LETTER: Ditch cadre deployment

This week’s Sunday Times front page headline, referring to the ANC’s decision to partially privatise SAA, quoting President Cyril Ramaphosa, reads: “No wholesale sell-off but we need private capital.” 

This illustrates the duality (or is it duplicity?) of the various factions of the ANC. On the one hand there is the realisation that the private sector should be involved in “saving” SAA from collapse. On the other hand is the other section (Cosatu and the SACP), which demands complete state control.

The facts are the collapse of SAA (and for that matter just about every other state-owned entity under the ANC administration) are a result of the continued insistence by the party and Ramaphosa on implementing cadre deployment. It is South Africa’s tragedy that while there are apparently no longer any qualified cadres available, the ANC still insists on dredging the reserves of incompetent party loyalists — come what may.

Not only is “private capital” needed to come to the rescue; so are competent, qualified and efficient, politically neutral officials. The owners of the private capital aren’t keen to invest in ANC-induced incompetence.

The indications are that there is more than enough private capital available in South Africa. However, what Ramaphosa and the ANC caucus, together with their Cosatu and SACP partners, should realise is that their partisan policies have failed.

VA Volker
Pietermaritzburg

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