Visvin Reddy cites former DA KZN leader Zwakele Mncwango claiming the DA’s movement to the right is one of the reasons for his resignation (The Mercury, October 10). It is a pity that somehow being regarded as right-wing is maligned, yet the progressive failures of the political Left are not treated in the same way.
For nearly 30 years South Africa has been ruled by the political Left’s policies of socialism and communism. The plight of the country today is the direct result of those ideologies – marginalisation of free enterprise, inflexible labour laws, cadre deployment, B-BBEE, progressive implementation of the failed Freedom Charter dreams, subsidising poverty and incentivising indigence, predatory control by the state of health, land and natural resources coupled with the progressive break- down of infrastructure and law and order. In short, the Left has produced a failed state.
The stark difference between the ideology of the Left and what is stigmatised as the Right was expressed by Margaret Thatcher in 1975: “The individual is the sun and the state is the moon which shines with borrowed light.” Governments do not produce wealth. They squander the wealth that is produced by private, individual initiatives and enterprises.
Thatcher’s point is that government should not be the arbiter of liberty and wealth generation. That is the essence of what being perceived as right-wing represents and in many countries it is what people want because they resent the politics of the Left which have impoverished their liberty, dignity and wealth. They despise the controls that their governments have placed on their daily lives and on freedom of speech while failing to provide law and order.
It is time the likes of Reddy and Mncwango exit their political bubbles and recognises that alternative policies of what they malign as right-wing, are the only ones that can salvage South Africa.
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