LETTER: Reconstruction tax deserves careful consideration

The year 2024 marks the 30th year of our democracy and the 28th anniversary of a far-reaching constitution meant to protect and consolidate it. It’s also the year of a watershed election that will have a profound impact on South Africa’s future — for better or worse.

As an unprecedented number of political parties line up to woo the electorate, whether from the Left, Right or centre, there is hardly a discussion that does not focus on the country’s unsustainable levels of wealth and income inequality, world-beating unemployment and levels of crime (more than 27,000 murders a year) and hunger (20-million people) that reflect the despair and desperation engulfing our society.   

In this context, “What is to be done?” becomes an existential question.

It’s this simple: if we don’t find the right answer, South Africa’s constitutional project will be done. We will face either another July 2021 (but on a larger scale) or the election of a populist government, allied with organised crime — or a combination of both. The small and insufficient gains of the past few years made in the fight against corruption will be quickly rolled back. 

These possibilities are not good for rich or poor. For once there is a common interest in perpetuating the rule of law and a constitutional democracy. 

But that cannot be achieved through the status quo.

This is why the proposal by Change Starts Now (CSN) for creating a ring-fenced ReGrow fund capitalised by a raft of short-term taxation measures, aimed at social solidarity and marginally redressing wealth inequality, deserves rational and calm consideration.

Indeed, there are a plethora of reasons to support these proposals: 

Economic: South Africa’s economy is stuck in the proverbial mud. A targeted infusion of money aimed at relieving the most critical social needs and rebuilding infrastructure could have a multiplier effect on both demand and morale. More people with money and more people with jobs mean more demand for goods. Addressing issues such as our water infrastructure before it chokes lives and the economy, and before costs spiral, is plain good sense. This is a proposal that CSN is developing with some of the world’s best experts. 

Political: Poverty and inequality have made South Africa fertile for populism of the most destructive type, yet polls show that our national character is overwhelmingly conservative. In this context, reform proposals that offer hope and redress the pain and indignity experienced by millions are vital to the legitimacy of social democratic contenders for power.

Neglecting these political and economic imperatives will come at great cost.   

Moral: We are moral people. Yet on a daily basis, we close our consciences to unfathomable suffering. We have normalised the abnormal. Measures that actively promote social solidarity will build bridges and shore up the spirit of forgiveness and ubuntu that was vital to the miracle of the new South Africa in the first place.

Social: When South Africa is united, it wins. 

Briefly, these are some reasons that in CSN’s Change Charter: A Manifesto of Hope, we have the unusual sight of a party with a sliver of big business and social justice activists rallying behind a win-win proposal that meets all their priorities. That’s different.  

However, in her most recent column “Is Change Starts Now the New Purple Cow?” (State of Play, February 22-28), Natasha Marrian exhibits a problem that seems common to political journalists covering the 2024 elections: how to classify a new hybrid political party. 

In the face of a possible new species of party, most commentators have shut their minds and reverted to types they are more familiar with. They have rehashed disinformation hung around the neck of CSN from even before its launch in December 2023: “a party of big business” with a “billion-rand electoral war chest” is the most common trope. 

To her credit, Marrian does set foot on the road less travelled. She describes the Change Charter as “compelling” and “a well-thought-out plan” to rebuild the country; she quotes Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman as calling it “one of the most credible plans I have seen for realising the country’s potential”.         

This really is what the discussion should centre on. 

Yet, such is the weight of consensus against the unfamiliar that ultimately Marrian declares CSN “dead in the water”. Ironically, premature declarations of death close off genuine democratic options and play into the hands of populists with couches of dirty money to launder on retaining power.

This election demands that we all do better. A country depends on it. 

Mark Heywood
Member of the executive committee of Change Starts Now and social justice activist 

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