STEVEN KUO: Deng’s lesson for the comrades: get out of the way
China’s economic success lies in private enterprise and in embracing ‘mom and pop’ factories and workshops
In the early 1990s I was a lad growing up in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal. My folks owned a knitwear factory employing about 50 mama mabhodini — Zulu women working in textile factories — from Madadeni and Osizweni.
In the factory, my father would maintain the machinery and deliver the finished products to his customers in Durban and Johannesburg, and my mother managed production. My brother and I would go in and help over weekends with odd jobs. At university in Cape Town I would have a laugh with friends whose parents were proudly in the struggle. As a son of owners of the means of production, I was clearly part of the capitalist, exploitive class!..
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