LETTER: One party cannot do it

Contrary to Terry Crawford-Browne's letter, the cause of the US banking crisis in 1929, which culminated in the Great Depression, was not the incompetence of the Hoover administration but a series of events that aligned to create the perfect storm (“Cyril Ramaphosa is losing the credibility he needs to sort out SA mess”, January 28).

This was not helped by a Europe dealing with the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles, which destroyed any hope of recovery in Germany. Ironically, it took World War 2 for the US to come back to full employment, not the supposed policies of a paternalistic Franklin Roosevelt.

The crisis we are experiencing in SA is three-fold. There is no effective bureaucracy to execute any policies that might turn the ship around. We have an inept administration that is mired in a failed policy of affirmative action. As in Zimbabwe, the governing class is part of the state capture problem and is doing everything in its power to retain access to the state ATM.

President Ramaphosa’s power base has always been the trade unions, but their leaders have also been corrupted by power and the pleasures it brings them. Wholesale retrenchment is politically unfathomable as it will destroy the black middle class and the votes this constituency gives the ANC. The point is that Ramaphosa is not, was not and cannot be the saviour of this country.

What we need is an acknowledgment by all political parties that the problems are too big for any single party to tackle, and that a government of national unity should be established. This political union worked well for Britain and the US during World War 2.

John Catsicas 
Via e-mail