As the country braces for a long weekend, the Heritage Day public holiday will give us pause from work but sadly not from an increasingly brittle political, economic and social climate.
Johann Rupert, Executive Chairman of Remgro and CEO of Richemont, said recently in London at a shareholders meeting that “radical economic transformation” was just a codeword for theft.
The ANC responded within hours with a blistering statement and a torrent of comments, straight from the socialist-Marxist economic textbook. They warned Rupert to remain silent because he is a “beneficiary of apartheid’s exclusionary policies” with “ill-begotten privilege”. The insinuation is that he opposes economic empowerment and change, and that he does not act in the interests of a democratic system.
Even though no comments have been forthcoming from other South African business leaders, it can be assumed that a substantial number of them agree with him on this point and say exactly the same in private conversations and in board meetings.
This most famous line in John Donne’s 1624 oeuvre, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, best sum up what may have been an ideal following the transition to democracy in South Africa in 1994.
The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) recently published a report that clearly shows that there has been an unprecedentedly high interchange of Cabinet Ministers and Directors-General since 2009 under President Zuma. Accordingly, the average length of a Cabinet Minister’s term was 8.5 months, and that of a Director-General (DG) 22 months. Sixty percent of working relationships between Ministers and DGs lasted only 12 months and 40% of them included an acting DG.
A concrete example of this (albeit at a lower level than DG) has also emerged recently. After the then head of Crime Intelligence, Mulangi Mphego, was forced to resign in 2009 for allegations that he interfered with witnesses in the Selebi case, he was succeeded by the now-notorious Richard Mdluli. After the latter’s departure, King Bhoyi Ngcobo was appointed acting head. After him, Pat Mokushane was appointed, but he was recently fired because he had no security clearance (only in South Africa!). Now the fifth head in eight years has been appointed for this important post – again Ngcobo (who was part of President Zuma’s Protection Unit).
The release of the Latest Poverty Trends in South Africa Report: An examination of absolute poverty between 2006 and 2015, on the 21 August 2017, by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA), was much like the release of crime statistics, late and bleak.
In an incident which has made global news, the First Lady of Zimbabwe, Mrs Grace Mugabe, is alleged to have assaulted a young South African woman while on a visit to the city of Johannesburg in South Africa. Early media reports had stated that she was on a visit to the country to seek medical attention. The most recent media reports, in line with a statement released by the South African Police Service (SAPS), stated that she was in South Africa to attend meetings convened by the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has since, controversially so, granted Mrs Mugabe immunity. This has left the Zimbabwean First Lady free to return to Harare, which freedom she promptly exercised.
Earlier this week Nkosazana Zuma, odds on favorite to become our next president, assured whites that they have nothing to fear from Radical Economic Transformation (RET) “because if it doesn’t happen peace cannot be guaranteed in the country.” What is this “radical economic transformation” that her former husband, President Zuma, refers to in virtually every major speech – and where does it come from?
RET’s origins may be found deep in the ANC’s Marxist-rooted National Democratic Revolution ideology which has as its core goal “the resolution of the national grievance arising from colonialism and apartheid”.
The ANC believes that although it achieved political liberation in 1994, it has not yet achieved economic liberation because – as President Zuma incorrectly insists – the economy is still controlled by “white males”.
Politics in Zuma’s South Africa is the gift that keeps on giving.
While the taste of victory in 1994 for South Africans of every hue was sweet, the reality of operationalising the dream was much harder, yet people remained steadfast.
