces inequality is high-paying jobs and the requirement for that is a good education system and the patient acquisition of skills. Put the blame firmly at the feet of the ANC leaders who perpetuate the bantu education system, while their leaders send their children to expensive private schools.

It’s a pity that the constitution does not have a provision that all government and political leaders from general manager and parliamentarian upwards must send their children to public schools.

It will take a 100 years to reduce inequality in South Africa, and not five. It took the Europeans 500 years.