Freebies will come with hefty price tag
CLEARLY, an overwhelming number of consumers heartily welcome the directive by the Competition Commission South Africa that cellphone operators should lower their data costs by 30% to 50%.
This is a commendable move, especially for prepaid customers who are the main ones affected by the high costs of data because of their socio-economic status.
Then, depressingly, the commission added something unsavoury to its ruling – prepaid consumers should be provided with “free” data daily. The unfortunate word, “free”, will soon send the country into oblivion.
In theory, all free services – from education to social grants, services and houses, you name it – offered to vulnerable citizens are benevolently intended, just like this one.
Practically, there is a serious danger that South Africa is fast becoming a country that will depend on freebies which are not sustainable in the long run. For example, social grants play an important part as a social wage to cushion the poor and vulnerable from the devastating effects of a hard life in a depressed economy.
But the fact of the matter is that a country cannot continue to exist as a welfare and nanny state with millions and millions of citizens depending on state grants.
Measures should be adopted to seriously wean millions from the grants and have them supporting themselves. That’s not happening as the contrary is the case, given the yearly rising number of grant recipients.
Politicians, as usual, are milking the situation.
For example, grants are used as an effective campaign tool by the ruling party to lock in votes. ANC electoral activists are wont to ludicrously and unashamedly (because state funds do not belong to the party state: “We brought you grants and the opposition is going to take them away when it wins power.”
The EFF, for its part, has nonsensically vowed that if it wins power, it will increase the grants astronomically.
I shudder to think what sort of legacy we are bequeathing to future generations when we instil in them that almost everything is free. Hence, I always cringe and wish to crawl into a hole, whenever I hear young people in their late teens to early twenties, in the run-up to elections, boldly threatening that they are not going to vote because they want free houses.
They believe they are entitled to houses as a right, not knowing that the so-called free houses were meant to temporarily ameliorate the plight of those disadvantaged under apartheid – it is not a “natural” right.
And the thuggish management of many state-owned enterprises have long climbed on the wagon with their incessant demands from the government for free bailouts.
The notion of “free” should be brutally and seriously reconsidered before it implodes society because it is just not going to bring any long-term sustainable benefits.