LETTER: Redress stymies growth

Racial redress is under pressure in the US, the implicit charge being that it creates debilitating entitlement, and that the only workable approach is competition. This in a country in which blacks comprise only 13% of the population.

How much more debilitating must it be to enforce — even accelerate — redress in SA, where blacks comprise 80% of the population. In fact, what little merit there is in redress in the US disappears completely here. It is surely absurd for such a small minority to be marginalised in a bid to empower an 80% majority.

The best recourse is surely to engage the skilled minority to the maximum to act as yeast in the economy. In this way we can empower the majority. However, abandoning the ideology of redress in SA would appear to be politically impossible, as its real purpose is not empowerment but elite enrichment.

The elite within the majority will not sacrifice this ideology, even for the greater good. All we can do — which we should now do — is suspend all workplace empowerment laws, in particular racial quotas for government tenders, until our economy has doubled in size.

The SA tragedy is that redress blocks growth. Growth and redress are fundamentally antithetical. It’s time we faced the truth. 

Willem Cronje
Cape Town

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