By: Ntalo Mabunda
The biggest disservice we can ever do to ourselves is to believe that somehow liberal economic policies can help us fight & ultimately defeat the so-called triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment. That would be a terrible fantasy, especially for the youth whose future still lies ahead with bumps of uncertainty.
The status quo in South Africa as it relates to the triple challenges and the patterns of economic ownership were created through violent, immoral and criminal ways by the SA state under successive white power regimes during the apartheid era and before. The aim of this creation was to lay a strong foundation for white supremacy to thrive. It is only through radical means that this foundation can be shaken and ultimately destroyed.
President Ramaphosa said sometime last year that the government does not create jobs, a statement which infuriated a number of people yet it is true in the context of SA’s current policies. That is the thing about liberal policies, they give room for the elite to dictate what is fair and acceptable for the rest of the society. Government through its departments and SOEs does create some jobs but the main aim of state entities is service delivery, not job creation.
Liberal policies leave the responsibility of job creation to the private sector while pushing for government and its entities to create favourable conditions for private companies to flourish. This context already gives a clear picture of how we are losing the fight against the status quo. The control and ownership patterns of the economy squarely reflects the reality of SA’s triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
These triple challenges as well as the economic ownership patterns which are all correlated to race, reflect a rather unfortunate reality of how for the past 28 years we have been stuck with a situation favourable to apartheid beneficiaries, while the majority remain trapped in life of misery.
As opposed to what liberals would like us to believe about the private sector, the biggest interest of private companies remains maximization of profit at all costs, hence exploitation still flourishes to-date under the so called best constitution in the world.
Nothing will change this status quo except through radical means. Not even an economic growth of the highest figures we have ever reached can bring about the change that is needed. The only practical solution to redress the imbalances of the past is for the state to firmly and uncompromisingly take control of all the strategic sectors of the economy, and let the will of the people determine the future as opposed to the markets and investors.
Sticking with liberal economic policies was always a terrible idea for a post-apartheid South Africa as it puts the liberation movement in a corner to manage the crisis emanating from the sins of apartheid regimes rather than solving it.
The Morogoro Conference of the ANC in 1969 correctly pointed out that, “Our drive towards national emancipation is therefore in a very real way bound up with economic emancipation. We have suffered more than just national humiliation. Our people are deprived of their due in the country's wealth; their skills have been suppressed and poverty and starvation has been their life experience”.
The conference further stated that, “we do not understand the complexities which will face a people's government during the transformation period nor the enormity of the problems of meeting economic needs of the mass of the oppressed people. But one thing is certain - in our land this cannot be effectively tackled unless the basic wealth and the basic resources are at the disposal of the people as a whole and are not manipulated by sections or individuals be they White or Black”.
Today we are living through a period (which) many have described as a ticking-time bomb. The unchanging or rather worsening conditions of the masses, especially the black youth, are a recipe for disaster. History from all over the world teaches us that no society can live peacefully and in harmony when the majority of its people, and the youth in particular, are excluded from the mainstream economy. This is time for deep introspection over rhetoric as far as the question of economic transformation is concerned.
The future of the ANC in government seems bleak when presented only with liberal choices that are all concerned with massaging the ego of whiteness. Former president Mbeki once warned that “If in time, the reality of the absence of fundamental change convince the disadvantaged majority that we have created a political democracy which is unable or unwilling fully to dismantle the system of racial oppression and exploitation, then we must expect that a dream deferred will, rather than wilt in the sun, explode!”. The warning is more relevant today than it was in 1994 when Mbeki said it.
*Ntalo Mabunda is the former ANCYL UJ DFC branch Secretary currently a member of the ANCYL ward 119 Chief Makana Branch and ANCYL Joburg RTT member. NTALO is a qualified Engineer and Serves as a non-executive director of the Johannesburg Property Company.
*He writes in his personal capacity