Economic zero-sum game is between cronies and the poor

FIFTY percent of our black people are waiting for something to happen. This allows foreigners to come in and fill the skills gap.

Foreigners set up businesses all over the country. Pakistanis have cornered the cellphone business and Bangladeshis have cornered the corner-shop business. Black people from other African countries specialise in the building, restaurant and retail sectors.

Our black people have only cornered the taxi industry, that’s all. And hundreds of thousands wait for work.

Yet our own government refuses to educate and train them. For example, we had to import hundreds of Thai welders on one of Eskom’s projects a few years ago.

This failure by the ANC to deliver is allowing the populists in the ANC and the EFF a bigger voice than they would otherwise have.

That they are debating about land grabs (expropriation without compensation) in Parliament when we know the outcome of property grabs in Uganda (under Idi Amin), Zimbabwe (under Robert Mugabe) and Venezuela (under Hugo Chavez) was mass starvation, that speaks volumes about their mental state and health.

They compound this cognitive dissonance by not realising that even if they combine their votes, they will not get the 67% required to change the constitution – unless they get the support of the IFP and all the other smaller parties, which is highly unlikely.

Ironically, there is a huge amount of land available in the open market for redistribution, but the focus of the Zuma administration was more about stealing billions to empower the Zuptas rather than to focus on the poor black masses.

Seeing none of them (ANC and EFF) are real farmers, how will this new black elite farm this land, assuming they succeed in amending the constitution? Will they farm it as Thandi Modise (the chair- person of the National Council of Provinces) did when most of the animals on her farm died of malnutrition and most workers ran away because of non-payment of wages?

Everything must be done to stop the ANC and EFF from destroying our agricultural and business base. Our mining sector has already lost 400 000 jobs over the past 24 years owing to the ANC’s cronyist black empowerment policy.

Only a few black crony elites gain free shares in their attempt to change the colour of the mining owners. Few of them are serious investors, most sell their shares the moment its “in the money” and spend it on consumer goods.

The mines must continuously look for a new set of black owners – a new set of crony elites – which increases the cost of mining and destroys the return on investments and the incentive to invest.

The combined GDP of both agriculture and mining is only 10% of the economy, whereas services comprise 60% of our GDP. This means 60% of the income and wealth is in services, and only 2% is in agriculture and 8% is in mining.

Services is where most black people will get meaningful employment and high incomes, thus we need to change focus.

We have a choice in this country. The zero-sum game (taking from one to give to the other) is not between black and white, but rather between giving to a few crony blacks and taking away from the 50% of black, downtrodden South Africans who have very little.

Throughout society, we have the same problem – be it in health, education, mining, public enterprises, etc.

The choice is between giving the 400 000 unemployed black miners back their jobs and scrap the requirement that 26% of mine ownership should be black. The ball is firmly in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s court. Naushad Omar

Hundreds of thousands wait for work