ANN CROTTY: State ownership may still be best
Corruption has taught SA some tough lessons
It’s tempting to assume our state capture woes would be less nightmarish if President Thabo Mbeki had privatised chunks of state business before they became the playthings of President Jacob Zuma. While it certainly would have reduced the opportunity for plunder it’s likely a privatisation programme would have led to lots of other problems. The most obvious of these would have been political. It is difficult to imagine how what was essentially a newly independent state with a brand new governing party could have sold the idea of privatisation to its supporters. Remember how exercised Cosatu was over the prospect of even a partial privatisation of Telkom?
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