Mashaba unveils plan for economic empowerment

INSTEAD of sitting back and allowing high unemployment, inequality, high murder rates and lawlessness to thrive as engineered by the ANC government to ensure that black people remain poor and economically inactive, ActionSA has unveiled its own inclusive economic empowerment (IEE) plan to change that trajectory.

This was the message from ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba, who was speaking to residents in Mabopane, north of Pretoria, yesterday, outside what used to be his first factory, where his famous Black Like Me cosmetic products were made.

Mashaba expressed disappointment that what used to be a factory that employed as many 250 local people was now an office for SA Social Security Agency grants which effectively made people dependent on the state.

He said he too was excited in 1994 about what democracy would bring.

“I looked forward to an explosion of black entrepreneurship and new opportunities for the communities that had been excluded under the evil apartheid regime. Today, South Africa remains the most unequal society in the world with unemployment hovering around 44%.”

Mashaba said it was possible for South Africans to turn things around.

“We’ve got to really stop this as I’m not prepared to sit back and allow the ANC government to destroy this country.”

The IEE, he said, was based on the principle that solving a problem required an understanding of the cause of that problem, rather than just addressing the symptoms.

Through this, he said, an Opportunity Fund would be introduced to reform employment equity measures, adopt a universal basic income stimulus, address persistent spatial injustice issues and promote social cohesion.

He said 10% of the fund would be allocated to education, 30% to entrepreneurial funding, 35% to infrastructure projects and 25% to further investments that promoted the sustainability of the fund.

A Universal Basic Income Stimulus would be introduced to provide a regular unconditional cash payment to every South African that signed up for it. The stimulus would help to ensure that no one went hungry under an ActionSA government.