WHITES STILL ENJOYING
SA WILL continue to remain untransformed because the political and economic system was designed by the apartheid government to favour white people.
This was said by political analyst Dumisani Hlophe, who highlighted that white people during the predemocratic dispensation negotiations ensured that they would retain benefits they had always enjoyed during apartheid. “By retaining the property clause it means that redistribution is out of the picture.
“We cannot redistribute land, minerals and all those kinds of issues,” he said.
Hlophe alleged that white people have retained control of the finance ministry.
“It is a very important ministry for a developmental state but the current political leadership does not have control over that, hence we change ministers within three days,” said Hlophe.
“The apartheid masters have been able to determine the rules of the game during apartheid and post-apartheid,” he said, adding that he was not surprised to see the DA winning the metros.
Another panellist, Ebrahim Fakir, manager of the Political Parties and Parliamentary Programme at the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, asked what would happen if there was no property clause in the constitution. He also asked how economic relations were going to be changed.
Fakir said he would advocate for the ring-fencing of higher corporate taxes and force corporates to invest a minimum amount in job creation, product and service expansion, and research and development. “But why should I trust a state in which there is a myopic political leadership who is riven with corruption, makes decisions unethically, who doesn’t understand the difference between capturing political power and administering political power.”
Fakir said the country’s ability to foster social, political and economical change was not due to the limitations of the transition from apartheid to democratic government.
“It is because of our own failures as black South Africans to run a state in the way we ought to be running it.”
Fakir said this was despite the ownership patterns of the Johannesburg Stock Exchangelisted companies not having changed as well as the routines by which they work. “That is not the fault of the powerful establishment, it is because of the complicity of a bunch of people who decided to buy into that bargain who must take the fall for that.”