LETTER: It is madness to enforce ‘equality’

Are we mad? How can our — any — government enforce equality? The name of the Promotion of Equality Bill is misleading: “promotion” envisages carrots, not sticks, and the bill contains dire penalties for failing to achieve the impossible.

People are not equal. Sheep are, but we are not sheep. Again, we are confronted by the ANC obsession with equal outcomes. Of course, each of us desires rising and coalescing living standards, but for this we need intervention in the market, not distortion of the market. Rather let banks set risk-related interest rates and then have the state subsidise reduced rates on a means test basis. This way the previously disadvantaged would benefit most.

The market place is and must remain competitive. If we are forced to be “equal”, we will discourage entrepreneurs and innovators. By definition, they are not equal to the rest of us. The ANC seems to want us all to become equally poor — except the political elite, of course — a replay of George Orwell's Animal Farm. We should instead inspire each to reach their potential, with all rising, especially the poorest. How will the poorest rise if the successful are punished? Who will employ those on the margins?

If we accept that all individuals can never be equal but that excellence is the product of competition acting on talent, we will create excellence. As talent is randomly distributed, we will eventually reach a level where race and gender are not statistically aligned with material or intellectual wealth. Only market competition — with explicitly targeted state intervention — can lead us there.

Willem Cronje, Cape Town

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