Democracy
and Taxes
It has
become standard in the modern world to separate the operations of Government
from the people who pay the bills. This
situation is nowhere more evident than in the new South Africa.
It should
be an essential understanding of Government that the people who make the laws
and those who apply them are the servants of the people. They are there at the will of the people, and
they are paid by the taxpayers. No
matter how the machinations of Government are constructed, the taxpayers and
the ordinary citizens are the ones who supply the money to keep them
there. South African Airways, although,
supposedly run as a business (although there are no obvious signs of any real
understanding of the principles of business in that organisation) is, in the
final analysis, an organ of Government, and it will remain so until the
Government chooses to divest itself of that millstone. As long as there is any public investment in
the corporation, it must be held to the rigid standards of good governance and
transparency that should be applied to any organisation owned by the
public. Eskom is another example of an
organisation established and funded by the people, by means of diversion of tax
money to support it, by guarantees given by the State to enable it to borrow
the funds that it says it needs, and by the payment by citizens and taxpayers
for the services it provides. The SABC
and Sanral are yet other examples, and there are many more. And there are as many examples of
incompetence in the performance of their duties to provide the services they
are supposed to perform, subterfuge, arrogance towards the public and
dishonesty in their operations and their reporting to the public, who are their
ultimate owners.
This
situation has come about because the politicians have succeeded in their
efforts to separate what they do from the decisions of those who pay for
it. The continual harping on the needs
of the ‘poorest of the poor’ has succeeded in convincing the electorate, the
taxpayers and the recipients of Government largess, that the prime objective of
Government is to provide a security blanket for those who cannot provide for
themselves or who will not take the steps that are necessary to provide for
themselves. Those good-hearted people,
and those who see their best benefit lying in a system that provides for them,
albeit poorly, without the necessity for them to do anything for it beyond
casting a vote twice in every five years for the party that promises the most,
fail to understand that the money must come from somewhere! The vast bulk of employees do not understand
that the money required to pay their salaries and wages does not magically
appear in the bank account of the employer every payday. They do not understand that their efforts on
behalf of their employer are what ensures that the money is there to pay their
wages. Government, on the other hand,
enjoys the situation that, if it needs money, it can simply take it from the
taxpayers. They do not understand the
effort, the risk and the imagination it takes to earn the money that Government
simply takes. However, in the end, if
Government fails to provide the conditions in which the taxpayers are able to
earn that money, the flow of funds to the Government will simply dry up. If the Airports Company simply increases the
rents and levies payable by the companies operating at the airports, the cost
of flying, an important element of the economic life of a country, will become
too high to be justified by the benefit to the entrepreneur of those
flights. If the cost of electricity, an
important indicator of the health of an economy, is simply pushed up because
the State-owned monopoly supplier of electricity is incompetent to do the job, the
industries and businesses that use electricity will simply close down. If the cost of road transport escalates to
almost double because the agency responsible to the construction and
maintenance of the roads decides that it needs more money (a decision that is
neither transparent nor honest, and very questionable in the light of the huge
salaries and bonuses paid to senior executives who are manifestly incapable of
doing their jobs), the tourist business will slow down, internal transport will
ultimately die, and all of the businesses that rely on a good road transport
system will fail, either spectacularly or miserably. If the alternatives to all of these services
are eliminated, either by Government edict or by incompetent and short-sighted
management of the public-owned organisations that provide them (do not forget
that Spoornet put a huge effort into destroying the long-distance rail service
that was such an important factor in building the economy of the country in
pre-ANC times), the alternative to road transport is severely restricted, and
the collapse of the road transport system is facilitated.
Every
thinking South African is aware of the rapidly increasing number and scope of
the threats to the South African economy.
If they apply their minds, they can see that the country is sliding ever
more quickly down the competitiveness slope, that even the basket-case
economies in Africa and Asia are progressing more quickly and more sustainably
than is South Africa. Many economists
and leaders of business and industry are expressing the view that South Africa
is rushing towards the tipping point, beyond which it may not be able to
recover without a lengthy period of traumatic economic surgery. Several of the more realistic of these are
already saying that the economy is beyond that point, that even an economically
sane and competent new Government will have extreme difficulty in correcting
the disasters that the Marxist-Leninist policies of the ANC are building. Even worse, many of the top leaders in
business are withholding comment in public, fearful of the punishment that will
be meted out to them by the Party, a group of people who are increasingly
adopting the North Korean imperative of unrelenting praise and glorification of
the Great Leader, Jacob Zuma, from whom all largesse flows! Those leaders of business are working quietly
in the background to ensure that their businesses are insulated from the
economic crash that they discuss in private.
Some
economists who should know better, such as Ryk van Niekerk,
feel compelled to state that the economy will not collapse, while they point
out that the Government headed by Jacob Zuma is the worst Government South
Africa has had to endure in over a hundred years. One cannot help believing that the protestation
that ‘things will get better’ stems more from a pious hope than from any
understanding of the situation. It is
clear that things will not get better unless the people who pay the bills, the
taxpayers, take urgent and effective action to recover control of how their
money is spent.
Thinking
democrats, the people who believe that the Government they pay to do the work
that they require and authorise must comply with their wishes, must take urgent
steps to recover control of the Government from the politicians who see the
country as their fiefdom. They must take
meaningful action to make the politicians understand that they are prepared to
pay the taxes only if they are satisfied that those taxes are being applied,
efficiently and effectively, and, above all, honestly, to achieving the
objectives that are needed to ensure that the income that pays those taxes will
continue, and will grow.
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