PROUD OF A CAPITALIST SOLUTION
A purple cow has made its way on to the ballot paper for the May 8 elections, the emblem of the newly launched Capitalist Party of SA (ZACP). Here’s an extract from a speech by Kanthan Pillay, one of the founders
THE Rand Club is almost as old as Johannesburg itself. The gold rush of June 1884 triggered a massive influx of gold diggers into the area.
The city was founded in 1886 and the club itself was established a year later after Cecil John Rhodes strolled through what was then Marshall’s Township, stopped at the intersection of Loveday and Commissioner, and declared: “This place will do for a club”.
This is a symbolic choice for us gathering here today.
This place was built from the riches of what became, and still is, Africa’s financial capital.
The Anglo Boer War, or the South African War as some refer to it, ripped the fabric of this country apart. At the end of that devastation, this club stood as a symbol of British triumph.
Most of us gathered here today would not have been allowed through these doors other than as hired help if we were blacks, Jews, Afrikaners, coolies.
And yet, today, as one ascends the staircase of the Rand Club into the Armoury, where firearms of the era still festoon the walls, a portrait of Nelson Mandela greets us while another of the Queen of England looks on from the sidelines to where she has been relegated. My car parked outside bears a Rand Club membership decal on the windshield.
This should be a triumphant moment, symbolising the end of colonialism and apartheid and that all of us gathered here today should do so as equals in a prosperous land.
But that is not the case. Today we gather in darkness. There is a generator on the balcony outside burning diesel so that we may continue this gathering as planned. On a Sunday morning, when the city and its businesses lie dormant with reduced demand on the grid, we have no electricity.
The absence of electricity that brings our economy to a grinding halt almost every single day is the most visible manifestation of what is now a failed state.
And the reason we have reached this point is that all of us are victims of crime. But the crime I speak of is not the crime of Marikana, Life Esidemeni, Nkandla or state capture. This crime is of the most insidious nature because we are not aware that it is taking place.
Every one of us in this country pays taxes, one way or another. For almost all of us, this takes the form of VAT, fuel levies, motor vehicle licensing fees and road tolls. In addition, our companies pay corporate taxes. And the single biggest contribution to our tax base comes from the middle class – every person who earns R6 500 a month or more.
And here is the crime. Of every R100 we contribute, our government spends R34 paying themselves.
Remember when you went to school in the morning and the bullies would line up to steal some of your pocket money? That’s exactly what happens to us now: R34 of every R100 taxpayers contribute goes to the public service wage bill.
I suspect many of us would have no problem with this if we had:
Hospitals that worked without killing babies through infection.
Police who could defend us, instead of us having to pay for private security.
Our water supply preserved, instead of sewage flowing into the
Vaal Dam.
Public transport systems to get to and from work safely and quickly.
But none of these things work. And they are never going to work if we continue down this path.
And this is all our fault. Our best and brightest go on to become doctors, scientists and engineers who can hold their own with the rest of the world.
The next tier become MBAS, chief executives, lawyers, chartered accountants and academics. Then we have artisans, mineworkers, construction workers, auto workers, all of whom do real things on a daily basis with real skills.
Gardeners know what plants need sun and which need shade.
Domestic workers know the intricacies of operating machinery like dishwashers and microwave ovens.
But who do we send to Parliament? Of the 400 people we elect to the National Assembly every five years, how many would be able to quit Parliament tomorrow and get jobs in the private sector that would pay them as much as they now earn?
We pay 400 people more than R1 million a year each, and they are largely unemployable.
They have never created a business, but they want to tell us how to run businesses. They have never created a single job, but they want to interfere with how we create jobs. These are people who do not know how to change a tyre, but want to spend our money on an airline that most of us will never use.
These are people who insist that a working mother taking home R5 000 a month must pay her caregiver R2000 a month.
They send their kids to private schools, but they spend our money on schools where teachers cannot read, write or count – where teachers impregnate pupils and no one gets convicted for statutory rape.
It’s at these schools where 5-yearolds die in the most horrifying manner – drowning in s**t. Almost a year ago I saw a picture of a 5-year-old on her first day of school. She had her whole life ahead of her, but her lifeless body was pulled from a pit toilet.
I’m a father with daughters. My youngest is 3 years old, and when I look at this picture, I see my children with their lives ahead of them cut short by the collective incompetence of the 400 people we’ve sent to Parliament.
I realised it was time to put an end to the tyranny of incompetence.
We need to fix this, and the only way is for those of us who know how to make things work to stand up and say: “Get out of the way, we’ve got this.”
Who are the people who know how to make things work? There is a collective noun for us. We are capitalists. South Africa is a capitalist country.
The street vendor is a capitalist. The spaza shop owner is a capitalist. The minibus taxi driver/owner is a capitalist. The factory owner is a capitalist. The farm owner is a capitalist. The mining boss is a capitalist.
The woman who sets up a crèche in a traffic island in Alexandra is a capitalist. And all of us capitalists come together to create jobs and prosperity.
Capitalism has unleashed the biggest wave of prosperity in the history of the human race.
By embracing it, the people of South Korea became 17 times wealthier than the people of North Korea and on average 15cm taller because of better nutrition as they are able to afford better food.
By embracing capitalism, Russia will shortly overtake the UK in size of its economy.
By unleashing capitalism on its economy, China every month pulls a million people out of poverty.
But here in South Africa, politicians have turned capitalism into a swear word. They make us feel guilty for working hard to improve our lives. And this guilt enables them to steal money from hard-working families and use it for corruption.
We say that if you are a taxpayer or employ someone and pay them, or if you provide a service for which people pay, you are a capitalist, and be proud of what you do to grow our country.
And what better name for a political party than to use the name that they have hurled at us as an insult, year after year?
And what of our symbol? Cattle are the most visible symbol of wealth for all of sub-saharan Africa.
Purple is the colour of prosperity. And in the words of Seth Goddin: “The only way to cut the hyper-clutter of products and advertising today is to innovate something new, unique and remarkable – like a purple cow”.
So, my fellow South Africans, I am proud to introduce to you to the Capitalist Party of South Africa – the ZACP
There are 10 of us. What we have are 10 core principles that bind us. They are liberty, equality, freedom of speech, private property rights, the rule of law, the right to work, the right to safety and security, free markets and international free trade, firearms for self-defence, fraternity.
We chose our core policy objectives to focus on solutions to specific problems, in line with our slogan, “Innovation, Disruption, No BS”: Solving cash-in-transit heists (crime). Beneficiation of mineral wealth (unemployment).
Increasing access to quality schooling (education).
Increasing tourism (unemployment). Improving policing (crime and unemployment).
Fixing hazardous school toilets (service delivery).
Reducing violence against women (crime).
Reducing high school dropouts (education).
Solving the drug problem (drug abuse).
Negative income tax as an alternative to a basic income grant (unemployment).
We believe the people of our country are tired of manufactured outrage. All of us, irrespective of where we come from, want to live comfortable, fulfilled lives and leave our children better off than we were.
We believe that we are the only party that refuses to be held prisoner by the past and knows how to shape the future.
We believe that there are enough people among our voters who share these beliefs.
They are the 7 million people who were registered for the 2014 elections and simply did not go to the polls because there was no one who spoke to those beliefs.
To you, we say, take a leap of faith. Get out of bed on May 8, go to the polls and put your cross next to the purple cow on the national ballot.
When we get into Parliament, we will campaign relentlessly for what we have outlined.
We will promise to give you feedback every week on our Youtube channel as to what progress we have made, what the stumbling blocks are and how you can help us to overcome them.
But before we do any of that, in the words of Steve Jobs, we have one more thing.
In recognition of the fact that 34% of our taxes go to the public service wage bill, the first piece of legislation we will table in Parliament will call for a 34% reduction in salaries across the board for all Members of Parliament, ministers and the president as a show of our resolve to cut government expenditure and rebuild the economy.
We know the people of South Africa support us in this. We call on all other parties to join us in this initiative.