Ignore Pilger’s cranky moan: ANC made the right choices

I’M disappointed that the Sunday Times wasted valuable column space on John Pilger’s article, “South Africa has been betrayed” (April 13). This crank, who has been peddling this leftist, woe-is-me Western imperialism and “capitalism is so evil” narrative for decades, should have been ignored. This man is risible in his assertions. He is a man who enjoys the freedoms and amenities of living in the West yet bemoans the very freedoms that allow him to express his opinions without being locked up or tortured. He is a man who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believes that a Marxist-socialist state is the solution to poverty, a lack of opportunity and access to services. Pilger is like those old, embittered British socialists whose cause was obliterated by Thatcherism.

The ANC, when negotiating with the apartheid regime and white business elite, did exactly the right thing. Mandela, Mbeki and other members of the ANC elite came to see economic reality.

A Marxist revolutionary change in South Africa would have destroyed it and drenched it in blood. Maintaining the freemarket system while implementing an evolutionary change in business ownership and job opportunities for previously disadvantaged people was, and is, the correct policy.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t flaws. Unemployment, inequality and inequity are serious dangers — but South Africa is not unique in having these problems. — Graeme Long, by e-mail