Share Article: Share Article: > Markets > Companies > Personal Finance > Life > Sport Smoking gun of apartheid is shooting us in the foot Leon Louw, 21 January 2015, 06:08 Jacob Zuma. Picture: REUTERS/SIPHIWE SIBEKO According to our president, the evil apartheid regime caused everything that afflicts us, writes Leon Louw I AM kicking myself for not realising that the real cause of our woes is apartheid. President Jacob Zuma told the African National Congress’s 103rd anniversary gathering that our electricity catastrophe and corruption are the results of apartheid. He could’ve added that apartheid explains why South African Airways (SAA) cannot get off the ground, why we have schools without education, why the Post Office does not deliver post, why young black people are unemployed, why if people drive straight it means they are drunk and forgetting to avoid potholes, why state hospitals are sickening, and why Bafana Bafana cannot play soccer. Before Zuma’s insight, I thought bad things were caused by bad policies, corruption, nepotism, deployment, affirmative inaction, incompetence, Zionism, Islam, the Boeremag, or Steve Hofmeyr. Now I know apartheid is the white in the woodpile and denialists are closet reactionary, anti- transformation, historically advantaged, right- wing, unreconstructed, bigoted, neoconservative, neoliberal, neofascist, neo-colonial, neo-vetkoek, white racist apartheid apologists. Apartheid caused the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Nkandla, Boko Haram and George Bush. Very few things — such as Obamacare, e-tolls, Islamic State and fever blisters — have other causes. There was unjustified scoffing at Zuma’s epiphany. The evil regime caused everything that afflicts us, including Eskom, the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the Financial Services Board (FSB). Apartheid forced blacks to live, as they do to this day, on government land. It concealed corruption, caused black youth unemployment, created a nanny state to control our lifestyles, established the propaganda broadcaster, mandated the Reserve Bank to nationalise foreign exchange and diverted money from poor blacks to black holes called state-owned enterprises. Corruption, Zuma pointed out, existed before 1994 and his government was dealing with it. When delegates to the 1987 Dakar Conference visited Burkina Faso, which is twice as far from Pretoria (5,250km) as London is from Moscow (2,500km), tens of thousands of people chanted anti-apartheid slogans. Brutal dictator Thomas Sankara explained that apartheid caused their destitution. So yes, Zuma is right, apartheid is the smoking gun behind everything his government inherited. That it merged with its former oppressor may explain why it perpetuates most of the apartheid legacy, including racist policies. But for the wealth that apartheid dinosaurs such as Eskom, the Post Office, Transnet, SAA and the FSB destroy, a decent house could have replaced every shack, and all road maintenance and new roads could have been completed. Private electricity could have electrified all homes and thousands of factories, mines, office parks and shopping centres; our economy could have been 20% richer and we could be booming like China, India and sub-Saharan Africa. Few people comprehend the magnitude of the electricity catastrophe. No one knows how much has been wasted on doing without electricity. Energy efficiency is a euphemism for extreme waste and inefficiency (low-energy technology, insulation, diesel, renewables and the like). Load shedding is a euphemism for blackouts. Keeping the lights on is a euphemism for keeping us in the dark. It entails cutting production and jobs in mines and factories. The Transnet rail catastrophe forces suppliers to fund thousands of coal trucks taking coal to power stations while causing congestion and destroying roads. The SAA catastrophe requires endless bail-outs euphemistically called loans or guarantees. The nationalised healthcare catastrophe inflicts disease and death on the poor. While Rome burns, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi fiddles with what works, private care. Wherever you look — courts, education, roads, security, policing, transport, welfare — catastrophe lurks. All inherited from apartheid. That is as obvious as the solution, which is for the government to jettison Neanderthal socialists, fascists and communists in order to implement true transformation, namely the deregulation and privatisation of everything it does badly. • Louw is executive director of the Free Market Foundation.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 19:22:19 +0000
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