In exhorting voters to “turn South Africa around,” on one of its election posters the ANC conceded that the country is in need of a new direction. As a result, many voted in the hope that President Ramaphosa would honour that commitment. Sadly, his SONA address has proved otherwise.
Whilst a SONA address is not the place to present a laundry list of issues and how they would be tackled, it is the occasion to lay down fresh policy directions which would result in turning the economy around. Specifically, the following should have been addressed: clarity on the EWC issue, privatisation of SOEs, the division of Eskom into three units, and relaxation of labour laws so as to generate new employment opportunities.
Ramaphosa’s silence on those issues proves that the ANC is not sincere in wanting to embrace new ideas and instead is continuing down the same failed, socialist path. The same structural constraints remain in place, namely the ideology of the SACP and its fellow travellers in the trade unions. The crisis of competence, which is the root cause of the failure of governance, continues because of the unconstitutional application of demographic representivity in employment and procurement policies.
Drastic surgery is needed if South Africa is to be “turned around.” More of the same is not the answer. Twenty-five years of it has failed to deliver a better life for all. What is needed is a series of Nuremberg-type trials in which the criminal syndicate within the ANC is prosecuted and their socialist influence terminated. Liberated from that millstone a fresh election should be called in which a government of national unity delivers honest governance and real economic growth.
Sent into The Mercury, The Star, The Witness and The Daily News and published, 26 June 2019
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