I read Ayabonga Cawe’s column (A legacy of apartheid collusion and now a lack of consultation, May 22) on GM’s exit and have come to the conclusion that almost all our development economists are stuck in a 1950s anti-McCarthy, witch-hunt time warp. The fact that in 1950s America, as in 1970s SA, liberal economics (union participation and anti-monopoly politics) and liberal politics went hand-in-hand has completely escaped them all. If you stood for the worker, and against "the firm", you were communist and left-wing. The fact that the majority of the workers were black, and the majority of the bosses were white, invariably meant that anyone who supported left-leaning labour policies also supported equal rights and an end to segregation, apartheid, etc. In 2017, if you want to address inequality you had better make sure you are not seeking to redress racial discrimination with socialist economic policies — Zimbabwe is the result. If you can solve issues for the poor and uneducated, y...
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