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DA leader John Steenhuisen, left, and President Cyril Ramaphosa shake hands in this file photo. Picture GCIS
DA leader John Steenhuisen, left, and President Cyril Ramaphosa shake hands in this file photo. Picture GCIS

I am a small-business owner. As such my company can create proper jobs. It also pays some of the highest taxes in the world.

When the ANC blathers on about job creation it means government jobs, which have to be paid for either by taxes extracted from private businesses, or by loans raised on bond markets.

Survival instincts persuaded me to vote DA at the most recent election. But then the DA kept the ANC in power by joining the government of national unity (GNU) and the campaign against small businesses just increased, most recently in the form of Parks Tau’s proposed new Transformation Fund, closely followed by the Expropriation Act.   

It was only when I listened to Argentine President Javier Milei’s speech at Davos last week that I understood what was going on. The ANC is essentially communist, but masquerades in international forums as progressively “woke”. As such, what Milei said would have been water off Cyril Ramaphosa’s back.

But John Steenhuisen was also there. I’m beginning to think the DA is also really “woke” but sells itself as being liberal democratic. Certainly, it will make big government work better, but I don’t think it wants fundamental change. That’s why, for all its bluster and condemnation of the Expropriation Act, the DA won’t leave the GNU and will use the MK bogeyman as justification.

For small business, the current options seem to be either a quick death with an ANC/MK GNU, or a slow, lingering one with the ANC/DA. What we need is a party with a really sharp chainsaw.

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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