Black people must stand together in finding solutions and untangle inequality
THE ASSERTION in the article in City Press of March 1 that “Herman Mashaba believes that his rags-to-riches story would not be possible if he were starting today – with no education or qualifications – as he did 30 years ago”, is based on the paper’s glorification of the apartheid era whose sentiments it seems you continue to cherish.
None of us can deny the road to success that, you, Joseph Moloantoa and Johan Kriel, carved to create Black Like Me as a truly successful brand, and you have enjoyed my support and respect since 1986, and to date Black Like Me remains one of a few black symbols of success today.
Your comment “inequality is inflicted by (the) government” is both mischievous and inappropriate.
Only last week, David Lipton, the deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), attested that the South African government was faced with a hard balancing act, because the economy inherited by the new government was skewed to benefit a few.
Inhibiting factors
Indeed part of our labour legislation does inhibit entrepreneurship development, and the establishment of the Ministry of Small Business Development under the stewardship of Minister Lindiwe Zulu provides us with the scope to deal with those inhibiting factors afflicting small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs).
We needed the establishment of this ministry in support of your own call for support for entrepreneurship, and countries such as India, Malaysia and Indonesia have shown that, with a dedicated SMME ministry, entrepreneurs can flourish, but under a national SMME master plan that places SMMEs at the epicentre of economic development.
We have many self-made and wealthy individuals such as Ndaba Ntsele, Vusi Sithole, Sandile Zungu, Dr Thandi Ndlovu, Dr Anna Mokgokong, Bongani Mabizela and many others, whose fortunes continue to flourish with the space created by the new democratic dispensation.
This includes many young people, such as Bokang Seritsane, who have set up thriving businesses in the Johannesburg precinct.
This has been made possible because of the new democratic order through transformational policies that I continue to support, and where there are weaknesses, and we continue to collaborate to find alternative solutions, because it is the only government we can claim as ours.
The amendment of the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act and the Revised Codes of Good Practice on Black Economic Empowerment are testimony to this collaboration.
Your assertion that our Constitution does not allow discrimination is baseless and misplaced.
Clause 217 under Procurement of the South African Constitutions states:
(1) When an organ of state in the national, provincial or local sphere of government, or any other institution identified in national legislation, contracts for goods or services, it must do so in accordance with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.
(2) Subsection (1) does not prevent the organs of state or institutions referred to in that subsection from implementing a procurement policy providing for –
(a) Categories of preference in the allocation of contracts.
(b) The protection or advancement of persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.
(3) National legislation must prescribe a framework within which the policy referred to in subsection (2) must be implemented.
[Subsection (3) substituted by section 6 of Act 61 of 2001.]
It’s there in black and white, so there is no ambiguity!
In my opinion piece two weeks ago, (Business Report, February 25, “Road to SA’s Radical Economic Transformation is Far and Elusive”), I stated that: “As black South Africans, the success of our struggle for economic freedom means we must continue to create democratic institutions that we dominate for selfish interest, but never for self-interest.”
I further said: “It means the umbilical cord that binds us must permeate beyond our institutions, but must bleed our influence in other institutions representing what looks like the rainbow nation. For, the rainbow can never be defined as complete unless its colours include an equitable spread of our national pigmentations.”
Simply put, as black people we must all stand together in finding solutions and stop whingeing, and together endeavour to untangle this 300-year-old inequality monster alongside government.
South Africans agree that social grants cannot be a long-term solution, and you are not speaking for the majority when you say “social grants destroy families by destroying the dignity of the recipient”. The opposite is true.
In reading The Independent (the UK newspaper) of March 4, page 20, I came across an advertisement that reads as follows: “Become a child sponsor today and for just £15 a month you could give a child like Elisa a future.”
The advert describes Elisa as “being a child living in the Democratic Republic of Congo”. It further states that Elisa longs to go to school, and so on…
Now for me that is what instigates the erosion of dignity of the black child, which the current social grants attempt to restore. What erodes personal pride and dignity is to see adults begging at street corners and for vulnerable children turning to prostitution and becoming sources of cheap labour.
What bleeds my heart is seeing a poor and orphaned African child walking to school hungry because of the absence of a bread winner at home.
In his book, A Time Travelling Guide to our Next Ten Years, Frans Cronje, the chief executive of the South African Institute of Race Relations observes that the social grant system has assisted greatly in improving the lives of poor communities and impacted on preventing more people spiralling further into abject poverty.
The same sentiment is shared by the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
It is not useful for you to advocate for the current political leaders to step down against the wishes of 11 million South Africans that affirmed their support for the current government policies through a democratic vote.
Surely, since you have raised your hands as a political commentator, democratic elections are held every five years and surely your turn will come. Meanwhile, it is only fair for us as business to take our role and make this democracy work, we owe it to our children and future generations to come.
As black people we must all stand together in finding solutions… and endeavour to untangle this 300-yearold inequality monster alongside government.