The so-called
“Democracy” that is claimed to be the centrepiece of the New South Africa is
very hard to discern.
The most
glaring example of that is the National Covid Command Council, a grouping of
the top (ANC) politicians which has taken on itself the control of the South
African economy, issuing commands without providing any indication of the
justification for them, if indeed there is a rational justification, and
requiring strict adherence to even the most destructive and nonsensical parts
of them, in the manner of any of the typical African dictatorships. This process
of undemocratic governance is so clouded in secrecy and Party-controlled policies
that even the nominal President has, at times, been blindsided in an embarrassing
way. The actions of this Command Council are very clearly decided behind the
scenes by the subversives in the Ramaphosa Cabinet and the suspect members of
the ANC NEC. Nowhere is there any sign of a democratic process in making or evaluating
these commands in a reasoned way by the elected representatives of the people, even
those subject, as they are, to the discipline of the Party, another element of
non-Democracy, and there is not even any apparent attempt to lead the
electorate to believe that there is, in fact, any democratic process at work
here.
Another
example of the abject failure of democracy in South Africa is the rapid
agreement by the government, in this time of financial and fiscal crisis, to
hand over to the taxi industry R1,2 billion, to make up for their losses as a result
of having to operate at less than their normal 120% of capacity. When the taxi
bosses declared that they were not satisfied, wanting R5 billion, the
government hastened to mollify them by agreeing that they could load 100% of
capacity, provided they drive around in sub-zero temperatures with their
windows open! Apart from the evidence that the government is operating on
another planet, this move demonstrates two points very clearly. The first is
that it has now been established beyond any shadow of doubt that it is possible
to gain what you want by making threats, provided you simultaneously contribute
generously towards the bank accounts of the favoured few, probably as well as
the ANC. The few thousand lives that this will cost is, after all, no more than
the usual death toll the taxi industry inflicts on the public as a result of the
abject failure by the Police to do their duty in combatting dangerous driving
and unroadworthy vehicles, and the failure of the government at all levels to
provide safe and affordable public transport to its citizens.
Yet another
example of the lack of fairness, usually a requirement of democracy. Is the
fact that thousands of businesses were forced to bear the closure brought by
Covid-19, coupled with the loss of wages and profits by millions of citizens,
all of whom have the same debts, rent, and all other expenses and cashflow
elements associated with being alive, while the government and SOE employees,
most of them avid ANC supporters, continued to receive 100% of their
grossly-inflated wages and salaries, without any need to perform any services
to earn them. Of course, as they are ANC voters, one could not expect
otherwise.
Of course,
the ANC government is accustomed to unfairness. The BEE regulations are an
enduring indictment of their commitment to unfairness in their striving to win
votes. Under these regulations, Whites are unfairly prejudiced by not being
able to build, own and manage their own businesses beyond a minuscule size,
and, as a result, they unfairly prejudice tens of thousands of Black workers,
who would have enjoyed an income from them, as well as an opportunity to gain
the skills and experiences that, in any sane country, would have enabled them
to work their way to the top, to start and operate their own businesses, and to
contribute to the economy in a way that would have resulted in South Africa
winning the race against unemployment and poverty. The regulations, by
demanding that businesses have a prescribed minimum proportion of Black
ownership, have also had the effect of driving away billions of dollars (not
exaggerated, as is directly known by the writer) in direct foreign investment,
money and expertise which would have gone a long way to allowing South Africa
to win its place at the forefront of world economies, rather than slipping down
the indices of leading countries in almost everything that counts for its citizens.
What seems to have been ignored by the ANC louts is the fact that anyone who is
willing to take financial risks, to apply effort and ingenuity, and huge effort,
to build a small business into a large one, is not willing to hand over a
significant proportion of that business to a parasitic shareholder, who will
share in the profits and growth of that business without contributing anything
in the way of skills, investment or risk.
The final
example that we will list here, although the list could go on for pages, is the
idea that Blacks have a need to own their own piece of farmland (conclusively
disproved by several surveys and by the fact that most of those with access to
such farmland do not make use of it to farm at a scale greater than subsistence
level). This idea had produced the notion of Expropriation without Compensation,
a principle that goes directly counter to the principles enshrined in the
supposedly-democratic Constitution, and seems to be aimed directly at the
Whites, who have been the driving force that took South Africa to the point of
being a noted agricultural economy. Any Ramaphosa protestation to the contrary
is shown to be no more than ANC disinformation by the fact that the President
hastened to drop to his knee at the foot of the Zulu King, who did not like the
idea of losing his control over the three million plus hectares of land held by
him. The fact that the land became subject to his control by the despotic
actions of his bloodthirsty ancestor, King Shaka, another markedly undemocratic
person, seems to play no part in Ramaphosa’s unstinting promise to the Zulu
King (another example of the failure of democracy under our Constitution) that
the ANC would not apply to ‘his land’ the “fair” principle of return of the
land taken from the early inhabitants of the country to their original owners.
The thought that the Zulu King holds the land on behalf of his ‘subjects’ is
belied by the corrupt actions of many other Black tribal Kings, who enrich themselves
at the cost of their tribes, by the difficulties experienced by those subjects
in gaining any long-term rights to the land in order to build an agricultural
business, and by the facts that the Zulu King unilaterally imposed a ‘rent’ on
his subjects, in respect of land which they apparently own.
It would
certainly not be unfair to say that the illusion of democracy to which the
citizens, all of them, signed off in 1994, when they handed the control of the
country to a Party which has earned its name as the ‘Association for Nepotism
and Corruption’, was a massive confidence trick.
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