By Alec Hogg
Found myself scratching my head again yesterday when reading the latest flash of idiocy from the ANC – spending R88bn on social upliftment as an ‘Acceleration Plan’ for the stagnant economy. Pretoria appears incapable of understanding that spending money you don’t have on short-term fixes only creates more problems.
Then I looked at the person making the proposals. Olive Shisana, the architect of this latest example of how inmates running Pretoria’s asylum, is a social worker whose major contribution, her CV tells us, is “contributions to social sciences research in areas of HIV and National Health Insurance’. Point taken?
___STEADY_PAYWALL___There are legions of people within the BizNews tribe better qualified to offer ideas on economic upliftment. A good friend, Trevor Edwards, has started the ball rolling. Trevor is a gifted entrepreneur who has created thousands of jobs in his career.
He emailed me ([email protected]) a “turnaround” plan for SA in the hope that others in our tribe will pick up on the theme and share their own thoughts for publication. That will surely provide something sensible, sustainable and effective. An alternative to the well intentioned Shisana and other nonsense from the ANC.
Please have a read of his suggestions below. Hopefully this will get you thinking – and sharing. Am standing by in eager anticipation.
Sterkte
Alec
How to turn around South Africa – The Trevor Edwards Plan of Action
I have been so impressed with what I have seen in Turkey and now believe it’s possible to turn SA fortunes around if we follow a similar path.
An outline of a plan:
- *Vote in a new government. (We are all going to have to play our part in ensuring we get rid of the ANC mafia)
- Rationalise ministries and departments around focused priorities.
- Only hire the best people.
- Slash wasteful and unnecessary expenditure . All ministers to lead by example and drive Toyotas (I am not joking), stay at four star hotels maximum, City Lodge even better. Drastically reduce security details. Always travel economy on flights (Tito did it).
- Agree a vision and strategy/plan with time lines and budgets. Give them three months to prepare.
- Improve security. Introduce permanent road SAPS control points. Improve the criminal justice system. The safety of poor people is also important.
- Reduce the SANDF’s Africa commitments Focus on strategic key points including the border.
- Fix Eskom. Develop PPPs and privatise it.
- Fix rail and ports. PPP and/or privatise.
- Repair and invest in priority infrastructure.
- Privatise many of the SOEs. It worked for Telkom.
- Focus on key industries including tourism (tourist safe nodes are a priority)
- Federalise provinces to xcreate competition. Small government.
- Be nice to business. Create a climate for investment with business friendly laws.
- Change the constitution re: criminal rights and dealing with corruption. This includes special laws to punish government and municipal employees involved
in corruption. Adopt what they apply in China. - Relentless focus on timely implementation.
- Be nice to all the big Western countries. Also be friends of India and China .
- Fix government hospitals
- Fix the education system
- Cancel BEE.
- Focus on assisting the poor and getting them back to work.
- Improve the townships.
- Target growth rates of 7 percent plus . We need to reduce unemployment to 10 percent
- Deduce ‘bad’ government debt.
- Raise a once off wealth tax tocfund the turnaround.
- Give guidelines of reducing tax over a period of time.
- Focus on assisting micro and medium enterprises.
- Ask leading world consultants and successful countries to assist.
- Focus on uniting SA. Starting with singing the national anthem at schools every day and encouraging businesses and citizens to fly the national flag.
- Halve the number of public holidays.
- Get a president who is the CEO of SA and a visionary leader with a high skills set.
- Have only one place for government. Tshwane.
- Hopefully as a result of the successful implementation of the plan our currency will strengthen against the other major currencies.
- Embrace technology.
We have to start somewhere.
Eat the elephant one bite at a time. (will have to chew quickly)
Can’t do everything at once.
Need to prioritise.
Together we can achieve more.
Divided we will fail.
Keep it simple.
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