Challenging the untouchable: South Africa’s growing call for reform - Katzenellenbogen
Key topics:
Rising criticism of BEE and ANC policies comes from diverse voices.
Young black libertarians and old lefties unite against state failures.
Johannesburg seen as the key test for reform vs. populist politics.
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Our prolonged national decay is forcing many who are deeply worried about the future to speak out.
It is difficult to judge the scale of this newly popular taking-on of the sacrosanct pillars of the ANC post-1994. But in the past few months, stinging criticism of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and the labour laws, often from unexpected sources, has exploded.
Much of this comes from beyond members of the chattering classes, analysts, the Institute of Race Relations and the Free Market Foundation. It is also not coming only from analysts such as Moeletsi Mbeki and William Gumede. It is coming heavily from young black commentators, old white lefties, and some surprising sources.
Also people on the street, who moan about the potholes, the filth on the streets and the crime, often offer me solutions that are anathema to ANC thinking.
Most of the angst about our direction of travel on social media is from a multitude of largely black under-40s, because of their alarm at corruption and their experience of what national decay is all about.
Supporters of BEE have been on the defensive since Elon Musk’s refusal to allow for an empowerment stake in his company Starlink, which is a legal precondition for him to operate in SA. The Institute of Race Relations, the Free Market Foundation and Sakeliga have pointed to the exorbitant cost to the state of BEE procurement policies. An attempted push-back to this came in Business Day and the Sunday Times. Columnist Stephen Grootes then came in saying that there were problems, but it was wrong to consider BEE as part of state capture, and it was still a necessity. All this has meant that battle has been joined.
The number of young black libertarians and ANC opponents on social media pushing their causes is growing, and they are becoming a lot louder.
Favourite targets are BEE, cadre deployment and the overall implosion of government and public enterprises.
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Phumlani Majozi, a former corporate economist turned activist and author, is seriously libertarian and heavily critical of the ANC. Part of the reason he turned activist was the country’s direction of travel.
“Freaking them out”
Sihle Ngobese, known as “Big Daddy Liberty,” combines a free market outlook with support for Israel, and a deep dislike of the woke and Leftists. A recent “Big Daddy” Facebook post reads: “What we are seeing in real time is South Africa’s race-based Leftists being challenged on their lies that using racism to “fix” past racism is “fair discrimination. It is freaking them out to be RIGHTLY called out for being the evil racist filth that they are! Race-based laws are immoral, no matter who they target & for whatever perverted justification they are enacted!”
Siphamandla Dhlamini, a former data scientist who studied physics, is a columnist who combines strong libertarian views, but also frequently upholds the role of family and Christian values.
And there are many, who are young and black, who are not even close to being activists, but are simply speaking out because they are really gatvol.
Many old white Lefties with solid struggle credentials are increasingly speaking out, because they have changed their minds. They feel a deep rage at having been betrayed by the ANC through its failures to significantly uplift the poor, due to rotten government services and high unemployment.
As the editor of “COSATU News” in the 1980s, Dirk Hartford worked at mobilising workers, “to rise up against the apartheid capitalist regime.” Today as a “BizNews” columnist, Hartford says he is trying to urge business to fight “the ANC regime”.
“We are going through something truly evil due to the ANC elite extracting what they can.”
He feels betrayed by the ANC adoption of race-based policies, as what he fought for was a non-racial society. And he believes that the unions share a lot of the blame for what has gone wrong.
He views himself as duty-bound to speak out, particularly as a white who feels politically marginalised. Hartford’s great disappointment is that business and the ANC are silent at this crucial juncture.
Lost the battle of ideas
The Left has now lost the battle of ideas and they should be reconsidering a lot of what they believe in, but there is silence, he says.
In the 1980s Jack Lewis, a former academic who taught economics and sociology at the University of the Western Cape, was part of the Marxist Workers Tendency, a far-left group that operated within the ANC underground. Today he runs a pomegranate farm in a remote corner of the Karoo.
Lewis changed his views years ago, mainly after being struck by the words of Deng Xiaoping, the Paramount Leader who initiated China’s economic reform in the 1970s – “It does not matter if the cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.”
Lewis still sees Marxist analysis as valid, but is shocked by the sheer inefficiency of the state. “The real problem is BEE and cadre deployment and the failure to value experience.” He also sees wage demands not linked to productivity as driving unemployment.
The most surprising criticism of the sacrosanct came last week from Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Provincial Police Commissioner. The labour laws and high wage settlements, he said, had led to factory closures, which had pushed up unemployment, which in turn had led to a higher crime rate. But due to the high level of wage settlements with the unions, the police could not increase their numbers to fight the higher crime rate.
Where is the big national rethink headed?
In what might have seemed bizarre just a year ago, there is consensus on a range of key issues among liberal think tanks, Afrikaner-based groups like Sakeliga, many young blacks, and old lefties.
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A market-type reform agenda is difficult to sell, because it cannot make definite promises about when people’s lives will improve. But as in Argentina, when things get so bad, many are persuaded that it is a viable reform option. Winning the battle of ideas is the first hurdle.
Test bed
According to a DA poll released last week, the ANC is at below 29 percent in the polls, 11 percentage points below its standing at last year’s elections. And the DA is at 28 percent in this poll. Johannesburg will be the test bed of this battle of ideas.
I increasingly hear ANC stalwarts say Helen Zille should be the DA’s candidate for Mayor of Johannesburg. That is out of sheer desperation at the state of the city, and their having seen what ANC rule means.
While the support for serious reform appears to have growing traction, there is the strong possibility that support for populism might also strongly grow, as times become harder. The scenario of a populist ANC linking up with its rivals in the other comrade parties, uMkhonto we Sizwe and the Economic Freedom Fighters, could be an outcome of our national plunge.
That is precisely why big business and the ANC moderates have a moral duty to speak out.
*Jonathan Katzenellenbogen is a Johannesburg-based freelance journalist. His articles have appeared on DefenceWeb, Politicsweb, as well as in a number of overseas publications. Katzenellenbogen has also worked on Business Day and as a TV and radio reporter and newsreader. He has a Master's degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission