Tag: BEE

Anthony Turton: How BEE de-industrialised South Africa

In the closing weeks of 2019, South Africa reached Stage 6 load-shedding. This is uncharted territory, so let’s unpack it a little.

Some years ago I wrote about a startling fact that few were interested in at that time. That simple fact was that Eskom, our national energy utility company, was running on standby generators.

Nobody responded, so I shut up and moved on, but I never stopped thinking about this simple startling fact. Why is our national power utility running on standby generators?

The answer is complex, but one element of that answer is diesel fuel. You see, a lucrative contract was given to a politically connected person to supply diesel. That diesel wasn’t the cheapest, because the supplier wasn’t the manufacturer of the diesel, but bought it from a real diesel supplier that wasn’t allowed to enter the game because of the rules of that game.

That game is called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and it has de-industrialised a country that once produced 40% of all the gold ever mined in all of recorded history, from the Incas to modernity. That country once pioneered the production of oil from coal. That country once pioneered the first human heart transplant and gave us the first base-bleed artillery capable of firing a tactical nuclear weapon. That country pioneered water treatment technologies that recovered safe drinking water from sewage and it produced sophisticated steels used in highly specialised engineering processes. The list goes on, but you get the point.

South Africa used to punch above its weight and was a genuine participant in the global economy. We produced things of value. Sophisticated things. Technologically advanced things.

Then came BEE, and it changed the rules of the game by skewing the playing field in favour of those whose only attribute was that they were politically connected. It actively discriminated against anyone who was creative and nimble in the field of science, engineering and technology.

It incentivised the out-migration of those people merely because the rules of the game deliberately discriminated against excellence, and rewarded those whose sole attribute was their ability to extract money without creating value. This is called rent-seeking behaviour.

The sale of diesel to run the standby generators in the national energy utility enables the extraction of money, but it creates no enduring value, so it is inherently parasitic. It is a textbook example of rent-seeking behaviour.

Any organism infested with parasites slowly succumbs to their voracious presence and eventually that organism becomes so sick that it dies a miserable, lingering death.

The collapse of Eskom is imminent for all the reasons noted above. It is deeply infested with parasites extracting money without creating value. It is unsustainable for the same reasons that SAA has collapsed. It too had the game being played about the supply of fuel at inflated cost. But it also had the other games – supplying toothpicks, serviettes, cookies, butter and buns, all at inflated cost. It too has separated the right of remuneration from the responsibility of productivity.

South Africa no longer produces anything of value to the world. The mining industry has collapsed, leaving a toxic landscape of hazardous waste that will poison society for the next century. Denel, which once played at global level in the field of sophisticated weapons systems, is collapsing after the theft of the intellectual property that used to fuel its engine.

We have become a society that creates, rewards and protects thieves, parasitic, ambitious and greedy thieves with an insatiable lust for money, and an aversion to honest work and creativity.

South Africa is that poor animal infested by parasites which is now emaciated and sick, not yet dead, but feeble and suffering. It will die, for that is inevitable, but, before that, a predictable series of things will happen. Those things are inevitable, logical and therefore predictable.

I have seen them before first-hand when other parasite-infested countries died. I saw it in the Romanian revolution that overthrew the tyranny of Nicolae Ceausescu. I saw it in the Leipzig Option that created rolling mass action to depose Erich Honecker in East Germany. I saw it in the Velvet Revolution of Czechoslovakia. In all of these cases, revolution deposed the parasitic class that had been extracting money, earned by the sweat of the people, without creating value for the nation.

I also saw it in the lingering demise of Robert Mugabe, who destroyed a proud nation because of his ruthless control over the extraction of money without the creation of value.

This is what I believe the inevitable implosion of Eskom, SAA, PRASA and other state-owned enterprises is all about. We are witnessing the death of a destructive system – BEE – that has sucked the life blood from a once vibrant economy, and replaced it with a new breed of oppressor, that preys on the poor and vulnerable in society whom they once claimed to have liberated.

The oppressed has become the oppressor, and technological advancement is no longer possible as we enter the New Sanitation Dark Age, where raw sewage flows freely in many towns and cities of South Africa, and where pumps have ground to a halt because electricity production has been compromised by a class of parasite that is encouraged to supply diesel at inflated value, but is protected because of patronage.

This article was originally published on Dr. Turton’s FaceBook page on 10 December 2019

Hitachi case exposes fronting by ANC

South Africa has been fingered in the alleged “improper payments” originating from contracts that the ANC’s investment arm, Chancellor House, for work at the Medupi and Kusile power stations.

As a signatory of the OECD Convention which is aimed at combatting fraud in international business transactions by foreign officials [OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions], South Africa’s failure to do so, has been exposed at the highest levels.

It appears however that the ANC has also transgressed their own Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act by making use of “fronting” to take money for awarding lucrative contracts to Hitachi.

These observations have been made by the American investment watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which described Chancellor House Holdings as a “front” through which the ANC could make money from the contracts with the Japanese group Hitachi in South Africa.

The OECD meanwhile released a damming report at the end of last year about South Africa’s unwillingness to act against international bribery and corruption and the finger is pointed directly at the ANC government.

The title of the report is: ‘Phase 3 Report on Implementing the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in South-Africa’. The subheading reads: ‘Lack of enforcement jeopardises South Africa’s fight against foreign bribery; OECD concerned that political an economic considerations may be an influence’.

On page 9 of the report of 87 pages, it is stated, amongst others, (under the caption of Bribery of Foreign Public Officials):

‘Corruption remains a serious problem in South Africa. The country has experienced a number of high profile domestic corruption scandals, and corruption allegations have been linked to the highest levels in government.’

Also: ‘Corruption in public procurement tenders has been a particularly serious problem…’. It mentions that the Head of the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) had already reported to Parliament in 2011 about the fact that between R25 and R30 billion – approximately 20% of the country’s total annual procurement budget had been lost due to ‘corruption, incompetence and negligence’.

SA has highest number of dollar millionaires

South Africa has the highest number of dollar millionaires on the African continent and this number is set to rise in coming years, according to Old Mutual’s New World Wealth Africa Report for 2015 released on Wednesday.

The report predicted an increase of 55 500 in the number of dollar millionaires in the country by 2017, despite a weakening local currency. The group had grown by nine percent since 2007.

This projection, said Luke Martins, a financial planner at Old Mutual Private Wealth Management was realistic, but dependent on the country’s future economic situation.

While individual attitudes toward building wealth, such as investing and having a clear vision plays a role in the success of high net worth (HNW) individuals, the performance of the local economy was equally important, he said.

Martins said there was great potential for South Africans to create wealth, despite educational and socio-economic challenges, which may slow down the growth of HNW individuals.

“The continued growth in numbers of high net worth individuals in South Africa can be attributed to a combination of factors, including the country’s continued position as a business and investment gateway into Africa and its appeal as a global investment destination, and its robust physical and financial infrastructure.”

A financial planner for Old Mutual Private Wealth Management, Lesego Monareng, said South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies had done much to create wealthy South Africans.

“In South Africa, the political will to drive economic empowerment of previously disadvantaged persons has been a major contributor to wealth creation for many. It has both built the middle market as a feeder into individual wealth achievement and allowed many individuals to position themselves to take advantage of the resulting opportunities,” Monareng said.

Source: ANA

South African business ‘schocked’ by new black ownership rules

Unless South African businesses hand over large chunks of equity to black shareholders, they will no longer be awarded so-called “BEE points” by government, which means that they could be forced out of business. According to the Johannesburg financial newspaper, Business Day, “the Department of Trade and Industry sprung a surprise on business, issuing an unexpected ‘clarification notice’ on Tuesday that broad-based empowerment and employee share ownership schemes will no longer count as much as individual share ownership on the black economic empowerment (BEE) scorecard.”

The notice astounded lawyers and verification agencies and will substantially alter the ratings of companies that have placed a portion of their ownership in the hands of employees or community organisations.

The notice also set out to clarify a range of issues relating to the new codes of good practice, which were due to come into effect on May 1, and explain their staggered implementation.

Of the 25 points on the new scorecard that can be earned for black ownership, broad-based and employee share ownership schemes can contribute only a maximum of three points. They cannot count towards the voting rights of black people or the economic interest they hold in the company, which are the other elements on the scorecard.

Under the previous score-card, broad-based and employee ownership schemes were used in the general calculation of black ownership, provided they were manifested in voting rights and reflected genuine economic interests, such as dividend payments and the ability to trade shares. The change was not canvassed with stakeholders or verification agencies.

Keith Levenstein, CEO of empowerment verification agency Econoserve said it would affect hundreds if not thousands of broad-based schemes.

“It is going to instantly drop these companies on the scorecard by as much as 20 points and imply they do not meet the element of ownership,” he said.

Empowerdex described the news as a “big shocker” and Mazar’s managing partner Tony Balshaw called it “devastating”.

“A significant number of nonlisted multinationals and large-and medium-sized enterprises have done empowerment deals based on employee or broad ownership schemes. The effect on them could be to drop at least three ratings levels of the eight,” said Mr Balshaw.

Chief director of the Department of Trade and Industry Takalani Tambani said the idea behind the change was to ensure that ownership by black individuals was given greater priority by the business community.

“The message is government views the ownership as important to transform the economy. For us to effectively do that, we want to see black people participating meaningfully in the core of the economy.

“Passive shareholding will not be able to transform this economy. Passive shareholders are not the real drivers of the business,” he said.

ANC politicians have previously used their positions to acquire stakes in businesses, sometimes for free. The use of the phrase “private shareholding” might imply that businesses are going to be pressurised to offer risk-free equity deals to the ruling nomenklatura, their family members and friends.

 

South Africa sliding backwards economically under black rule

Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene will have his work cut out at next week’s budget to try and reassure disillusioned South Africans that the government still has gas in its tank to pull the economy out of the doldrums.

Twenty years after Nelson Mandela swept the African National Congress to power, pledging to unleash the economy and ensure universal access to quality education, jobs and houses, very little of the optimism that engulfed the country then remains.

For South Africans like Mulalo Ramavu, a self-employed handyman who barely scratches out a living for his family of four in Johannesburg’s poverty-stricken Alexandra township, confidence that the ANC can reduce social inequality and significantly improve living standards for blacks has long gone.

The future looks even bleaker for his young sons.

“This is not the South Africa I expected after apartheid,” said 40-year-old Ramavu, reflecting on his long-abandoned dreams of becoming an engineer and buying a house in the suburbs, the preserve of whites during apartheid rule.

“After a promising start, the ANC now seems to be taking us backwards, and I fear for the future. I don’t see how Nene can convince me otherwise.”

Even the ruling party’s harshest critics concede it has done a lot to better the lives of black South Africans since 1994, building over 3 million houses, improving access to water and power and providing social grants to over 15 million people.

But many are growing impatient with the government’s failure to get the economy moving after a 2009 recession.

After averaging 5 percent previously, annual economic growth has struggled to reach 2 percent in the last five years.

In February, then Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan predicted growth of 2.7 percent for 2014, but Nene has admitted that now looks unattainable after months of debilitating strikes that have hit efforts to reduce 25 percent unemployment.

Official data shows nearly 3 million 18 to 24-year-olds cannot find jobs, translating to a youth unemployment rate of above 60 percent.

“Unemployment has turned our youth to crime and lawless behaviour. The desperation is simmering towards boiling point,” said Mkhuleko Hlengwa, chairman of the youth wing of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party.

“The desperation of our people may translate into a catastrophe which will reverse the gains of the past 20 years,” he told a conference this week, noting young people have been at the forefront of protests against poor services.

President Jacob Zuma in May promised “radical socio-economic transformation” through industrialisation, black empowerment and expanding the state’s role in the economy, but few believe his plan will be realised.

Confidence in Zuma’s leadership, moreover, is at an all-time low after the public protector found the government had inappropriately used more than 240 million rand in state funds to upgrade the president’s country home.

Economists urge the government to overhaul restrictive labour regulations to attract more investment, slash the bloated civil service and clamp down on corruption by government officials to free up funds for productive sectors of the economy.

But they expect little progress on this from Nene in his budget.

South Africa, which recently lost its status as Africa’s biggest economy to Nigeria, is still suffering from protracted wage strikes in the platinum mining and manufacturing sectors earlier this year, meaning Nene has limited funds at his disposal for the quarter of the population that rely on social grants.

Already, the government is sitting on a debt-to-GDP ratio of 40 percent, the result of years of spending to boost growth and finance what critics say is an unwieldy public sector wage bill.

“What we should be doing is shrinking government. We should be finding ways to do more with less, not less with more,” said George Glynos, managing director at ETM Analytics.

“The government has done a very poor job of boosting confidence in the longer-term prospects of the economy.”

Business confidence is close to record lows, with firms worried about rigid labour laws they say have given unions free rein to stage crippling strikes to press for above-inflation wage demands.

The ANC has, over the years, flirted with policies which, on paper, promise to boost growth and lift the black majority out of poverty.

Foremost has been a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) employment code that critics say has only benefited ruling party cronies.

Many studies suggest the critics might be right, with several measures of overall inequality widening from 1994 levels – albeit with a small black minority joining the ranks of the super wealthy.

A recent report coordinated by Oxfam and funded by the European Union noted that South Africa’s Gini coefficient – a widely used equality indicator – rose to 70 percent in 2008, one of the highest levels in the world, from 66 percent in 1993.

Few people dispute the need to redress the imbalances left by apartheid but white South Africans, such as retired school teacher Anne Sharpe, believe BEE is unfairly edging their children out of the labour market, forcing many to emigrate.

“Many young whites see no future for themselves here and feel persecuted for a history they were not part of,” said Sharpe, 69.

“Apartheid was wrong, but so, in some ways, is BEE. Two wrongs don’t make a right.” – Reuters

Quintessential liberal failures: Affirmative Action

Affirmative actionby Deon van Rensburg

In this series of opinion pieces I will attempt, and more often than not, succeed, in highlighting liberal failures. In the process I hope to shine a very bright light on the inherent hypocrisy associated with every liberal preconception, ideological turnip and bias ever uttered in the public or private sphere

In my opinion piece Liberalism – True Political Ideology or a Mental Disease I contended that there are two types of liberalism:

  • Classical liberalism as defined by those that espouse freedom for everybody – freedom from invasive government, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom from oppression, freedom to trade and be relieved of the master and serf condition, freedom to own property, freedom to till the earth, freedom, freedom and more freedom…All whilst keeping to the confines of what is considered civilised, moral and ethical;
  • Modern liberalism or “progressive” liberalism yearns for the Nanny State, where a god-like government will be the saviour and mater of the individual, collectively looking after all from cradle to the grave, where equality is the pinnacle of achievement and inequality is deemed to be a deadly sin, where man and woman are the same despite glaring biological and psychological differences, where cultural differences have been wiped from the face of the earth despite thousands of years of poles-apart development, where abnormal is the new normal by undermining morals, ethics and values, where people who do not think like you are abhorrent.

There seems to be a definite correlation between “progressive” liberalism and Sociopathic Personality Disorder – immediate gratification of the self, a feel good ideology, damn the consequences. There are also elements of Hyper-vigilant Narcissistic Personality Disorder as diagnosed by psychiatrist Dr. Glen Goddard of the Mayo Institute.

Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviours that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.

There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization. Evan Sayet

I often refer to the obvious infusion of Socialism on the modern version of liberalism termed by these liberals themselves as “Progressive Liberalism”.  The palpable similarity between “progressive” liberalism and the Socialist ideology seems to be a bridge too far for “progressive” liberals to understand. I contend that “progressive” liberalism is a grouping of churlish individuals too indolent to think for themselves and will repeat, verbatim and in parrot-like fashion,quasi-intellectual “socio-political” discussions of excrement – disguised as opinion pieces in the Lame Stream Media – after bourgeois gatherings in comfortable homes situated in upmarket gated estates. Logic, reason and fact will immediately take a week-long vacation on some South Sea Island just to get away from the pure absurdity of circular reasoning.

Vladimir Lenin quite rightly referred to them as “useful idiots” who will champion the Marxist cause throughout the world. If only he knew how right he was.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Henry Ford (1863-1947), American founder of the Ford Motor Company

“Progressive” liberals are not averse to implement ideological dogma that has been proven as a failure over and over again. Collectivism, equality, atheism, feminism and a great favourite of the slavering white-guilt-ridden useful idiots – Affirmative Action.

In South Africa it goes by many names – Employment Equity, Affirmative Action, Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment, Quotas. It remains in essence Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action has its natal origins in the United States of America where President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 on the 6th of March 1961 in a misguided and naïve attempt to stem racial discord in the US. A monster was created which pleased Socialists to no end as racial discord has been amplified by this bestial attempt at social engineering. It is invasive in schools, universities, sports, business and government – in fact, all spheres of society like a cancerous growth on the body of a mangy dog.

“Progressive” liberals will repeat ad infinitum that Affirmative Action is necessary to “right the wrongs of the past”, how “selective discrimination” is fair, how “previously disadvantaged” people must get an equal opportunity at success and how it is aimed at rectifying “white privilege”. Except that there is nothing fair about any type of discrimination – the whole notion is a contradictio in terminis. Nature has an immutable law that only the strong survive, which “progressive” liberals wishes to subvert but that cannot be subverted. White privilege is a Socialist myth, which could as well have been the brainchild of Saul Alinsky himself – which it probably was in its modern form although credit for this academic excrement must go to W.E.B du Bois. I will discuss the subject of “white privilege” in later articles.

 White liberals are the most racist people there are, because they put blacks in a box and insist that they think one way – and if they don’t, they attack them as illegitimate, all the while denying their policies destroy blacks. – Dr Ben Carson

I have to agree with Dr. Carson here – who just happens to be a very successful paediatric neurosurgeon and who also happens to be a person of colour. “Progressives”, through Affirmative Action, are telling people of colour that they cannot succeed without the social engineering and the help of Socialist policies on their own. What is more racist than that? To be told that you are incapable of any success on your own, that no achievement can be reached by one’s own effort but whitey liberals will help you along by crying “racist” at everybody that dares stand in your way.

But even more damning is that Affirmative Action is a failure – everywhere it was instituted

When cornered with the glaring failure of AA and BEE in South Africa the vitriolic retort would be that it is being wrongly applied – as if there is a right way of applying any piece of doctrine that has at its heart social engineering? “Progressives” will invariably mention Malaysia as a success story, America is a beacon of success in Education, and the caste order in India is all but destroyed, yet they are not. Here is why.

Affirmative Action had its inception in Malaysia in 1971 and initially was a success by uplifting poor rural people to middle-class entrepreneurs. However, in 2001 the New York Times – a mouthpiece for liberal propaganda and a target for the social group Rage Against the Media due to various biased articles aimed at the Republicans, the Tea Party and hiding the true nature of Obamacare – published an article entitled ”Criticism of 30-Year-Old Affirmative-Action Policy Grows in Malaysia”:

But as the country prepares to mark three decades under what is called the New Economic Policy, the program’s failures are becoming increasingly apparent. Affirmative action, critics say, has morphed into cronyism. The government transferred wealth to a small pool of politically well-connected businessmen.

Sounds familiar?

But as the Television ad goes – but that’s not all. Ten years later, in 2011, a study by The Centre for Independent Studies titled “ Malaysia still held back by Affirmative Action” found that Malaysia’s Affirmative Action social engineering project had been a total failure with many businesses on the brink of bankruptcy looking towards the government to bail them out. Air Malaysia is just one small example(). This does not tell a success story but rather one of abject failure. Why then deploy it anywhere else?

In America the Cato Institute published an article titled “The Affirmative Action Myth” and focuses on Affirmative Action in Education specifically Universities. It concludes that Affirmative Action policies do not help the AA candidate one iota and that it too is a miserable failure. This is then followed up by a piece in the LA Times in August 2013 about the miserable failure of Affirmative Action (courtesy of NationalReview as I am not a subscriber to the LA Times ) of a particular student at Berkeley that was admitted not because of his academic excellence but because of Affirmative Action.

Enter my favourite author on all matters economic and political – Dr. Thomas Sowell who is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow in Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and also a person of colour. In his book entitled “Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study” he disproves the ideology, the practice and the expected consequences of Affirmative Action in the United States, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria. He delivers a stinging indictment against Affirmative Action. In his book he states:

…this discussion has been informed by theories, rationales, and debates over semantics but has been insufficiently attentive–if at all–to the actual consequences.

He finds in every country examined, the negative consequences far outweighed any positives that may have been generated.

The same consequences that we see in South Africa today. Cronyism, a ruling oligarchy, corruption, jobs for pals, a shrinkage in economic activity, a bloated civil service filled with incompetents, lowered education levels …ad infinitum.

In the minds of their original architects, affirmative action policies were temporary arrangements, which would be phased out when real gains in education and employment among the minority were made. But, in the absence of those gains, affirmative action has often become a permanent policy of “preference” and has unfortunately incited animosity and hatred among the “non-preferred,” leading to ethnic conflict and violence.

So if Affirmative Action is such a failure – everywhere – why do “progressive” liberals (and their affiliated political parties) champion and defend such a lost cause? Because reason and rationale does not form part of the thought process, because “progressive” liberalism is a socialist construct and modern liberalism is a “feel good” ideology – as I indicated, some marked similarities with sociopaths.

Affirmative Action has been proven on numerous occasions to be a failure, pandering to the wishes of a small elite – the recipients who garner an income they are unqualified for and who for all intents and purposes are completely incompetent to add anything productive or constructive to their work environment, the ruling oligarchy who receive riches and power beyond their wildest dreams and the white bourgeoisie who do not want their little Utopias disturbed and who are still able to live in their comfortable environments with their tenured and management positions earning obscene amounts of money every month.

Here comes the hypocrisy part. With Affirmative Action being a proven failure, the “progressive” liberals mounted a concerted campaign of vitriol-filled idiocy against a small group of people of non-colour who held a peaceful non-violent protest march to object to the discrimination and social engineering that is at the heart of Affirmative Action – amongst other issues, I will add. I would bet my house that these same “progressive” liberals would not bat an eyelid if people of colour mounted protest marches about any issues they consider important – such as service delivery. Oh wait, that happens on a daily basis, yet there are no articles in the Lame Stream Media decrying such events as “racist” but rather a heart-felt compassionate sympathy decrying the plight of the poor. Once the article is written and the opinion given – they leave for their pubs, clubs and houses in comfortable neighbourhoods. Once more to have quasi-intellectual discussions with like-minded sociopaths over a glass of good malt whisky or maybe Johnny Burger’s best wine.

Maponya criticises BEE

Richard Maponya
Richard Maponya

Businessman Richard Maponya criticised the government and black economic empowerment in an interview published in the Sowetan on Monday.

“It (BEE) is not a real thing because it takes away the self-initiative needed from young and up and coming entrepreneurs who must wake up and want to do the things themselves,” he said at the sixth birthday celebrations of Maponya Mall in Soweto on Friday.

He said broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) was a good idea in principle, but in practice it did not always work.

“I really blame our government for the economic situation because we are nearly 20 years into our new dispensation but we have not come up with a bank that would give people a risk fund.”

He also said black and white business needed to unite, but added that white business people and foreigners should not be allowed to dominate business in townships.

“Soweto has suddenly become a place where white business people want to do business, when small entrepreneurs of the area should be given an opportunity to own business here,” said Maponya. – Sapa

Sasol axes shady BEE partner

sasol2Petrochemical giant Sasol has pulled the plug on a shady empowerment deal with union boss Simon Mofokeng and wife Maureen after Business Times exposed how they used fake documents to clinch contracts worth over R300-million.

But this still leaves questions unanswered, including how Sasol could have done business with Mofokeng’s company for 13 years before uncovering the deception.

Sasol confirmed this week it would report a case of fraud to the police, which means the Mofokengs are likely to face charges along with their financial director, Vusani Moyo.

Simon Mofokeng is the general secretary of Cosatu-affiliated Ceppwawu (Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers Union) – a serious conflict of interest, as Ceppwawu has a major presence at several of South Africa’s top listed companies, including Sasol.

Sasol, which is listed on the JSE and the New York stock exchange, said on Wednesday it had cancelled its coal-handling contract with Khotso Batho “with immediate effect” for issuing “fraudulent letters of good standing to Sasol”.

“Sasol is not immune to corruption, but in instances such as this, where acts of fraud are identified, we will act swiftly and decisively,” said Sasol CEO David Constable.

The scandal has also sparked a major overhaul of Sasol’s procurement processes to make it harder for contractors to get away with fraud. It also launched an internal probe into the role of Sasol staffers, including the likelihood that they had failed to act against Khotso Batho despite being given evidence of wrongdoing.

“Any member of staff found to have knowingly facilitated a corrupt or noncompliant relationship with this service provider will face disciplinary action,” said Constable.

Well-placed sources told Business Times previously that Mofokeng had enjoyed a close relationship with Sasol top brass, including former Sasol Mining MD Hermann Wenhold, who is now group safety manager.

Sasol declined to confirm whether Wenhold or other senior executives were under investigation.

A three-month investigation by Business Times previously exposed how Mofokeng used his influence as a union boss to extort special treatment for his company from Sasol, which renewed its contract twice even though it failed to comply with its procurement rules.

These included needing a tax clearance certificate and letters of good standing from the labour department proving Khotso Batho was up to date with payments to the government’s compensation fund.

Mofokeng earned a salary of R130 000 a month as a Khotso Batho executive while employed as a full-time Ceppwawu office bearer, even though the union does not ordinarily allow its salaried top brass to hold paid outside employment.

Business Times established that Khotso Batho owes the SA Revenue Service at least R22-million in unpaid taxes, has failed to produce audited financial statements in the last three years, and is up to a year behind in submitting its VAT, PAYE and UIF returns.

It has been in arrears with the compensation fund since 2001. – timeslive.co.za

Poverty engulfing SA’s white middle class

The white middle class struggling
The white middle class struggling

It was not only the poor who were hard hit last year. As many as 116000 “financially comfortable” households have fallen on bad times.

Slowing economic growth and rising unemployment hit many a household classified as “anchored well”, shifting them into the more vulnerable category, “drifting”, Momentum’s Household Financial Wellness Index showed yesterday.

An economist at Unisa’s Personal Finance Research Unit, Johann van Tonder, said the Momentum data showed that even skilled people with “high-net worth” and a formal-sector job were not immune to deteriorating economic conditions.

Households classified as “anchored well” are not necessarily high-income earners. But they have a stable standard of living.

Bernadene de Clercq, head of the Unisa research unit, said that many of the “anchored well” were pensioners but could sustain their lifestyle.

About three-quarters of South Africans said they we re facing financial challenges, according to the index, which sampled more than 3500 households in different income groups and geographical areas.

The rising cost of living – higher prices for electricity, food and fuel – and the high level of indebtedness have been gnawing away at disposable incomes.

This is despite the interest rate being lowered to an historic low in July last year. The repo rate is now at 5%, prime at 8.5%.

Slowing economic growth has hit both shacks and comfortable suburban homes.

The index revealed a decline in the average “financial wellness” score of households from 65.23 points in 2011 to 64.77 points last year.

“Though the change seems marginal, on a net basis it translates into over 276000 households moving to a weaker financial wellness category,” said Van Tonder.

Last year, economic growth was 2.5%, compared with 3.5% in 2011. Lower growth hurts employment and also makes it tougher for entrepreneurs to turn a profit.

About 80000 jobs were created last year, which was about a quarter as many as in the previous year, according to Van Tonder.

Last year, the number of unemployed people increased four times faster than in 2011.

“These factors combined to adversely affect many households’ income-earning capability, their ability to finance expenses, their capacity to accumulate wealth and to improve their dwellings, and their prospects of acquiring a better education or improved skills,” said Van Tonder.

Only 15000 households rose to a higher financial wellness category.

The outlook is not good.

Most economists, the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund have reined in their growth forecasts this year. The current consensus is that the economy will grow by only about 2% after the first quarter surprised on the downside, showing growth of only 0.9%.

The middle class have resorted to the courts – challenging, among other things, e-tolling. – timeslive.co.za

 

 

The drum beat on SA land grab quickens

by TAU Bulletin

During the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in the late nineties, the  Commission declared in its findings that there were four different kinds of truth. The Commission “rejected the popular assumption” that there are only two options to be considered when talking about truth – subjective and objective information – but that there were other kinds of truth – “personal or narrative” truth, “social or dialogue” truth and “healing or restorative” truth. We wonder which kind of truth is being published in our media on the history of land ownership in South Africa, and specifically why the reasons for the codification behind the South African 1913 Land Acts are being pointedly ignored.

South African history is arguably one of the world’s most controversial chronicles, but it was chronicled by those who could and did: the first Europeans who landed at the Cape, the subsequent colonial government, the missionaries, and the Europeans who made South Africa their home as did their counterparts who made other new world countries their home. The present government can only refer to the 1913 Land Act as a point of reference because their forefathers did not have the written word. They have no proof of anything other than what someone else wrote about. It is thus ironic that these complainants refer to “historical theft”, “land grabbing”, “stolen dreams”, “structural inequalities” and “infamous laws” as if they had their own factual proof that these circumstances existed.

Facts are ignored in the surfeit of hyperbole and distortions carried by the South African media which is increasingly becoming a mouthpiece of the government’s fraudulent propaganda.

A rooibos tea farm in South Africa
A rooibos tea farm in South Africa

TAU SA’s two previous Bulletins exposed this disinformation about the history of land in South Africa and the land devastation of Zimbabwe.  Nobody in the media published one word of these Bulletins. TAU SA requested the Johannesburg Sunday Times to publish the 1913 Land Act Bulletin as an advertisement. The cost of a half page is around R180 000. TAU SA was completely ignored. The paper was not prepared to publish anything other than the politically correct myths and false dissemination about the history of land in this country.

This should reveal something to readers of this Bulletin. If the facts are ignored, who is kidding whom about press freedom in South Africa?

The media

City Press, a publication within the largest Afrikaans press stable in South Africa, carried a full-page article “A century of stolen dreams” containing the opinions and historical fantasies of one Dr. Ruth Hall from the University of the Western Cape. On the adjoining page was an article by ANC national spokesman Jackson Mthembu entitled “A Call to Accelerate Restitution”.  His article was entirely predictable – land is a “ticking time bomb”.  At the bottom of the double page spread was a large piece  on the now discredited book by three British academics called “Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land” on which we wrote in a previous Bulletin. This double-page centre spread’s ideological humbug is served up as a true picture of the land question in South Africa.

Who is Dr. Ruth Hall and why does she have a say while not one word from commercial agriculture – the people who actually produce South Africa’s food –  is printed anywhere? Hall holds a Ph.D. from OxfordUniversity in the UK and is an Associate Professor at the University of the Western Cape. She joined in 2002 and has continually punted a leftist, ideological viewpoint which is a total disconnect from SA’s agricultural realities. Her SA history in the article was distorted and her sanctimony and bitter criticism of the twin plagues of colonialism and apartheid infect her pronouncements.  The “erasing of history, unjust laws, cheap migrant labour, the legacies of displacement, deprivation, dispossession, inequality and poverty” are alluded to as being the fault of whites. She laments the fact that there was not a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Land.

South Africa’s largest circulation newspaper the Sunday Times gave prime space to one  Mtobeli Mxotwa , spokesman from the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform whose article was entitled ”Radical steps needed to right the 1913 wrong”, while leftist Gareth van Onselen’s article on the same centre page was headlined “Consequences of a cruel act linger on”.

The absolutely useless ANC Youth League was given top space in The Citizen to say that “Land reform is too slow” while a large colour picture of President Jacob Zuma and the Minister of Rural Development shows them at the opening of an exhibition entitled “Reversing the legacy of the Natives Land Act 1913” at the Cape Town Convention Centre. Some newspapers printed critiques of current legislation but not one paper printed theTAU SA bulletin or excerpts thereof containing the historical facts on the history of land in South Africa.

The Land Act bulletin was specifically sent to Business Day, asking that some of it be printed. TAU SA was ignored. To top it all, the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Rapport(30.6.13)  carried an article by “political analyst” J.P. Landman who sees the government’s land reform program is a “political requirement for community and political stability”. In other words, hand over the farms to appease the (mostly violent) mob demands. Thus we are to continually appease each time there’s a riot, or a threat of violence. Feed the crocodile until it devours you! His Zimbabwe allegory is completely wrong – agriculture was destroyed by Robert Mugabe when he lost the 2000 election and grabbed farms to placate the so-called war veterans who demanded land, not because land was not handed over earlier. is Zimbabwe allegory is completely wrong – the land(Perhaps Mr. Landman would like to hand over some of his property as an appeasement gesture!)

Media

Instead of all of the above, when will the South African media explain the truth about land in South Africa? Whose viewpoints should be exposed to the population – those who produce the food or those who talk about expropriation, who draft parliamentary laws to further curb commercial farming, who are establishing a land valuer’s office to determine the price of land according to themselves, who urge giving in to the violence of the mobs, or the British university zealots with leftist agendas?

Getting the facts to the South African public is becoming as difficult as the course taken by samizdat activists during the worst years of the old Soviet Union.  From the Russian sam “self”, and izdatelstvo “publishing”, these activists’ literature was secretly written, copied and distributed  during the periods of Soviet repression. We haven’t reached this point yet, but when a national newspaper refuses to print undisputable facts about land in South Africa, and even refuses a paid advertisement containing these facts, then we can’t be too far behind. TAU SA’s bulletin and other news is disseminated via the internet, but the masses who vote for the ANC only read the inflammatory nonsense propagated by government-supporting academics and ANC spokesmen. These masses clamor for land based on this disinformation. They believe Jackson Mthembu’s ticking time bomb warning, and his statement that Africans can only build from the “ruins of the past” if they have a piece of land on which to do so. This is dangerous nonsense. Forty million black people each with a piece of land?

TAU SA tries to maintain the very best relationships with the media: there is also much appreciation of how the media has handled TAU SA’s viewpoints and how they have been presented in the media.  In this light it is thus strange that this important topic is met with almost absolute silence. It doesn’t make sense. TAU SA is of the opinion that the land question is of crucial importance, given the implications for food security in South Africaand the emotional way it is presented to the voting public. The other side of the story should be heard – especially when this “other side” consists of the very people who produce South Africa’s food. For the sake of justice we would like to see this happen.

What are the facts?

  • All the undisputable facts on the history of land in South Africa can be found in the book “Disputed Land” by Louis Changuion and Bertus Steenkamp. Almost a third of the book contains historical documentation to back up the contents of the book. (It can be bought at Kalahari.com). As far as we know, not one South African publication has reviewed this book.
  • Only 35 000 commercial farmers provide food for South Africa’s nearly 53 million people. If the emotive recommendations of Dr. Hall, and the ignorant demands of the ANC ever become realities, will Dr. Hall and the ANC suggest suitable food supply replacements for SA’s commercial farming sector’s production?  In a 25 June press release, TAU SA asks that the government “take active steps to prevent more farmers leaving the industry to avoid South Africa relying on unsustainable food imports”. The World Bank recently warned that food demand is growing, and that “disruptive weather events are increasing in frequency and amplitude. The variables that surround agriculture are increasingly volatile. Countries will not export food if they are themselves vulnerable.” The World Bank continues:  “About 50% of global grain supplies are in India and Chinaand they are not exporting them. Countries from India to Egypt to Vietnam to Indonesia banned exports of rice during the 2008 crisis, while sudden changes in trade policy also affect exports.”  Will the ANC turn South Africa into a country dependent on others for food?
  • The government’s land restitution policy is an abject failure. Hundreds of farms have been lost to production.
  • Black Economic Empowerment has not left agriculture alone. The current Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Bill is due for amendment, and comment has been called for. It is a fact that profit after tax on average assets of a working farm in South Africa is 1,7%.  Farming enterprises are running on thin margins – 85% of livestock producers show a profit per annum of less than R40 000 per month, while 27% of general farmers run at a loss and 58% make a profit of between zero and R500 000. Most farmers cannot afford BEE. BEE scorecards have been presented to agriculture on which little research has been conducted. If this legislation is thrust upon commercial farmers, many will go out of business, further impinging upon food security in South Africa.
  • Agriculture throughout the world is increasingly less labour intensive. The US farm population today is only 1,5% of the total. Yet American farmers feed 320 million people and they export massive quantities of food around the world. Thus this “hunger for land” and “everyone must have a piece of land” punted by the ANC is clearly a sop to their electorate but a danger to food security. South Africa will simply relapse into one huge squatter camp if commercial farms are broken up and redistributed.

Indeed the agricultural warning drum has been beating but who is listening? The “free” press should ask itself whether honest information or politically correct propaganda is its mission, and whether it should be held responsible for a collapse of food security in South Africa.

A challenge to advocates of Affirmative Action

Kevin_King

by Kevin King

A few months ago I read an article entitled “Some perspective for racist whites in SA” by Hanjo. If you haven’t yet read it please do so. In his letter, Hanjo basically says the following things:

a) He advocates AA/BEE (Affirmative Action/Black Economic Empowerment) – provides the reason that it is to “undo the past” and to “level the playing field”

b) He says that most whites are racist – basically states that whites “reach for their racist agenda” when dealing or debating this topic. Considering that the majority of whites do not support AA/BEE, he is implying that most whites are racist.

Besides his negative stereotyping of one specific race, which by definition is racist, I also find it disturbing that he directs his argument solely at whites, not Indians, Coloureds, Asians, and yes Hanjo, even Blacks that also do not support AA/BEE. I’d question your motives for ignoring these groups when discussing a topic that affects an entire country which you call “a democracy”.

What are you advocating?

Those that support the current AA/BEE system usually provide the same argument that Hanjo has in order to advocate AA/BEE. But what are you really supporting:

a) You are backing a system which takes jobs and wealth from one racial group and gives it to another racial group. This is racist and unconstitutional. In a country with huge unemployment figures, you promote the transfer jobs and wealth rather than the creation thereof.

b) You support a system that uses time and money which could rather be used on issues such as “crime, poor governance, poverty, unemployment, over population, education, etc”. It is as evident as night and day that government puts more emphasis on transformation than it does on issues which you say are important. It makes sense however, as taking from the whites and giving to the blacks is far easier and cheaper than dealing with these important issues.

c) You advocate a system that seeks to replace the skilled candidates with weaker candidates based solely on race, thus weakening the entire team, in which case everyone loses.

d) You vote for a system that at present is enriching only a select few, and was designed by a select few, who steal hundreds of billions of rands each year from the citizens of this country.

e) You endorse a system which is a paradox to nation building and racial harmony. A system which mimics Apartheid.

I challenge you

Come with me to one of the thousands of white Afrikaner squatter camps around the country which hold almost a million white Afrikaners and do the following:

a) Justify to these peace loving, law abiding people why they had their jobs taken away and why they are now unemployable, thus left unable to support their children because they are white.

b) Justify to them why they are refused jobs even when there are vacancies which have been open for months, even years. And why in some cases government will even import foreigners above qualified locals because they are white.

c) Justify to them why they are refused government aid such as grants and food aid because they are white, and are even told by government officials that “it is racist to feed poor whites”.

d) Justify to them why government is even refusing to support those charities (non-profit organisations) which provide care and support to whites.

This is the system which you support and openly advocate, a system which has all the characteristics of genocide.

BEE charities: Segregation is back

Charities could face ruin over a government proposal that firms could lose black economic empowerment (BEE) points if they donate to charities that do not have 100 percent black beneficiaries.

Some charities believe the proposal means that any firm that donates to a charity that helps a white, coloured or Indian person may not be able to claim points for its BEE scorecard.

It could also mean that if just one white child or person is among a group of black people the charity is helping, the firm that donates to it could lose it points.

A BEE scorecard is used by the government to measure a company’s BEE compliance. Those that comply do business more easily with other companies also wanting to increase their scorecard and are favoured by the government in all aspects relating to business.

Despite repeated attempts since Monday for a response and clarity from the Department of Trade and Industry, all it would say was: “All stakeholders who have concerns and objections are requested to make use of the 60-day period to make their submission… We will not be in a position to comment/respond to the questions as we do not want to pre-empt the process.”

The amended changes to the BEE Codes of Good Practice are on the department’s website and up for public comment until December 2.

Legislation that is in place allows for charities to assist all races, but lower points are scored when companies assist organisations where less than 75 percent of the recipients are black.

Bridget Brun, a Durban BEE agency head, said she hoped the proposed amendment was an error.

“I don’t think they [the department] have realised what they have done. Think of organisations such as Girls’ and Boys’ Town or Childline,” she said.

“This amendment will have a huge effect. It means if the charity benefits any Indian, white, coloured or even a Mozambican or Zimbabwean child, companies will not be able to claim points on their BEE scorecard. We are now going to have segregated facilities.

“Charities will not help white children if the companies which support them withdraw support because they can’t claim the points.”

Erika Petersen-Holmes, a partner in the commercial and corporate law department at Shepstone and Wylie in Durban, agreed, saying: “Almost all charities have at least one white beneficiary.

“This could result in those charities receiving no corporate donor funding, or those charities rejecting white beneficiaries.”

Karen Hatton-Jones, of retail giant Spar, which gives many charities, orphanages and NGOs large cash and food donations every year, said she was “distressed and disgusted” by the proposed change.

“It’s not going to change what we do. Since when do we put a colour to those in need?” she asked.

Childline head Joan van Niekerk said BEE laws were going from difficult to ridiculous.

“We don’t know the race of the child who phones us. It’s inappropriate to ask, ‘Are you black, and how black are you?’ This is a different kind of apartheid. It’s extremely distressing,” she said.

Van Niekerk said charities were pragmatic about funding.

“There is no such thing as a free lunch. We have to be practical and realistic about funding now. This corporate social responsibility money is something companies are obligated to give and we know the rules up front. If this goes through it will now be far more difficult to deal with.”

Jackie Branfield, of child crisis organisation BobbiBear, said it was the first that she had heard of it.

“Yes, 99 percent of the children we help are black, but we are certainly not going to turn away that 1 percent who could be a white or Indian child. Where’s our democracy, where is our new South Africa?”

Durban Chamber of Commerce CEO Andrew Layman said worthwhile social upliftment projects would suffer. “The implications could be severe,” he said. IOL

Nothing maverick about The Daily Maverick’s sucking up to Woolworths

The Daily Maverick should rebaptise itself as “The Cute Conformist”, for that is really what it is, a bunch of people who sound like your average ANC propagandist on the SABC, except they think they are cute.

One such very cute conformist writing for that cyber rag is a certain Justin MacCarthy. I had never heard of him, until someone mentioned that he had accused me of producing a rant against Woolworths. MacCarthy is given to clichés, so probably everyone who does not agree with him, is guilty of “ranting”.

However, one of the commentators on his piece states that MacCarthy is actually the MD of TBWA/Hunt Lascaris who happens to be the lead advertising agency for… You guessed it: Woolworths. How mercenary, how venal! If this is the quality of people Woolworths actually pay to do their PR for them, I am getting more and more confident that we are going to bring the PC Cape firm to its knees with our current campaign.

Judging from his profile on The Daily Maverick, alias The Cute Conformist, MacCarthy also lives in Durban. Yes, that hot and humid place in KZN, the area where they speak Zulu. I have some memories of Durban and petty ethnic insults that seem to sprout amid the tropical verdancy in that “Indian Ocean City” as Mbeki referred to it during the World Conference Against Racism that yours truly proudly attended. I was one of about five whites among the multicultural multitude. I saw the ANC wasting a few hundred million rand to produce hot air, amid general disorganisation, non-functioning interpretation systems (with all the equipment lying around) while Jews and Palestinians screamed at each other.

Talking of petty ethnic banter in Durban, that is about the sum total of the stupendously brilliant “adman” Justin MacCarthy’s intellectual repertoire. Not only does he fulminate – or “rant”, to bring it back to his set of platitudes – against Afrikaners, but also against white English-speaking South Africans (Wessas). In fact, his tedious sermon of an article bears the long-winded title: “Moaning Myrtle and Mrs Woolworths: Why white English speaking South Africans are failing our country.”

MacCarthy’s penchant for cliché and the unexamined idée reçue is complemented by his urge to entertain us on his autobiography. Therefore in the first paragraph he lurches into confessing that he is actually a foreigner, an uitlander. Again, I seem to recall Mbeki declaring at some point: “Never again will you be uitlanders,” addressing himself to some undefined leftist and presumably white alcholic or drug-crazed populace with a stated allegiance to Great Britain and its creation, the ANC, like the uitlanders of old. However, Justin MacCarthy uses the word buitelander, which lacks the historical reference to the people who caused the Anglo-Boer War. The most hilarious part of his preaching which I am going to quote at length here, as I am sure it will amuse you too, is that he “is not given to generalisations”. Apparently he was at Wits, that bush college in Jan Smuts Avenue which I also attended in days gone by. However, “An Introduction to Logic” in Philosophy 1 was oviously not one of the courses he took:

“When I first came to South Africa, I thought racism belonged to white Afrikaners of a certain ilk. How disappointing, then, to find that the selective blindness plaguing the country is not only frighteningly widespread, but that even a new generation of white people feels as entitled as ever.

I’ve followed the furore in a frappuccino over the Woolworths boycott with a great deal of interest these past few weeks. When the ‘story’ broke I admit I was quite dismissive and thought it would be over by the time I’d finished my double espresso. I was wrong. Not to inflate the issue with any greater import than it deserves, but it got under my skin and irritated me like a mozzie in my ear. In fact, I find the entire matter not only distasteful but quite alarming. It’s actually revealed an issue of much greater proportion than I imagined – and one of critical national importance.

I’m not given to generalisations. They’re often concocted from a narrow base of opinionated observation and therefore dangerous. However, I am making an exception here, and using several, which (in my defence) are based on many years of broad-based observation. So when I refer to white English-speaking South Africans, for instance, I refer to them as a collective – which is, by definition, a generalisation, and therefore unfair. I admit upfront that my accusations are far from universal.

In my teens, my primary association with Apartheid was not blacks or coloureds or Indians (we were separated then) but the white Afrikaner male. I was a buitelander to them (being an Irish import), and I was here in their land of milk and honey by their good grace. When I turned 16 they insisted I join their army. I politely declined. They did everything in their considerable power to force me into conscription, including amending a law to close a loophole on dodging buitelanders. They bullied and intimidated me and threatened me with all manner of foul impositions, so that my lasting impression of the Afrikaner was that of a myopic, insecure bully, empowered to enforce doctrine and dogma by the authority of their illegitimate State. Their leader, the serpentine, lip-licking, finger-wagging Groot Krokodil who spat threatening warnings about black people and communists and the devil from my parents’ television set, personified everything that was grotesquely distasteful about this tribe of denialists. I evolved into adulthood with a deep distaste for anyone who belonged to this tribe, a view that was compounded by the police intolerance and brutality I witnessed first-hand at demonstrations on Wits campus. Their iron-rigid dogma, unshakable intolerance and viciously violent enforcement of their will awoke in me the horrors of Apartheid and the hotbed of student activism that fizzed comparatively peacefully around the fringes of the township violence so prevalent throughout the eighties. Even at a liberal institution like Wits University, I had to sign my name and student number to access the special library reading room where one could consume the filth penned by the likes of Marx and Engels, under constant suspicion that Craig Williamson was taking note of my silent revolutionary intentions.

My prejudice was hard to shake, and every now and then I get an unpleasant reminder like a surge of indigestion that elements of this benighted tribe remain. Like when I read Dan Roodt’s rant about Woolworths and his “War Against Racism”, or when I learned of the trade union organisation Solidarity’s call for a boycott in which they take an appallingly poor dig at Woolworths’ proposition (“making a differentiation” [sic]). However, this should not be unexpected, as a vocal number of Calvinistic Afrikaners are rather disgruntled by their loss of absolute authority. It sits uncomfortably with aspects of their superior being belief system.

Yet many, many are not. Many get on with life and work an honest day and pray to their god and demand no more than what is enshrined in our Constitution. They have skills and application and they possess a can-do attitude. They make a number of aspects of our economy productive and efficient. They pay their taxes and help their neighbours and are generally cheerful and conscientious citizens who understand that as possessors of knowledge and skill, they have a responsibility to deliver on their contribution to making this country stable and prosperous.

What struck me about the calls to boycott Woolworths was the reaction of middle-class English speaking white South Africa. In as much as a cry of racism is expected from diehard enclaves of the Afrikaner resistance, I didn’t expect the outpourings of bile from this bunch that I thought understood the dynamics, if for no other reason than they are the beneficiaries of the finest education South Africa has to offer. The weight and volume of derogatory comments, misinformed myopism and out-and-out racism shocked me. PRAAG, the pro-Afrikaner organisation of which Dan Roodt is some sort of high priest, has managed a whole 1,500 petition signatories in their WAR on Woolworths. That’s pretty feeble. My 13-year-old son has half that many BBM contacts. Dan the Man also has 2,665 Twitter followers. Solidariteit doesn’t disclose the number of signatories to their anti-Woolworths campaign, but they do have 12,500 Facebook fans collected over the three years they’ve had the profile (the trade union itself was founded in 1902). They also have 2,880 Twitter followers. It’s probably safe to assume that the majority of their members support their cause either actively or passively. These are the guys claiming to be behind the temporary suspension of Woolworths’ Facebook wall. Assuming a high duplication of Facebook and Twitter fans/followers, neither organisation has a particularly impressive following in the numbers game.

Conversely, an English speaking blogger and self-styled “internet marketing” expert by the name of Justin Harrison has 34,600 Facebook fans and 68,900 Twitter followers, although he maintains he doesn’t like Twitter and is going to close his account – which two weeks later he still hasn’t gotten around to doing. He has, since he went public with his protest over Woolworths, protected his Twitter account under the pretext that he couldn’t take the hate. His blog, http://www.justinharrison.com/,has a significant following, although it has been down for some days with a redirect to his Facebook page, leading me to suspect him of attempting to control the buzz. Perhaps his views on EE were having an effect on his business interests. Now, Mr Harrison has courted quite a bit of controversy since his call to boycott. 2OceansVibe, a streaming radio station and website that appears to be developing a bit of a CSI bent, did an exposé of sorts on Harrison’s social media following after some industry folk asked “who?” when his numbers were bandied about. His website has subsequently undergone unscheduled maintenance for the past 10 days, lending more credence to my suspicions.

Controversy, bought followers and credibility questions aside, what Harrison did achieve was to be the first to spot the Woolworths recruitment ad and create a fuss (according to him at least). His various blog posts, Facebook posts and tweets ranted about the gross unfairness, unconstitutionality and immorality of Employment Equity. He fed the trolls and they feasted. By comparison, the News24 comments feed was relatively tame. Now that takes some doing.

Immersing myself in this swamp emanating from the bile ducts of the internet, I discovered a whole boil of racism festering and seemingly lanced by the Woolworths recruitment ad. The majority of the whining came from English speaking whites, possibly because they make up a disproportionate percentage of Woolworths’ customer base, or possibly because they’re just as racist as their Calvinistic broeders. What they almost universally displayed was a distinct misunderstanding of the difference between BBBEE and EE (which are related, not equated) and a complete insensitivity to what Ferial Haffajee in her fabulous article The Woolworths boycott brigade eloquently termed “intergenerational privileges”. The dramatic irony of their invoking Constitutional rights they had barely anything to do with coupled with a blind miscomprehension of just how fundamental redress is to their survival, forged from the vantage point of their soapbox of inherited privilege, is so ironic as to be worthy of a Shakespearean three-part drama.

Here’s the reality, white South Africa, whether or not you like it, agree with it, are guilted into submission or just plain accept it as part of living in this magnificent country: unless we address the grotesque imbalance of access to the corridors of wealth creation, this country will fail and it won’t by any stretch be just the government’s fault. It will be just as much your own. This country is magnificent while you have access to education, jobs, skills and the means to make a good living. It’s not if you don’t and are forced to live off government grants and have no real prospects of improvement. That plain sucks. It sucks emotional energy and replaces it with anger and resentment that feed the monsters like Julius Malema who use it for the advancement of their personal agenda. Malema is a dangerous character, not because of who he is, but because of the support he can mobilise. When you have no voice and no representation, you’ll take Julius over nothing. Silence Julius, and another thousand will fill his place. Look at the history of civilisation, and every time the inequality gap has reached a tipping point. You have to be blinded by dogma not to get it.

If you are a white product of the new South Africa (in the sense that you were born after 1990 or so) then open your mind and read our history. You cannot dismiss Apartheid as the “sins of our fathers”.  As hard as that may be to swallow, it’s a fact, and as much as you may feel a victim of history, be bloody thankful you weren’t born black in 1960. You have been born to a position of privilege, so quit moaning about a small element of job reservation and use that privilege to your own advantage. Learn some more skills, work that much harder, or go to the big school of entrepreneurism and take the hard road.”

I apologise for subjecting you to all that, but I felt it to be quite a revealing “confession of an adman”. Now I understand why most advertisements in South Africa these days do not show any white faces, why Vodacom thinks the average white man has never heard of “Bluetooth” and needs some black genius to explain it to him or why paying a visit to your local bank often feels like a visit to a branch office of the Cuban Communist Party, as you will be confronted with socialist-realist-style propaganda posters masquerading as advertising or “corporate communication”.

Let me just summarise three of his dogmatic and ethnocentric suppositions, which any mild application of intelligence, historical research and coherent argument will reveal to be baseless.

Afrikaners are a benighted tribe: Just name one other tribe in Africa and many other parts of the world that has produced the finest body of prose and poetry on the African continent, folk songs, Cape Dutch houses, as well as modern and postmodern architecture, our own popular music stars, engineering feats such as the old Transnet, Eskom, Sasol, the Rooivalk helicopter, G5 and G6 cannons, not to mention the atom bomb by means of an innovative enrichment process.

Whites have inherited privilege: Unlike in the U.K. and many European countries, we white South Africans do not really have a class system. We are far poorer, on average, than most Westerners for the simple reason that we have poured a huge amount of our income, wealth and manpower into “black upliftment” over decades and even centuries. Since 1948 we have spent trillions of rand on blacks via our taxes, charitable contributions, donations, corporate responsibility programmes, church welfare schemes, etc., only to demonstrate the old adage: “Never a good deed shall go unpunished.” We owe blacks absolutely nothing. In fact, they owe us. Big time!

Without BEE, EE and the alphabet soup of discriminatory measures, this country will fail: No, this country will fail because of these measures. Already the wholesale ethnic cleasing of white engineers and accountants from the municipalities has caused many towns and cities to fail, with raw sewage running down the streets and into rivers, the degradation of roads and a chaotic lack of town planning, no to mention the financial bankruptcy of many such towns. The same goes for state hospitals, Eskom and Transnet. The only reason why Eskom is still functioning, is because of its huge tariff increases, to “fund” the structural inefficiences brought on by rampant greed and affirmative action.

Woolworths, too, is taxing its white consumers to finance its sojourn into the dizzy world of ANC race politics. Very soon you will see quotes from Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon printed on your insipid packet of Thai spring rolls at Woolworths, as those two are apparently very much en vogue at the moment.

I am an Afrikaner or, by Justin MacCarthy’s and probably Woolworths’s definition, an “element of this benighted tribe” that “remains”. In one of Zapiro’s cartoons he actually referred to the old South Africa as “Jurassic Park”, with the same kind of exasperation that Afrikaners are not yet extinct. Despite the murder of 3000 farmers, the killing last week of André Jordaan of Muldersdrift and the week before of 13-year old Alyssa Botha. And all the others that have been raped, killed, humiliated, driven off through affirmative action, insults, innuendo, baseless accusations of being “guilty of a crime against humanity” and so on.

We are still here, against all odds. Unlike the white Rhodesians, the Portuguese of Moçambique and Angola (500 years of Portuguese settlement in Angola), the Indians of Idi Amin’s Uganda and other African minorities who have simply been ethnically cleansed from their lands, we refuse to bow to the pressure to simply “move on”. We are supposed to go and disappear into the wider Anglo-Saxon empire, somewhere in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom. After all, the more effective form of genocide, apart from simply massacring the target population, is assimilation.

However, although I consider myself an Afrikaner, we must acknowledge that the total onslaught – PW Botha did not live to see his term vindicated by the New South Africa – is against all whites in this country. In a sense the ANC has never recognised that there are two language communities, two Western cultures, in this country. To them, we are simply “the whites”, the “non-designated group” against whom it is fine to discriminate or even to incite violence as Malema and so many others, even Zuma, have done.

There is a community of prejudice between the ANC, Malema, Woolworths, TBWA/Hunt Lascaris and Justin MacCathy. While they cry “racism!” at every turn, their style of generalisation, of stereotyping, of Kafkaesque accusation and calumny correspond to most legal or academic definitions of racism or ethnic prejudice. That is why I am going to lay a complaint of “apartheid” against Woolworths, because they are more guilty of apartheid by the international definition than government officials of the old South Africa.

Ultimately, Justin MacCarthy is an identityless opportunist, a drifter without any real culture except maybe yesterday’s American fashion that the mass media will stamp on him like he in turn will toil to stamp it on us and everyone else who queues up at McDonald’s or KFC or any of the global icons that define our “South African”landscape. By the way, someone mentioned the other day that “no white person is allowed to own a McDonald’s franchise”. That is something worth investigating, once we have finished with Woolworths.

The uitlander opportunist that J.B.M. Hertzog referred to as the “foreign fortune seeker” is therefore still with us. As ever, he is the source of conflict and discord. He is the purveyor of lies, propaganda and “generalisations”, slinging mud against “the whites”, notwithstanding our well-nigh pristine human-rights record, compared to other nations, be they German, British, Japanese, American, Rwandan, Cambodian, or whatever.

I specifically refer to Hertzog because he was more or less the inventor of the notion of “South Africanism” and of a broader Afrikaner identity that included all “indigenous whites”.

When an uitlander like MacCarthy, confidently full of his hatred for local whites, having been well fed on British leftist and Scandinavian propaganda in the 1980s, therefore vilifies Wessas, I feel concerned too. In fact, I have a theory that there are only two types of Afrikaners in South Africa: the ones who still speak Afrikaans and the ones who lost their language through British policy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Of course, today many Afrikaans children are also growing up “English” in foreign lands due to ANC policy, so we are all in the same boat.

This ANC nightmare was foisted on us by Britain, Sweden and Norway who provided the money, the propanda and strategic know-how for what was virtually a coup d’état in the early nineties. Regime change. With an election to follow. How many times have not seen that in the recent past, causing the same violence, misery and instability as in South Africa?

Once the nightmare is over, a new Afrikaner nation will rise up and the old wounds will heal. Once again we will be strong, and fair and tolerant like we have always been.

All those who are currently managing the unjust and, yes, exceedingly racist “transformation system” – and that includes people like Justin MacCarthy who are in a real sense collaborators – wil some day have to answer to us.

However, unlike the ANC and their odious hangers-on, we are not prone to terror and violence. We will use logic and reason to defeat them. The current system is so full of legal and other contradictions that it will almost collapse of its own accord.

But as in those self-defence manoeuvres in which one uses the attacker’s momentum to help topple his body and bring him crashing down, we need to give the system a push in the right direction. Let’s keep on boycotting Woolworths.

Also, don’t forget to sign our petition against Woolworths.

Follow me on Twitter.

US-style ‘minority procurement’ or BEE is ill-suited to South Africa

by Dan Roodt

Deputy President Motlanthe’s call for black business to become more “cost-competitive” in tendering for state business is another noble-sounding ideal denied by reality.

South Africa is so committed to race preference that there is no turning back. It is inscribed in the Constitution and in the minds of almost everyone. BEE, which nowadays gets referred to as Black Elite Enrichment, is a political principle and not an economic one.

The mythology of “apartheid” being a Nazi-like system which “killed millions of people” (this was stated to me by a Wits academic) and withheld education from black people has created the “debt” which must be discharged through hand-outs to the black elite, masquerading as “business”.

Big Business in South Africa has always meddled in politics and has taken a kind of decadent pleasure in kow-towing to a radical government. Some sucker will always pay for BEE and affirmative action, whether it will be pension funds, the middle-class taxpayer or the poor simply getting poorer. We have been infected with American ideas dreamt up to pamper a smaller number of blacks in an economy forty times bigger than ours.

US-style “minority procurement” or BEE is as ill-suited to us as Pik Botha’s anecdote of a snow plough sold to a former homeland government for its airport. “Every airport must have a snow plough” was the sales pitch. Just like every black man must have a business and enjoy some form of preference to soothe his pride and dignity.

South Africa is already a failure as its education and health systems crumble and the numbers queuing up to be “empowered” from the state’s coffers swell. But this is all part of the master plan; a sovereign state at the southern tip of Africa did not suit the major powers.

Many abroad will applaud South Africa’s eventual descent into Zimbabwean bankruptcy and squalor, with gleeful Schadenfreude. It is our fate, which was decided in 1994 and even before.

South Africa is a weak state, if not a failed one. The previous Afrikaner state had some strategic value as it could exert some influence over the sea routes and bother its adversaries. This weak or failed state has about as much strategic importance as Swaziland or Lesotho.

No-one could care less about whether Zuma or Malema governs us, or whether the state pays R7 or R27 for a bottle of water.