There are many flaws in Vilakazi’s historical notions

WHILE the existence of nodes of commonality in terms of language and culture among the different indigenous peoples of southern Africa is not disputed, Herbert Vilakazi’s assertion that in pre-colonial times they constituted “one historical family” (Business Report, November 21) is not supported by the facts.

Just as many European communities were insulated and isolated from each other during medieval times, African communities existed as separate, independent chieftaincies. Although Vilakazi refers to the “constant movement of people from one area to another”, he is silent about the depredations Arab and African-led slave raiding and trading which caused a steady southward movement of Africans and also of the role of Shaka. The hegemony of Shaka after 1818 caused massive upheaval among indigenous communities resulting in subjugation, dispersal and relocation.

Whole areas of what came to be known as the Transvaal were found by the Trekboers to be devoid of human settlement.

The Basuto evolved from the refugees who holed up in the fastnesses of the Drakensberg to escape Shaka’s raids. The Ndebele under Mzilikazi of the Khumalo clan of the Zulu fled westwards from Shaka’s despotism settling eventually north of the Limpopo.

There, in turn, they indulged in constant subjugation of the Shona people of north-eastern Zimbabwe. As recently as the early 1980s, Robert Mugabe attempted to turn the tables on the Ndebele through a series of ethnic cleansing purges.

Those factors, along with the black-onblack violence in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1980s, which cost about 14 000 lives, scarcely conjures up the notion of “one historical family” as Vilakazi asserts.

The spaces that separated African communities from each other before the colonial intrusion were, therefore, the result of internecine conflict. In Natal, for example, Shepstone’s location system was an attempt to identify and to provide scattered refugee remnants with territory within which they could rehabilitate themselves.

One critical and much overlooked factor is that the black and white presence in southern Africa was established through the same means – invasion and conquest. DUNCAN DU BOIS DURBAN About time to wake up for all our unions AN OPEN letter to all South African trade union leaders: Instead of your continual strike action with unrealistic and unsustainable demands on commerce/industry and the mining sector, for higher wages which ultimately lead to cutbacks in labour thus escalating the unemployment situation, resulting in ever increasing hardship for the poorer and less qualified workers in South Africa, why don’t you do something constructive for your members.

Here is a suggestion to you which I believe will have an impact in uplifting the financial wellbeing of your members. You are expected (because of your position as elected leaders) to be knowledgeable about economic principles and factors which affect the economic wellbeing of a country – this includes such matters as the country’s balance of payments on the current account, the country’s credit rating in the eyes of the outside world, thus impacting on South Africa as a desirable haven for foreign investors’ capital (on a long-term basis) etc.

As alliance partners of the ruling party, you are obviously well aware of its disastrous obsession to open trade opportunities with countries which manufacture goods to export to South Africa, which historically were manufactured right here.

In many cases the imported articles are of grossly inferior quality, being vastly cheaper because of “slave labour” practices in their countries of manufacture, which your unions would not tolerate in South Africa.

This has caused the collapse of many local industries, such as the textile industry and its affiliated clothing sector, the boot and shoe manufacturing industry, the electrical component industry and many others, all resulting in the massive loss of employment to our local working population, with no hope in sight of our unfortunates ever obtaining employment. How do you feel about this betrayal of your responsibilities to our labour force?

With the great number of people in South Africa relying on you for direction/advice, I believe that you can turn the above situation around by recommending that with their huge purchasing power, our population immediately demands to be offered only South Africanmade articles and rejects outright the inferior articles now on offer in our shops.

This will encourage local entrepreneurs to invest in a revitalised manufacturing way of life to the advantage of our labour force. Just go into any of the stores (clothing, shoe ware, tools, etc) in our shopping centres and examine the goods on display – you will find a very small percentage are made in South Africa – mostly in China.

I recently visited the shoe factory shop in the Loskop KwaZulu Natal area near Winterton, owned by a well-known South African brand and could not find one article made in South Africa – the closest was a pair of school shoes made in Lesotho, the rest of the stock was made in China (and this in the centre of a huge African-dominated populated area). ERROL HICKS HILLCREST

Tough times looming large for Gauteng

THE COST to government of keeping voters compliant has become too large to maintain.

The fact that only two items, ie salaries of an ever increasing number of civil servants and social grants wipe out 56 percent of this country’s revenue budget, has forced Gauteng to take austerity measures. At the tabling of Gauteng’s medium-term budget policy last week, MEC for Finance Barbara Creecy, while trying to put a positive spin on her government’s performance, delivered the harsh reality that austerity is the only way to survive in the face of a fiscal cliff.

She indicated that we are at a crossroad. The current account deficit and rising public debt highlight the need to spend less, yet maintain fiscal stimulus to ensure service delivery. She then delivered the bad news that over the next three years, budgets would be cut across all three levels of government. The implication of this is a drop in standards of already mediocre service delivery.

The MEC highlighted that besides reducing budgets, the Gauteng provincial government would in addition increase spending on infrastructure, attempt to reduce corruption and would try to generate additional revenue.

One wonders to what extent these undertakings are mere platitudes. It is common cause that cadre deployment and poor management skills make it highly unlikely the government can make any real difference when it comes to implementation. The ANC have taken us down a rocky path over the last 20 years and it seems as if we are about to reach a dead end.

Very few people have confidence in the so called “radical” interventions espoused by the ruling party. ALAN FUCHS DA MPL IN THE GAUTENG PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE