The importance of merit and competence
DR DUNCAN du Bois was a DA councillor in the Bluff area before he left the party to join the Freedom Front Plus (FFP) in August 2016. The party recently elected him as its KwaZuluNatal premier candidate.
Chief reporter Chris Ndaliso asked him how he planned to tackle the task ahead.
What is your reason for getting involved with the FFP?
My reason is based on principles. Those principles are merit and competence. How will you maintain those principles?
Only by adhering to merit can racism be abated, and mediocrity and incompetence in public life minimised. A concomitant consequence of merit as the cornerstone of governance would be a return of confidence in the economy and the prospect of real, positive change. Voters need to register their opposition to the failed policies of B-BBEE, demographic representivity, affirmative action and cadre deployment and vote for merit.
What are a few things that you felt were against what you stood for in your previous political home?
Its embrace of affirmative action and BEE made a mockery of nonracialism. Its leadership had moved to the left to the extent that the Institute of
Race Relations today finds itself to the right of the DA. Also the DA’s attitude to minority groups was that they could simply tag along, as the main purpose was to reap black voter support. As the Institute of Race Relations has pointed out, the DA now embraces a race-based ideology.
In your new role as premier candidate for the FFP, what are the chances of that becoming a reality?
The FFP aspires to either a role in opposition or in a coalition.
How big is your party’s support base in KZN?
I am not at liberty to state that except to say that it garnered a small but promising number of votes in the previous two elections. Indications are that it stands to benefit from voter unhappiness with the DA.
What would you change in provincial government and why?
The Cabinet size needs to be drastically reduced; the size of local government needs to be revised; obviously cadre deployment would be replaced by merit. Farm attacks need to be recognised as a priority crime. Rural security needs to be overhauled so that properly trained forces can deter roving criminal elements. Accountability and transparency would be reinstated in public life.
What are your views on affirmative action, employment equity and BEE?
The FF Plus would abolish them as they are discriminatory and make a mockery of non-racialism. As policies they have failed to decrease unemployment, which has tripled since 1994. They have added layers of red-tape bureaucracy on to employment practices and thereby hobbled economic expansion and foreign investment, while producing an obscenely enriched elite. They also constitute a shocking affront to persons of minority groups born since 1994 and who had nothing to do with the faults that preceded them.