OPINION: It is a fact that many politically-connected tenderpreneurs who have been awarded many government-linked contracts have just been in it for themselves without any intention of increasing wealth distribution among fellow previously disadvantaged individuals, writes Professor Bonke Dumisa.
By Professor Bonke Dumisa
OUR PRINT and electronic mass media platforms were full of news headlines to the effect that Dr Reuel Khoza has said the post-apartheid South African government must learn from and copy what the Afrikaners, meaning people who speak Afrikaans and who closely identify themselves with the aspirations of the Afrikaans speakers, did to empower themselves after the National Party came to power in 1948.
Many people deliberately want to misunderstand Khoza on this. When we listen or read anything, we must learn to fully contextualise everything we read or listen to in order for us to understand what the speaker or writer meant. That is what they teach in Communications 101 at any university or other educational platform.
Let’s revisit the racial history of South Africa. Racism was not invented by the National Party in 1948. Racism had always been there ever since whites arrived in Africa. The Union of South Africa, which came into existence on May 31, 1910, marked the formal coming together of whites in southern Africa with the common interest of consolidating their hold on the country to the exclusion of the black masses. Hence the resultant Native Land Act of 1913, which was passed by both Afrikaans speakers and English speakers with a common purpose of empowering themselves at the expense of the black masses.
In 1948, the National Party came into power with the explicit mandate to represent the exclusive interests of white Afrikaans speakers who, at that time, had the perception that they were being undermined and sidelined by the English speakers. They were, therefore, unapologetic about creating the very first All-Afrikaner Cabinet since the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
This all-Afrikaner Cabinet did not hesitate to advance their Afrikaner empowerment political mandate by unapologetically making decisions on:
Appointing Afrikaners to top positions in the civil service;
In the army;
the police;
they created State-Owned Enterprises, SOEs, where the Afrikaners dominated.
It was, under those circumstances, the apartheid governments of the day were unapologetic in appointing Afrikaners to the highest positions of all the SOEs like the SABC, which always had to be listed as SABC/SAUK to emphasise the importance of Afrikaans; the South African Airways, which always had to be listed as SAA/SAL to emphasise the importance of Afrikaans, and others like the South African Railways and Harbours.
They did not hesitate in intentionally doing business with Afrikaner-owned businesses and banks like Trust Bank and Volkskas and supporting the Afrikaner-owned insurance companies like Sanlam and others.
Sasol was equally used for similar purposes, and they did not hesitate to “commercialise” it to protect the interests of Afrikaners as soon as the winds of change and the end of apartheid could be felt approaching.
The same can be said about Denel, Armscor and others. They made sure that they fully supported Afrikaans medium universities like Stellenbosch University, Rand Afrikaans University (RAU, now part of the University of Johannesburg), University of the Free State, and other institutions.
In summary, the apartheid governments were very unapologetic and very public in utilising public institutions and their levers of power in raising the standards of living of the Afrikaners to match those of the English speakers, all at the expense of the black masses. They were very successful in achieving their goals using the political levers of power.
The challenge by Khoza is thus that we must now see how we can now, in the post-apartheid era, see if we can contextually learn from and copy some those successful apartheid-era strategies by the Afrikaners without necessarily replicating apartheid. In principle, I do not have any problem with Khoza’s deliberate challenge to South Africans on this issue; I actually contextually agree with him.
It is an undeniable fact that the concepts of Affirmative Action (Employment Equity) and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment have been largely used to enrich and empower a select few politically-connected individuals in South Africa since 1994. It is under those circumstances that many incompetent, ill-qualified or unqualified individuals were appointed to higher positions they do not deserve, and many such individuals were mostly used as fronts for corruption and other malfeasance.
It is also a fact that many politically-connected corrupt tenderpreneurs who have been awarded many government-linked contracts have just been in it for themselves without any intentions of increasing wealth distribution among the fellow previously disadvantaged individuals.
The point I am making here is that the Afrikaners worked collectively to raise their standards of living as a language group. Many of the present day tenderpreneurs become well-known for their extravagant conspicuous consumption tendencies, where many of them do not hesitate boasting a fleet of expensive imported cars and expensive designer clothes, with absolutely no conscience to do anything to raise the standards of living of other fellow previously disadvantaged individuals.
What the previously disadvantaged groups can learn from the Afrikaners was that the latter were always very conscious that whatever money they got, partly due to the benefits of those in the levers of power, had to circulate, mostly within “die volk” within the language group in order to empower more, hence effective wealth distribution. Unfortunately, the new rich tenderpreneurs don’t share the spoils; their money is quickly spent buying from and getting the services from the previously and still advantaged language groups and race groups.
The government has now come up with the Employment Equity Amendment Act, which is meant to ensure that businesses with more than 50 employees submit equity plans that reflect the demographics of the region they operate within. The main opposition party in South Africa, the DA, has now opportunistically seized this opportunity to fight the efforts to address past racial imbalances by pretending that this piece of legislation “will worsen racial tensions in the country”.
This is just one example of how our well-meant Constitution and labour laws do now stand in the way of achieving the same goals achieved by the Afrikaners for themselves when they were answerable to no one but themselves. It is not possible these days to achieve the same goals within the parameters of the law.
* Professor Bonke Dumisa is an independent economic analyst.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the DFA.
