Friday, 26 August 2011

Strikers, Trade Unions and Civilization

Recent events in South Africa should give pause all of those people of good will who supported the transition of South Africa to majority rule.
There can be no doubt that Apartheid was an evil system.  It deprived large numbers of men, women and children of the right to realise their potential in a fair environment.  It treated Black people as inferior, and that can never be excused.
However, recent events in South Africa have demonstrated, to those who care to pay attention, some of the fears that allowed that evil system to gain credibility.  Apartheid was based on the fear that democracy would allow people to rule regardless of their ability and their suitability to do so.  The fact that this fear was based on skin pigmentation was wrong, but many of the logical conclusions of this fear have been shown to have been well founded.  South Africans should be careful to ensure that the realisation of these fears is understood not to have, necessarily, a racial foundation, but rather be based in many other factors, some not unconnected with the very implementation of the system of Apartheid.
One of these factors is the rampant corruption in Government at all levels.  There can be no doubt that a significant portion of the funds intended to improve the plight of the people in general have been diverted to enrich those with some influence on the expenditure, and probably as much has been wasted by incompetence, ego and self-aggrandisement.  A large amount of money has been expended almost entirely for the purpose of enabling those in power to skim off bribes.  Many of these cases are known or strongly suspected, but the likelihood of the guilty parties ever being brought to justice is small.  The spread of the corruption is probably so wide-spread that the people who could do anything to combat this top-level corruption, apart from those who will have no desire, no incentive and, probably, not sufficient personal integrity to act in a manner likely to bring corrective or punitive action are, in all probability, in too tiny a minority to have any effect.
Another of the factors was highlighted by a Deputy Minister in a recent radio interview.  She was waxing lyrical about how she and several other high-level Government persons had visited a small village, a two-hour drive from the nearest town.  They found that the conditions there were appalling.  An example that she quoted was of a ‘child-headed household’, in which the child, a ‘woman’ of sixteen years of age, was alone supporting her five children, born since she was eleven years of age!  The Deputy Minister found that the conditions the family was living under were horrific.  The disturbing part of the report was that neither the Deputy Minister, a woman, nor the interviewer, also a woman, made no comment about the fact that a child of sixteen years should have been producing children at the rate of nearly one per year since the age of eleven!  It is little short of amazing that the underlying cause of the poverty of the family was ignored: the continual production of children in an environment of no hope for the future!  It is horrifying that it should be so normal an event in that population that a child of eleven should have been subjected to a repetition of the rape that is a serious statutory offence in South Africa, and that the Deputy Minister should have ignored that!
This example is highlighted by the continued rapid growth of the squatter camps surrounding every city and large town in the country.  Attention is paid to the squalor of these camps, to the poverty of their inhabitants, and vast sums of money are being pumped into their improvement, to provide at least a decent quality of life to the people living in them.  Politicians love these camps – their inhabitants are typically people who believe the wild promises made by politicians on the extremes, politicians who come to power on the back of the beliefs that the delivery of land will resolve all the problems, that the forced transfer of businesses from Whites to Blacks will automatically enable the beneficiaries of the transfer to enjoy the good lifestyles that the previous owners enjoyed, that the enforced appointment of Blacks to senior management positions will automatically acquire the knowledge and experience that the Whites, who previously or presently hold those positions, acquired over years as they worked themselves up to the positions of seniority, power and wealth.
A further factor is the example of lack of civilization displayed by many Trade Unionists during the recent strikes.  Violence, intimidation, destruction – these are all words that have become synonymous with the excessive demands for wages increases, many of which start at such high levels that they cannot be considered to be realistic.  A more realistic view of these demands is that they are pitched at that level – and believed by the unthinking and unsophisticated membership – in order to lead inevitably to the violence and confrontation of the strikes.  These actions were taken to an extreme in a recent strike, where non-striking women and men were stripped naked and humiliated, as well as beaten, by a jeering crowd of women and men strikers!  This cannot be held out to be the actions of a civilized nation!  However, some thoughts should be held in mind when thinking about these actions.  One of them is that the race that carry out these atrocities is the same as that that practiced the art of ‘necklacing’ during the ‘Freedom Struggle’.  This was the stripping naked of people who were claimed to not to support the ‘Freedom Struggle’, tying their hand and legs with barbed wire, putting a car tyre over them, filled with gasoline, which was then ignited, burning these political enemies to death in the most horrific way!  The perpetrators were Blacks, the victims Blacks!  Another thought that should be born in mind is that an influential member of the alliance that keeps the present Party in power is the Trade Union movement!
The final factor that one cannot ignore is that the massive growth in population in South Africa is a time-bomb that is predestined to explode.  The problem is not unemployment, as most commentators claim.  That is a symptom of the underlying problem.  The real problem is that the population is growing too quickly for any nation to create jobs at a rate sufficient to keep the new hands busy, the new bellies full.  Experience throughout the world has shown that a good rule of thumb for estimating the capital expenditure necessary to create one new job is US$250 000!  West Germany, when it amalgamated with East Germany in 1989, had a highly productive, exceptionally well-educated population of 65 000 000.  East Germany had a population, less productive and less well-educated, of 15 000 000.  Germany pumped billions into the small East German population and territory, and even now, 22 years later, it continues to do so.  The results are starting to become visible, but experts believe that it will take further decades for the East German population to come to the standard that West Germany enjoys.  And that in a country with a negative population growth!  Applying this formula to South Africa, an investment will have to be made for the foreseeable future at a level that will exceed the Gross Domestic Production!  What are the chances that South Africa, with a rapid growth of population, an education system that is near the bottom of the world ranking as a result of years of following failed policies and ideologies, a technical training system that no longer exists in any meaningful way, a political system that permits profiling by wannabee politicians at the expense of the few Whites who are trying to hold the economy together, a tax collection authority that has shown itself to be an ally of corruption, a President who seemingly spends most of his time attending meetings in foreign capitals and practically no time in actually making the decisions that are sorely required to keep the country operating, and a population that seems determined to copulate itself to destruction?
Those people of goodwill, inside South Africa, Black, White, Indian and Coloured, and outside South Africa, all of those who supported the transition from the evil system of Apartheid to a system of unbridled Democracy, which now exhibits very clearly the worst aspects of that system, should ask themselves:  “Is this what we wanted?”