LETTER: SA must focus not on race, but on competence
SA has hobbled along on policies based on resentment, entitlement and redistribution
07 February 2024 - 17:02
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A boy wearing an ANC T-shirt stands underneath posters bearing the face of party president Cyril Ramaphosa during a campaign rally in Mangaung. Picture: Ziphozonke Lushaba
The election looms. No-one knows what will happen, except that the ANC will be on the waterline. It may be just underwater and need rescue; it may be just above water.
The DA and the EFF will eye each other malignly from opposite ends of the spectrum. The IFP will be a potent presence in KwaZulu-Natal. Little parties will dart about like tiny fish in shallow water.
However, no party — even the competent and honest DA — has been able to enthuse the people. Only 63% of voting-age adults are registered to vote. Of those who are registered, a third won’t bother to turn up on polling day.
Isn’t it time to break out of our Madame Tussauds wax model attitudes? Our political world is static. We seemingly cannot move beyond “Take more from X and give to Y” or “Don’t take too much from X, please”.
No-one moves — only our mouths formulate insults. With the DA in the vanguard, surely all serious political parties must know that our only hope for survival, let alone prosperity, is to break from static to dynamic?
To achieve this we must focus relentlessly not on race, but on demonstrated competence; set free the market wherever this is possible; open our gates to skilled foreigners; and institute early-childhood education from age three.
SA has hobbled along for a quarter century on policies based on resentment, entitlement and redistribution, while all that should matter is to grow our economy at 5% per year. At that rate we’d reach Western levels of affluence in a mere 30 years.
If we’d gone for the politics of growth instead of resentment post-1994, South Africans would have been twice as wealthy today. If we want to enthuse voters we must focus 100% on growing the SA economy. In a mere 15 years we’d have double what we have today. That is really all that matters.
Willem Cronje Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: SA must focus not on race, but on competence
SA has hobbled along on policies based on resentment, entitlement and redistribution
The election looms. No-one knows what will happen, except that the ANC will be on the waterline. It may be just underwater and need rescue; it may be just above water.
The DA and the EFF will eye each other malignly from opposite ends of the spectrum. The IFP will be a potent presence in KwaZulu-Natal. Little parties will dart about like tiny fish in shallow water.
However, no party — even the competent and honest DA — has been able to enthuse the people. Only 63% of voting-age adults are registered to vote. Of those who are registered, a third won’t bother to turn up on polling day.
Isn’t it time to break out of our Madame Tussauds wax model attitudes? Our political world is static. We seemingly cannot move beyond “Take more from X and give to Y” or “Don’t take too much from X, please”.
No-one moves — only our mouths formulate insults. With the DA in the vanguard, surely all serious political parties must know that our only hope for survival, let alone prosperity, is to break from static to dynamic?
To achieve this we must focus relentlessly not on race, but on demonstrated competence; set free the market wherever this is possible; open our gates to skilled foreigners; and institute early-childhood education from age three.
SA has hobbled along for a quarter century on policies based on resentment, entitlement and redistribution, while all that should matter is to grow our economy at 5% per year. At that rate we’d reach Western levels of affluence in a mere 30 years.
If we’d gone for the politics of growth instead of resentment post-1994, South Africans would have been twice as wealthy today. If we want to enthuse voters we must focus 100% on growing the SA economy. In a mere 15 years we’d have double what we have today. That is really all that matters.
Willem Cronje
Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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