Black Advocates – Equal Opportunity or Government Racism

 

The law and the policy of South Africa is designed to ensure that Black people are given equal opportunity to act in the economy of the country.  There is no profession more committed to that ideal tan the legal profession.  The lawyers were in the forefront of the fight for equality, both Black and White lawyers.  However, it is a concern that there is now a discussion about the preponderance of White advocates in the people used by Government and large corporations in their legal battles.  The Black lawyers are calling for the use of Black advocates to a much greater extent, and for a binding policy to enforce this.

The simple reason for the use of White advocates is that those advocates offer the best opportunity to win the Court action, which is the purpose of the litigation.  This simple reason introduces a range of other considerations.

First and foremost, the Constitution calls for equal opportunities to be available to all qualified persons, regardless of race.  Any Government policy that goes contrary to that intention is contrary to the Constitution.  The Government has progressed a long way towards negating that principle of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ in its BBEEE legislation, which clearly denies White males the opportunity to realise their potential, regardless of the superiority of their qualifications or their capabilities.  It is very clear that the Government is exercising racial discrimination on a broad base, to the prejudice of the economy and of its general population.

The standard of Government education in South Africa is too poor to provide the minimum requirements for an effective advocate.  Unfortunately the fact is that a majority of the people who obtain a good education are Whites, partly because the White population recognises the need for an adequate education and are willing to pay for it.  The Law Society issued a report several years ago that a large proportion of newly-graduated lawyers were not functionally capable of using language, an essential element of legal training and education, adequately.  Many of the university students entering universities need to undergo corrective education in language, mathematics and science.  What chance do these people have of becoming effective legal professionals?

Another important factor is that the home background of the Whites is often more modern and aligned to the needs of the modern society and its legal thinking.  A ‘herd boy, growing up in the rural areas’, as Jacob Zuma proudly claims to have been, is exposed to the tribal systems of ‘law’ and thinking, which are very far from the modern society of the cities, and adapting to a modern system of laws is a big jump in his mental structure. 

A further factor is that the White advocates have gathered experience that enables them to be more effective in the task, experience which can only be gained from years of doing the job, taking on increasingly responsible and complex tasks and learning on the job and from peers.  It is very seldom that an advocate who graduated ten years ago will be as effective in a legal dispute as one who graduated forty years ago and has practiced his profession since then.  A quota system cannot impose that experience or replace it.

The imposition of a formal quota system in the use of legal professionals, reinforcing the informal quota (or even exclusive use of Black professionals) will be another step in the imposition of a new Apartheid, and will be even more damaging to the effectiveness of Government in its work.  Government has an obligation to use only the best legal services available for the job.  That is part of the requirement that Government use its financial resources most efficiently, and that obligation cannot be satisfied if the obligatory use of a less competent Black advocate results in the Government losing a Court battle, with the result that it has to pay legal costs as well as losing the ‘meat’ of the action which, almost by definition, has a value in excess of R100 000 per case.  This is clearly shown by the annual awards by the Courts of damages for wrongful arrest of over R100 million per year against the Minister of Police.

All of this is not to say that there are no excellent Black advocates.  There are, and they should be retained in exactly the same way as the excellent White advocates.  However, the requirement that Black advocates should be used because of a quota system, rather than their legal and Court excellence, can only result in the standard of legal representation of the State declining even further.  Before the advent of the ‘Rainbow Nation’, an advocate had to earn his or her place in the legal profession the hard way, by achieving good results in all of the courses leading to the law degree, including examinations in English, Afrikaans, Dutch and Latin as background knowledge essential to an understanding of the law and the legal precedent cases, and by doing excellent work over a long period of time and so gaining a reputation that would attract further and more responsible briefs.  There can be no reason why a Black skin should be a reason to sort-circuit this process.

Whites and Foreigners in South Africa

The recent escalation in attacks on foreigner-owned businesses in many cities in South Africa are a predictable result of several factors, all of them promoted by the ANC and its allies.

The first factor, of course, is the extreme poverty of many people, particularly Black people, which results from the abjectly poor economic policies of the ANC Government, coupled with what seems, more and more, to be a policy to downgrade the mental capabilities of the electorate by providing one of the worst educations in the world.  A very large proportion of the populace is not equipped to participate in a modern economy, even with the forced advantages that the BBEEE policies provide them.  The ANC Government has intentionally removed many of the structures of education and training built up by successive Governments to keep the capabilities of the populace, or, at least, a part of the populace at a level near to that of Europe and the United States.  The Nurse Training College, the trade skills training centres, Medunsa, and many other places and systems of training have been dismantled and are now needing to be built up again, under management that has been shown repeatedly to be lacking in capabilities, skills and experience.  The people whose skills could have been brought to an employment-capable level have been left to fend for themselves, and the economy has gone into a nose-dive as a result, with skilled contractors being imported by virtually every organisation, such as Eskom, at huge cost and at huge dislocation, and, as is clearly evident, under the management of people who are more interested in driving expensive company cars and filling their Swiss bank accounts for as long as they hold the position, rather than promoting the objectives of the organisation or the community.

The second factor is that the Government and its organs have been directly involved in promoting discord between the Blacks and the Whites, as is evidenced by the recent spate of anti-colonialist statue removal demonstrations.  It can be no simple coincidence that these demands arose at about the time of the State Visit of that prime example of the Black destruction of democracy, Robert Mugabe, who spoke of digging up the remains of Cecil Rhodes, while his protégé, Jacob Zuma, sniggered his enjoyment in the background.  It seems to be clear that the present policy of the Government is to stir up hatred between the Black population and the Whites, as is evidenced by a series of television shorts and programs aired by the SABC ‘documenting’ the atrocities committed by Whites throughout Africa, such as the killing of the Hereros in South West Africa in 1908 (!) and the ‘anti-racism’ advertisement, aired several times per day, listing ‘Whites Only’ signs from Apartheid days, with a brief comment at the end of this inflammatory advertisement hat Nelson Mandela said that to hate is learned, and to love can also be learned.  Remarkably, nothing is said of the thousands of Whites who stood against Apartheid at the risk of imprisonment, or of the fact that the National Party was limited to less than a two-thirds majority at every election by White voters.  It is clear that a large proportion of Whites were against Apartheid from the inception.  Even Jan Smuts, a South African Prime Minister and one of the founders of the United Nations, is on record as having warned the National Party in 1948 that their racial policies would be a move that they would regret in years to come.  However, those facts have all been ignored in the rewriting of history to favour the ‘freedom movements’, and the truth has been perverted, just as Robert Mugabe now arrogantly claims that the British and the Whites were responsible for the slaughter of 45 000 members of the opposition tribe, their bodies being dumped down the shafts of mines, when it is a documented fact that those mines were in full operation until more than a year after Mugabe came to power.

The third factor is that one of the organs of Government, the King of the Zulus, made a public statement that foreigners were taking the jobs of locals, urging those foreigners to return to their countries of origin.  The fact that the Leader of the Zulu nation made this statement is noteworthy, particularly against a background of statements by Zuma and his cadres that the ‘problems of South Africa started when Jan Riebeeck came to the Cape’, clearly a statement that the Whites are foreigners, whereas the Black nations are not.  That ignores the fact that the Blacks are just as much immigrants as the Whites, having migrated from the north via an eastern route, to massacre the then-indigenous races of the area.  The statement also ignores the massive advances that the Whites and other ‘foreigners’ brought to the country.  Shaka Zulu, the national hero of the Zulu nation, was a murderous despot living in a Stone Age society when the Whites arrived in the area, yet he is glorified, ignoring totally the thousands of deaths of Zulus at his command.  History has been rewritten, and the credulous population, without the education to allow them to know better, is being exhorted to act against those who are not one of them, regardless of what they have to offer.  South Africa is going down the same road as Uganda did under Idi Amin.  If you have any doubt about that, ask one of the Indians who, as part of the mainstay of the Ugandan economy, were massacred, the survivors being driven from the country at the behest of a lunatic dictator.  Those Indians took their skills and work ethic to other countries, depriving Uganda of them, just as the Whites and other non-Blacks have been, and are being, driven from South Africa.  The economic and developmental results are clear to see in Uganda, as in South Africa.

The lack of public order, taking its example from the leaders of the ANC, who see that it is easier to take than to earn, is a major factor in the current attacks on foreigners.  This lack of effective policing is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the TV cameras arrive at each new looting well in advance of the Police, and by the ineffective Police action at each looting.  Is it really the case that a Policeman is slower than a looter carrying three trays of beer?  One could reasonably expect that at least ten or twenty looters would be arrested at each crime scene, yet the Police seem to be unable to do any better than to arrest a foreign shop owner who shot someone in the process of protecting his property and his life!  Of course, given the example of the extremely expensive arrest and extradition of Shrien Diwani and his subsequent acquittal after preparations of several years for the trial, it is perhaps understandable that the Police are reluctant to take action to arrest and bring to trial a simple looter and arsonist, particularly, probably, when he is doing no more than to give effect to the exhortations of his King.

Certain ANC-biased commentators claim that the attacks are a means for the starving poor to obtain food.  It is remarkable that the film clips of the attacks on foreigner-owned stores show the looters running off with crates of beer, the Police stealing packs of toilet paper!  One of the foreigners asked the obvious question.  ‘If they are stealing to feed themselves, why don’t they break into local-owned stores?  Why are foreigners being targeted?’  It is clear from the fact that the looting is taking place countrywide that the actions are being centrally controlled.  Is it a policy of the ANC, in contradiction to the statement of Thabo Mbeki that ‘South Africa belongs to the Africans’, (a statement that implicitly excluded the Whites), now to remove the non-South Africans, perhaps also excluding the Whites from the permitted group?  It certainly seems to the observers that this is the case.

The dissolution of the rule of law, upheld by well-trained and effective Policing, to the current state of mob rule, of hints given to the racist extremists by the President, of wishy-washy attempts by Government bodies to regain control of the country from the mobs, supported by statements by the President that show his unwillingness or inability to lead a law-abiding country, is an extremely worrying development.  The continuing slide of the country’s economy and the demolition of the excellence that had been built over decades is likely to continue, notwithstanding the statement by Zuma regarding Eskom that ‘We have plans’.  The public is entitled to know what the plans are, if, in fact, such plans do actually exist.  They are entitled to have a full elucidation of such plans in a public forum, such as Parliament, rather than the sniggering statement of omnipotence that Zuma made during his State of the Nation address.  If the Government does not have realistic and effective plans, ones that can stand up to public scrutiny and comment, that is a cause for huge concern.  If the Government does actually have plans, but is unwilling to make them public, that is cause for even greater concern.  Unfortunately, a rational analysis of public statements, evaluated in the light of events, makes one believe that the Government does have plans which have the objective of taking total control of the country, in the way that Stalin did in Russia, but which have no more than political and self-enrichment objectives, and which ignore the plight of the citizens of the country.  It seems more than likely that South Africa will continue to follow the lead of Zimbabwe.

AGOA and South Africa

A number of American clients have given voice to their concerns about the frantic attempts by Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, to convince the American Congressmen and –women that South Africa deserves to be included in the benefits offered by AGOA.  They have pointed out a number of matters that the South Africans have been at pains not to bring to the attention of the American public during the negotiations.  Some of the more important of these matters are addressed below.

South Africa is, at present, the dominant economy in Africa.  The objective of AGOA is to ensure that underdeveloped African countries are given an opportunity to grow by having duty-free access to the American market.  If South Africa is granted that access, it will go a long way to ensure that the country continues to dominate the African economic scene.  South African companies are known to adopt predatory practices in their competition with weaker competitors, both within the country and outside.  That is the reason why large companies predominate in South Africa.  It is also the reason why those countries are moving into Africa.  There is no altruism in South African business, and any small, developing African industrialist would have good reason to fear the entry of one of those large companies into its market.  That fear is multiplied by the close relationships the African top businessmen have with the politicians in other African countries, a relationship that is often greased with money and favours that are beyond the capacity of the smaller business neighbours.  Permitting South Africa to benefit under a renewed AGOA would certainly serve to advance the interests of South African businessmen and top politicians at the expense of the developing businesses in other African countries.

South Africa can no longer be counted on as a friend of the West, particularly of the United States and Britain.  This has been clear for several years, effectively since the accession to power of Thabo Mbeki, who is known to have strong leanings towards Russia, Cuba and China, and it has been intensified under Jacob Zuma.  The leaning is clearly demonstrated by the grants made to Cuba, by the sending of students who cannot gain admission to South African universities to institutions of higher learning in Cuba, Russia and China, rather than to those vastly superior universities in the United States, by the membership of South Africa in the Brics association, in which the two most significant players are Russia and China, by the fact that the African National Congress desired to send Julius Malema, then President of the ANC Youth League, to China for instruction in ‘anger management (or, more likely, indoctrination), by the large number of repatriation the bodies of deceased ANC and South African Communist Party members who died in Russia during the ‘struggle years’, by the unveiling today of a monument to the assassinated Leader of the Communist Party, by the fact that an important participant in the Tri Partite Alliance that enables the ANC to hold power is the SA Communist Party, by the fact that the ANC appears to have difficulty separating the SA Communist Party from Cosatu, and by numerous other examples.  That leaning was dramatically underlined by the speech of Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, during which he castigated Britain, the United States and the West, and declared his strong admiration for China and Russia.  His remarks were accepted with sniggering gratitude by Jacob Zuma, indicating his strong approval.  Mugabe has long been an advisor to Zuma and others in the ANC, relying on their inexperience, their lack of a Western-style education and their reverence for the ‘elders’.  Mugabe called for the formation of an alliance of African and Arabian nations to stand up to the West.  There can be little doubt that Zuma will follow this demand, in the hope that it will detract from his ignominious performance at home.  The strong support that Zuma gives to Russia and Cuba is, no doubt, a hangover from his terrorist days, when the USSR provided arms, training and funding to virtually any group of terrorists, masquerading under the name of ‘freedom fighter’, in order to extend its power into Africa.  The USSR may be gone, but the Russian dream of empire lingers on.

While industrialists need the assistance that AGOA will give them, the question is really whether the United States would wish to support an economy that enables the ANC to pursue its objectives of building Russia and China as effective competitors of the West, and particularly of the United States.  The American businessmen have stated that they would be more than willing to support a new AGOA that will build friends, but they are unwilling to support one that will assist the development of the irrational hatred of the United States that seems to be so much a part of the psyche of the present Government of South Africa.  They ask why they should grant import duty preferences to a Government that has signed an agreement that will give Russia preferential treatment in a bidding process to construct a new generation of nuclear power plants as well as control for twenty years over every element of nuclear technology that the country is involved in (with attention being given to the fact that South Africa has extremely friendly relationships with Iran and North Korea!), without any indication that American companies will have any significant involvement in the bidding process.  They ask why any unconditional assistance should be given to a country that has shown itself clearly not to be a friend.

If South Africa is to be included in the benefits that a new AGOA will provide, the American businessmen ask that clear commitments be given that America will be provided at the very least an equal opportunity, on a level playing field, to participate in the South African economy, without the need to bribe a senior politician or official.  They ask that the industries they establish in South Africa be given the right to conduct their business in a fair and transparent manner, without duress and unfair usage of the powers that State Departments have to coerce them to do the bidding of the ruling Party outside of the legal boundaries that apply to all, and without the prospect of indigenization of their businesses, which is no more than simple legalised coercion.  They ask that they be treated in the same way as the American Government would treat a South African-owned business.

Democracy in South Africa?

A news article today described how a Venda woman was fined by the local tribal chief an amount of R850 for the offence of bearing a child out of wedlock.  The article was more concerned by the hardship the woman faced as a result of having to borrow the money from a loan shark in order to pay the fine, with the child support grant of R350 per month being just sufficient to pay the interest on the loan, and it made practically no reference to the injustice of the system that permits a tribal chief, more often than not a barely-educated man who relies on a patriarchal system of tribal custom and culture, rather than a documented and democratically-approved system of laws and Courts.  The fact that this system is allowed to exist in South Africa, where the Government constantly tells the people that we have a democracy that is guaranteed by ‘the best Constitution in the world’, demonstrates just how hollow that claim is.  A critical element of a democracy is that all people are equal under the law (unmarried women, as well as the men who are the fathers of their children), and that every person has recourse to the Courts for enforcement of their rights under those laws.  Unfortunately, the woman in Venda does not have those democratic rights.  It appears from remarks made by the Speaker of Parliament that Jacob Zuma, the State President, is not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of the citizens (with the exception of those unfortunate enough to be subject to the tribal laws and customs), and nor is Mangosutho Buthelezi, a Prince of the Zulus, and who knows how many other political and royal dignitaries, all in accordance with the unwritten rules that seem to govern the South Africa democracy.

Another article concerns the meeting of the University Council convened to discuss the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, which appears to offend the sensibilities of certain Black students, as well as the visiting dignitary, the Honourable State President of Zimbabwe, a man who has shown himself to be amongst the least honourable and the least democratic of State Presidents.  The Council of the University of Cape Town, the home of the heart transplant as well as numerous other medical, scientific and industrial advances in years past, met to consider the demand of the students, under the threat of a rabble of such students, of whom fewer than 25% will graduate (while the rest go into politics and other forms of crime).  The meeting was allowed by the students to continue for about an hour before the rabble forced their way into the Council Room to demand that the Council decide to remove the statue.  The decision, predictably, was made to remove the statue to avoid offending the sensibilities of the Black students, notwithstanding the fact that Rhodes donated the land on which the University stands and made a huge endowment to enable its founding.  It is noteworthy that the decision was made under duress, enforced by an unruly mob which had demonstrated its willingness to enforce the demands made by Mugabe by violence if the decision did not accord with the demands of the mob.  This act of cowardice by the Council, and the precedent that violent and unlawful action is able to achieve the satisfaction of the demands of the small number of rabble-rousers who instigated the unthinking support of the uneducated and unthinking masses provides a very poor outlook for this formerly noble institute of learning, and will certainly go a long way to downgrading the respect for the degrees it will hand out in the future.

The picture that emerges from these two incidents is frightening.  The country is clearly ruled by mobs and by an unelected ‘royal class’, people who have no responsibility for their actions to the electorate.  It is a picture that bears a frightening resemblance to the communist revolution in Russia and the ascendance to power of Adolph Hitler in Germany.

It seems to be safe to say that democracy in South Africa, if it ever really existed since 1994, is now dead.

Mugabe and the New Order in Africa

The hate-filled and inflammatory speech of President Robert Mugabe during the State Visit to South Africa, following on the inane and giggling speech of Jacob Zuma must give cause to fear to any intelligent and discriminating observer.  Mugabe, as the current President of SADEC, left no doubt as to his allegiance to China and Russia, and as to his hatred for Britain the America, as representatives of the West.  His derogatory comments about Cecil John Rhodes made it clear that he is the motivator behind the current rash in South Africa of hatred against Rhodes and the Whites who did so much to develop the Dark Continent to what it is now. 

One must take the speech of Mugabe against a background of election-rigging, killing of the family members of the Opposition candidates, torture of thousands of Zimbabweans, unlawful expropriation of productive White-owned farms which were handed to Party favorites, internal terrorism by teenage ‘military veterans’, siphoning off of huge amounts of money to his personal bank accounts, and ‘peacekeeping actions’ by the Zimbabwe military in the DRC, at a time when Mugabe vetoed the payment to a South African country of the cost of water treatment chemicals to be used in an Opposition-held city, in order to gain a shareholding in a diamond mine in the DRC.

Mugabe attacked the West for the lack of equality by African nations in the United Nations Security Council, mentioning in a rather threatening way the role that might be played by the Arab nations against the West.  Given the influence by Mugabe in the African Union, the West should be concerned at the implicit threat by Mugabe to withdraw Africa from dealings with the West.  The drift to radicalism by several of the Arab and African Muslim nations is a trend that Mugabe could easily use to widen the gap between Africa and the West.  Mugabe went to considerable lengths to condemn the actions of the West in Libya, in Iraq and Iran, praising the leaders of those nations, particularly Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi as worthy leaders of democracy in their countries.  Of course, in comparison with Zimbabwe under this bloody dictator, they might have been examples of good governance, but in a comparison with any of the true democracies, there can be no doubt that those men ranked alongside Stalin and Castro.  The thought of permitting African countries under the control of genocidal dictators such as those men and Mugabe to dictate the policies and actions of the United Nations is a cause for many sleepless nights.  During his rambling discourse, Mugabe stated that the ‘colonial master of Rhodesia, Britain, threw helpless men and women down a mineshaft.  It has been conclusively proven that Mugabe’s ‘war veterans’ were responsible for that act, as part of a genocide of the opposing tribe.  However, as both Mugabe and Zuma have frequently demonstrated, truth is a concept that is foreign to them and their ilk.

The fact that Zuma, and the ANC, would welcome a man like Mugabe to a supposedly civilized country such as South Africa speaks volumes about their true views, allegiances and objectives.  The fact that he was permitted to make such a speech on a public platform, with Zuma giggling his acquiescence in the background, must be taken as a warning by any thinking person in the country.  It has long been suspected that the ANC views the Mugabe dictatorship and its actions and policies as a role model for an African government, and the speech by Mugabe now leaves no doubt as to where South Africa is headed.

The title of this blog is ‘Questions for South Africa’.  The answer to many of those questions is now clear.

 

Remove the History

There has been much agitation in the past weeks to remove the statues and the names of places that bear witness to the ‘White colonialisation’ of South Africa.  The statue of Cecil Rhodes at Cape Town University, the name of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, the statue of Paul Kruger in Church Square and the statue of Jan van Riebeeck in Durban are the first examples of this urge.  One may wonder whether this trend is driven by the upcoming municipal elections, given that the Whites in the country are increasingly being held responsible for the failures of the ANC Government.  Jacob Zuma has said that the problems in the country, from the state of joblessness of the poor to the abysmal performance of Eskom, all stem from the arrival at the Cape of Jan van Riebeeck.  However, in the same vein, we have some further proposals to make, to assist in the removal of all traces recording the contribution of the Whites to the country.

Let us ban the use of telephones, an invention of a White who, no doubt, had the deprivation of the Blacks as his main objective.  Let us destroy all computers and cell phones, also invented by Whites.  Let us scrap all the cars and trucks, the trains and aircraft, all invented by Whites.  Let us dump our supplies of medicines, invented by Whites, as well as all the medical equipment, following the example of the Department of Health, which is already far down the path of abandoning these instruments of evil.  Let us stop the production of electricity, an invention of Whites and brought to this country by the colonial masters, adding to the efforts of Eskom to drive us all back to the good times of Shaka.  Let us complete the work of the SABC in demolishing the institutions of radio and television, also inventions of Whites.  Let us add to the efforts of Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki in abandoning the principles of democracy, a system of oppression of Blacks which was introduced by Whites, and, while we are about it, let us also recognize that Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, was also a White.  Let us destroy the rifles, armoured cars, fighter aircraft and bombs of the Whites and equip our army with the short stabbing spears and rawhide shields that were so effectively used by the great King Shaka and his impervious regiments of Zulu warriors (totally ignoring the fact that both the idea of a stabbing weapon – a sword – and the ‘bulls horn’ tactics of Shaka which have been claimed to have been the greatest innovations of that King were well described by Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great thousands of years earlier in writing, which Shaka and his mighty nation of Stone Age warriors had not yet developed until the Whites arrived to educate them).  We could add a liberal dose of muti, derived from the hearts of the Whites, to make the new breed of warrior impervious to the modern weapons of the Whites, as was shown convincingly in the Massacre of Marikana.  Let us follow the example of the Departments of Education, and formalise the destruction of the system of education.  Let us drive all formal industry from our shores – Shaka did not have industry at the time it was introduced by the colonial masters, so it must be bad!  Cosatu and its trade union associates have already started this process.  Let us introduce violence and fear into the Councils of Government, by bringing in armed thugs under the guise of Police to expel all Members of a Party that has the nerve to question the State President on his illicit use of State funds (the taxes paid to a very large extent by the hated Whites and their organisation).  Let us introduce the notion that the President and the ‘Black Royalty’ are above the mass of people and so not subject to the laws and rules that apply to the rest of us.

Let us return to the peaceful and productive Stone Age society that prevailed before the Whites arrived in the country, bringing with them absurd notions of rule by law, of democracy, of education for all, of responsibility of the State and its instruments to the people.  Let us all live in mud and grass huts, as did the mighty King Shaka, and let us all submit to the violent and bloodthirsty dictatorship that characterised his rule.  Let us return to drawing our water from the rivers, ignoring the fact that those who live upstream dump their filth and their excrement into those rivers, to flavour the water that we drink.  Let us return to the idyllic days, where men were warriors and did little more than drink beer while the women tended the fields and produced the children as the property of the men.  Let us hand back the properties of the Universities of Cape Town and Rhodes to the Rhodes trust – we no longer want any part of the education that that vicious colonial master provided!  Let us dismantle the railways that Rhodes instigated, following the example of Spoornet.  Let us hand over power to the effective and benevolent leaders of our nation, and no longer demand that they account to us, the people, for what they are doing with the money they take from all of us.  Let us ignore the statements of the White-dominated Ratings Agencies – we will in any event refuse to accept the investments that the hated Whites make in our country, which is always done to impose their neo-colonial rule on us, and we will refuse the Aid grants made by them to support our fight against HIV/AIDS, our hospitals, our education system, our striving for democracy.  We will succeed on our own, ignoring the fact that our national economy is dependent to over 70% on the White colonial masters.  Let us drive the White managers, bankers, industrialists and engineers from our country – one Black man is as good as any ten Whites, as has so clearly been shown by the resounding successes of the BBEEE and land distribution policies.  Let us cancel the contracts of the White consultants, who claim to have been propping up our bumbling efforts to run our major State activities, from Government Departments to State-owned entities such as Eskom and SAA.

Most important of all, let us now cease the lip service we pay to the notion that Whites are welcome in this country.

Black Industrial Empowerment

President Zuma has espoused a new project.  He is pushing to invest huge amounts of money to support the move of Black people into the ownership of industries, in a bid to ensure that White will not continue to dominate the ownership of industry.  The objective of supporting Black ownership of industry is good, but Zuma admitted, in a sideways manner, that the plan to support Blacks alone is racist.  He denies that the plan has racist objectives, but, as we have seen, when Zuma denies something, with many small coughs and pushing of his spectacles, the denial is a simple prevarication. 

The simple fact of business is that experience gathered over many years of exposure to the real world is an essential element in the building of a competent businessman or woman.  The experience builds on a good education and a good understanding of how the world works.  Experience can only be gained over time.  It cannot be legislated into existence, and it cannot be replaced by State support, or even by mentoring, which, in any event, can only be based on that same experience.

The urgent problem faced by South Africa is the lack of sustainable jobs.  That problem has been caused by Government in many ways.  The high level of regulation, and the time consumption in complying with the regulations added to the multiplicity of fees is a strong dampener on the creation of jobs.  The duplicity of SARS in its dealings, using its draconian powers, in many cases illicitly to support the objectives of the ANC, including the promotion of the personal wealth of ANC members, has driven many industrialists from the shores, and prevented many potential investors from coming to South Africa.  The imposition of unrealistic and expensive Black Empowerment rules has increased the cost of doing business to the extent that many investors, including numerous companies which were South African icons, to establish themselves abroad.  The rampant corruption has been a major factor in reducing employment opportunities, as well as in increasing the costs of doing business in South Africa.  And, to top it all, the insistence of Government that cadres be handed directorships and senior management positions in all major corporations and bodies has ensured that the management of those bodies remains mediocre or even catastrophic.

Is this racism?  No, it is realism.  One need only look at the bodies managed or supervised by ANC nominees to see how abjectly poor even the best (in ANC terms) cadres are.  Eskom is a continuing disaster, after having been a star performer in its field at a world level under White (for ‘White’, read ‘experienced’) management, SARS used to be a competent and honest organisation and is now an instrument to assist ANC cadres to acquire huge wealth, the SABC has been directed and managed by liars, the NPA is engaged in infighting while its incompetence to conduct an effective prosecution was highlighted to the world in the Diwani case, the SAPS has demonstrated a total lack of competence in controlling and prosecuting crime, the Department of Public Works has admitted to having wasted R38 billion, the Department of Defence wasted over R600 billion on arms that were not required and are now no longer capable of use, SANRAL has lost the fight to maintain the roads, allowing them to degrade to the point where they will have to be rebuilt while concentrating instead on the conversion of public roads to toll roads, and refusing to divulge the details of the contracts (leading to apparently well-founded beliefs that the true beneficiaries are ANC-connected cadres), the Department of Education has demonstrated convincingly that it has no capability to provide the sort of education that will equip young people with the knowledge and skills they will need in life, the liquidation of Aurora is a clear statement of the desire of certain Blacks to enrich themselves at the expense of others, in the same way as the liquidation of Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, a venerable company that had existed for over a century, after less than two years of ownership by a Black ‘entrepreneur’.  One does not need to look far to find convincing examples of how bad the performance is of Black people forced into the top levels of management.  The reason is glaringly obvious:  a black skin is not a good replacement for thirty or forty years of experience, gained at the workface, with gains made slowly and carefully over time as they build on a good education.  This does not mean that Blacks are not capable.  Examples abound of Black people performing adequately or well once they have accumulated the experience required to do the job.  To accumulate that experience, the easiest way is to work in a formal organisation with the required competence, to learn how to do the job, what to watch out for, how to apply intelligence to understand the challenges and to develop ways to overcome them.  The fact is that in South Africa the knowledge and experience resides in the hands of Whites, and the efforts of Government have been directed at displacing those Whites, rather than using what they have to offer in order to support the development of skills and abilities throughout the population.  Those efforts have succeeded to a large extent, with most competent Whites in Government organisations being removed, often with large retrenchment packages in order to make way for the Blacks who do not have any of that experience.  The Government has spurned the willingness of the Whites to help make the country succeed, preferring instead to hand the lucrative jobs to incompetent and inexperienced Black, on purely racist grounds. 

The result is clear to see.  South Africa has slipped from being the leader of industry in Africa to become one of the worst-performing economies on the continent.  It has slipped from being the light of democracy under Mandela to being an Apartheid nation once again, one that is bent on implementing communism, in the face of all the evidence that that system of government has, as its main objective, the exploitation of the people for the benefit of the rulers.

The downgrading of the Eskom bonds on the international financial markets is just the first sign of the world’s judgement of the incompetence of the Black management of the country’s institutions and bodies.  Further downgrading will come, inevitably, pushing the country further down the slope of collapse that the ANC has chosen, rather than the enlightened path that recognises that the development of a non-racial development-oriented society requires the skills and experience of the Whites to help the best of the population, Blacks and Whites, to achieve their potential. 

A job is a job, whether the employer is Black or White.  A Dollar of foreign exchange has the same value, whether it is earned by a Black or a White.  And the way to achieve those jobs and earn those dollars is to encourage the development of industries, not of Black-owned industries, not to intensify the job-destroying, economy-devastating racist policies that have become the foundation of Jacob Zuma’s desperate campaign to cling to power.