Looming public sector strikes: reminder that the only way to dig oneself out of a hole is to stop digging
I REFER to the looming public sector strikes.
In 1962, blacks had overtaken whites as the wealthiest group thanks to Erehwon’s aggressive affirmative action policies. However, equality had been achieved by bringing whites down to the same level as blacks. In addition, most of the wealth taken from whites had disappeared into the pockets of the black elite.
Consequently, most blacks were poorer than they had been during the colonial-era (primarily due to inefficiency and a shrinking economy etc).
Unfortunately, getting rid of the government was far easier said than done. This was because of the government’s habit of doling out well-paid jobs to under-qualified, unneeded employees, who subsequently voted for it out of a fear of being retrenched by a new government.
However, by the late1970s most State Owned Enterprises were running at huge losses and the government hence was forced by pressure from the international community to reduce its wage bill. This created huge turmoil within the ruling party, with one senior member warning that several powerful generals were threatening to help the trade unions overthrow the party’s existing leadership (if it continued with its so-called austerity-measures). Accordingly, the government tried to win the generals over by giving members of the armed forces a generous salary increase. Sadly, the government was broke and raised taxes in order to fund these increases, which led to civil unrest and forced it to keep hiring more and more soldiers (and so on and so forth ).
Eventually, this vicious cycle resulted in tiny, impoverished Erehwon – which in 1984 had 71 times as many soldiers as school teachers – invading a neighbouring country in what many analysts believe was little more than an attempt at distracting its citizens from the country’s domestic problems.
All of which is probably not particularly surprising, when one considers that Erehwon’s colonial masters had apparently never explained that the only way to dig oneself out of a hole is to stop digging.
TERENCE GRANT | Cape Town