Redistribution is not the answer
IN MY opinion Siya Mkhize seems to have a one-sided view regarding white capitalism and poverty in his letter in your newspaper on December 13.
He mentions that the EFF should be commended for its courageous stance, and that white business owners should be made to hand over 51 percent of their business to their employees.
My question is why only white business owners? What about other races who own businesses? There are many other race groups who have staff, and in my opinion the same should apply to all business owners, not only the white business owners.
We all must acknowledge that the majority of our citizens did suffer and were disadvantaged under apartheid. However the present government has had 21 years in power, and has not made the progress that it should have over this long period in so far as poverty is concerned.
Almost every government department is a mess, they have plundered the state’s financial resources and wasted so much on corruption, also pouring billions of rands into the World Cup, Inkandla, and now are prepared to fund the Commonwealth Games in Durban.
All this did nothing to alleviate poverty in the long term but made a select few very rich.
To my mind poverty has many causes: corruption, a hunger for power, poor service delivery, and poor family values, just to mention a few. In many countries in the world, including several in Africa, there is abject poverty, and to simply say redistribution of the wealth will solve the problem is in my view very short-sighted.
The bigger picture is that responsible people be elected to serve public interests before their own, and that elected officials be held accountable for their actions. WADE WILLIAMS
Ladysmith