Battling to cope with apartheid’s hangover
AS WISE as ever, the ANC leadership should be commended for developing the economic reform discussion document, “Reconstruction, Growth And Transformation: Building a new, inclusive economy”.
It raises typical economic issues at the mercy of the government and industries vis-à-vis informal sector dominated by foreign nationals.
The ANC deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, also rang a clarion call for comrades to observe the lockdown regulations. Hopefully, they will, with the document being their oyster to make meaningful inputs.
Apart from a need for the hard lockdown, either way, the risk is worse as front-line personnel are often forced into isolation. Covid-19 has hit communities hard, with a surge in deaths. It has also laid bare cracks in society – where masses live in poverty, squalid overcrowded settlements and deprived rural communities. Yet the wealthy are wrapped up in their privileged lives. Could it be that they couldn’t care less for the poor?
The working class is not coping with the status quo wrought by apartheid. The system consolidated a racist ideology of separate development through concealed corruption and malfeasance, creating fertile ground to cultivate permanent benefits for the minority.
The ultimate fault lines lie with the Kempton Park consensus which allowed privilege to supersede the political significance of the Struggle.
Ekurhuleni