ANC EC treasurer fields frustration from the province’s young business people

A GENERAL perception has been created that when young black people succeed in business, especially those aligned to the ANC, they must be corrupt while with white people fancy names such as collusion and price-fixing are used.

This was newly elected ANC provincial treasurer Babalo Madikizela’s view when he spoke at the Progressive Youth in Business (PYB) business dinner at the Miriam Makeba Hall on Wednesday.

He said the responsibility of the ANC government was to give equal opportunities to people and “in the main empower the youth”.

“During the [2010 Fifa] World Cup there was a lot of corruption. And because it was done by white people, it got fancy names like collusion and price-fixing. But when ANC aligned young black people succeed in business, they are called corrupt,” Madikizela said.

He said it was wrong for a huge chunk of the economy to benefit a minority. “It is wrong to bring up the criteria when awarding tenders so that young black entrepreneurs are excluded. We have a government that funds cooperatives and small businesses but won’t buy from them. What we do must talk to what we want to achieve.”

Unemployment was high in the Eastern Cape, he said, and there were no factories – hence the provincial conference about a month ago had resolved to industrialise the province. Madikizela said the Eastern Cape was more like a subprovince, with even simple things like bricks and furniture being bought outside its borders.

“The baton of poverty must stop with us. We will make sure factories open and entities such as the Eastern Cape Development Corporation must fulfil their mandate. The newly elected PEC took a conscious decision that we must be major participants in the economy,” he said. Changing tune to focus on the ANC, he said the party was under siege from both internal and external factors.

He said big business was pumping money into political parties for selfish reasons, but the ANC had supported the Western Cape High Court judgment for political parties to reveal their private funding sources. “Factionalism and divisions are at the highest level in the ANC. This is a fight over resources. People in leadership don’t want to let go because the positions give them access to resources,” he said.

Madikizela said ANC members should be encouraged not to contest positions to access resources. “When the opposition attacks us, when we lose metros, when society loses confidence in us – stand up and be organised and coordinated. The success of the ANC is directly dependent on youth,” he said.

PYB provincial chairwoman Buhle Tonise said events such as the state of the province address were just a talk shop targets were met.

“We are not bashing government but we are pointing out things that need to be done. There is nothing wrong with tenders but there is everything wrong when government makes us rely on tenders for business,” she said to applause.

She said it was time for things to change and that young people have been taught discipline in business. “We are still maintaining that discipline but time will come when we are going to be tired. We have solutions that will produce results to problems. All we ask is to be given a chance to share those solutions,” she said.

The province, Tonise said, was behind other provinces in infrastructure development.

“Don’t bring huge documents and tell us about research. We have researchers in our companies, we need platforms to implement solutions,” Tonise said. as none of the