‘Skip whites’ with insourcing

During a parliamentary debate on draft legislation on the insourcing of workers tabled by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the party’s deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, said “all white South Africans are already beneficiaries”.

Prescribed assets – the policy of using workers’ pension funds to finance development and infrastructure projects – was proposed by President Cyril Ramaphosa and earned the backing of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

According to Shivambu, there should not be an outcry about government potentially adopting this policy, as all white South Africans are already beneficiaries due to apartheid-era policy.

“The apartheid government had channelled all pensions to benefit the white minorities when sanctions were being imposed against apartheid,” he said.

“All white people are beneficiaries and when we want to use that for the benefit of black people, they want to cry foul and say there is a crisis,” he said.

Faced with international sanctions, the apartheid-era National Party (NP) resorted to this policy to fund state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as railways, harbours and SA Airways (SAA).

But political analyst Daniel Silke cautioned against government repeating mistakes made under apartheid.

“Should prescribed assets be legislated into law, it means a portion of these funds will go towards funding ailing and mismanaged SOEs like Eskom, SAA and Transnet, in a compulsory fashion through government bonds.

“When the NP government channelled this money from pension funds, there were outflows out of equity funds into government bonds.

“The problem with this approach is that it affects the equity markets by reducing the value of equities.”

Meanwhile, EFF party leader Julius Malema called for the process of tenders for state-owned enterprises to be abolished.

The EFF leader estimated government spends R800 billion through tenders.

“Inflated prices and corruption are one part of the problem with tenders.

“The other problem is that private companies make our people work under terrible conditions, with long hours, no medical aid and pay them below living wage.”

As South Africa, we have succumbed to the narrative that blacks do not have the capacity to govern their own affairs.

Julius Malema EFF leader