No evidence for Motala’s conclusions

YOUR edition of November 20 carried a rather strange contribution from Professor Ziyad Motala. I use the term “strange” advisedly because I have profound difficulty in understanding the purpose of the piece.

Why would a person who is well-ensconced in Washington DC take the time and trouble to write a piece that boils down to nothing but a page of personal insults directed at me.

Why would an individual who styles himself as a professor of law at a prestigious US university stoop to this level? I am pretty sure he has time on his hands, if only because unlike those of us who live in South Africa, he is not required to engage with the day-today struggles on a range of issues.

The mystery generated by his letter is why he does not put such time to productive use? If he wants to engage in an honest discourse on economics, it would be necessary for him to support his uninformed statements with some empirical evidence, as is required of scholars.

He might then even display the wisdom to assist all South Africans to find solutions to the urgent problems of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Merely hurling insults detracts from that task.

Or, more up his alley as a professor of law, he could assist South Africans to understand our great constitution and thinking about the impact of life in a constitutional state where the Constitutional Court has found that the other two arms of government have failed in their core mandates.

He could even apply his mind to some of the arguments that have arisen in the report of the public protector titled “The State of Capture”.

He would then himself recognise that the conclusion of his article is entirely without foundation. Nothing he suggests supports the argument of my involvement in state capture.

The use of the term “state capture” is born of particular corrupt practices between individuals in government and particular groups of individuals by means that appear within the legal definitions of corrupt practices.

It is for this reason that the focus of South African commentators is so solidly on the relationships that some have with the Guptas.

The argument from those quarters tends to be “all are captured, if not by the Guptas then by somebody else”.

Their arguments are such a thinly-veiled attempt at distracting from the scale of corruption reported on.

When Motala joins that pack, he is choosing the side that’s against good governance.

I should say to him and all who are interested, that no allegations of corruption have been raised against me in the 20 years I served in government.

And I shall not allow him to – from Washington or anywhere else.

In point of fact, Motala offers little more than a Trumpesquepopulist rage against globalisation. He offers no proposals for solutions to anything. His autarkic ideas are so hopelessly out of date – a country such as South Africa is a trading country. We produce for export and we, consequently, import a variety of goods.

The good professor appears to have a problem with trade in itself.

Of course, it would be far preferable if the professor earned the right to criticise by making a positive contribution to the development of our country first.

Perhaps we should hold our views until there is evidence of such contribution.

TREVOR MANUEL Former Finance Minister