Reason for little progress

Mamokete Lijane is correct in her assessment that lack of economic growth is core to SA’s problems, but does not seem to want to interrogate why we are in such a parlous situation (“So much activity with so little to show,” December 6).

The reason is pretty simple: without fail, the socioeconomic policies and legislation introduced since the ANC has been in power have been regressive and antibusiness. Legislation is distributive, racially divisive and investor unfriendly, for both local and foreign investors.

The governing ANC is nominally a socialist/ communist organisation but has morphed into a mafia, more concerned with its elite’s personal welfare than with national governance issues such as state capture.

SA has little law and order (the bedrock of a functioning, modern state) and has been left to the tender mercies of extractive organisations such as the so-called construction mafia. None of the cadres on display shows any capability to govern a modern economy or to encourage wealth creation.

What Lijane is describing is the outcome of the ANC’s “national democratic revolution”. The growth dynamic she mentions in her last paragraph is not possible with the ANC/EFF in power. It is simply not part of their DNA, and never will be.

The economic problems that have caused SA’s fiscal and unemployment disasters are a direct result of their immature and populistic politics.

Ian Ferguson

Via BusinessLIVE