LETTER: ANC must address issues urgently and proactively
Paul Hoffman suggests a few interventions to address the economic hardships that will flow from last week's unrest
If the ANC wishes to avoid reaching its “expiry date” within the next election cycle, it will have to address a few issues urgently and pro-actively.
The economic hardship that will flow from the recent looting and destruction ought to be addressed now by the introduction of the much-talked-about basic income grant. Former Goldman Sachs Sub-Saharan Africa chair Colin Coleman has offered detailed advice on how to achieve this without undue strain to the nation’s finances.
An SA Special Risks Insurance Association-financed rebuild of burned down infrastructure should be organised in a way that provides jobs and training for the unemployed youth, not opportunities for collusion à la World Cup stadium contracts. Government guaranteed loans to help put destroyed small businesses back on their feet would help too.
The conversion of the ANC into a modern democratic party able to run a capable state involves the jettisoning of the national democratic revolution, its reliance on cadre deployment and its thoroughly outmoded ideology that strives for hegemony in society — that comprehensive control of all the levers of power that is deeply and darkly at odds with multiparty democracy under the rule of law of the kind contemplated in SA’s constitution.
Most urgently, ongoing grand corruption with impunity needs to be identified and addressed as the underlying motivation of those now making outlandish, lawless and destructive demands on behalf of Jacob Zuma. An end to their impunity is only possible if the binding court findings in the Glenister litigation are acted on by government.
An institution properly equipped to end the impunity of state capture, grand corruption and kleptocrats in SA must be established. Recovering the loot of state capture, hitherto elusive, would help.
Paul Hoffman, SC
Director, Accountability Now
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