ANC ‘socialism’ promotes inequality
FOR POLITICIANS who have run out of road in resolving the issues that confront the country, the latest red herring is so-called white privilege.
Its promoters include bitter socialists like Terry Bell (City Press, May 13), the ANC, advocates of moderate anarchy like Julius Malema and, not to miss the red herring bus, Mmusi Maimane of the DA.
It is a historical reality that ruling classes always enjoy privilege.
Therefore there can be no debate that whites were privileged under colonialism and apartheid. But that’s the past, it’s water under the bridge. No amount of hand-wringing can change that. Instead, the question to be asked is: what purpose is served in demonising whites for a past they can’t change and a new white generation that had nothing to do with life before 1994? How does that promote nation-building and harmony?
Politically, the answer is obvious: whites are being made scapegoats for the faults and failings of the new political rulers. That said, it is claptrap to claim white privilege has exacerbated black poverty and inequality. Here’s why:
ANC restrictive labour policies have discouraged wider employment practices and hobbled economic growth. Whereas unemployment stood at 3.2 million in 1994, thanks to worldwide sanctions and disinvestment promoted by the ANC, by 2017, after 23 years of liberated ANC rule, unemployment had grown to 8.3 million.
Blacks have benefited hugely as a result of demographically-based preferment policies on procurement and employment at the expense of minorities.
Whereas the civil service was once white-dominated, it is now almost exclusively black.
Statistics show that blacks now outnumber whites in the highend living structure.
Cadre deployment and state capture has done nothing to benefit the army of the black unemployed.
Education standards have fallen under the ANC to the point where Dr Mamphela Ramphele remarked that Bantu education was better than what schools under the ANC are producing.
Poor literacy and numeracy has thus further disadvantaged employment prospects.
History shows marginalisation of minorities produces emigration and/or self-preservation.
Minorities are increasingly entrepreneurial because employment in the government and corporates is demographically limited by new job reservation laws.
Whereas minorities survive through their own enterprise, the biggest mistake the ANC has made is to promote the view that the government is the solution for all social needs. Thus, socialist welfarism has now reduced 18 million to dependence on state grants for survival.
Black inequality and poverty existed before 1994. But its subsequent exacerbation and extenuation is entirely the result of the ANC’s socialist policies.