[Here is another good analysis from TAU, telling the raw truth. Black ANC rule in South Africa is nothing more than parasitism at its finest, finding ways to steal ever more creatively from whites. For the record: There were black multimillionaires under Apartheid. So it was the British, who ruled Natal who brought in the Indians from India as slaves. Now the Indians are rich.

NB: RW Johnson whom they quote below is actually a white economist from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe as best I recall. Jan]

I highlighted important sections.Jan]

SOUTH AFRICA BULLETIN
from the headquarters of
TAU SA in Pretoria
Web: www.tlu.co.za
Tel.: + 27 12 804 8031 Fax: + 27 12 804 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

April 25, 2018

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The Bulletin attached hereto is provided as a means to inform stakeholders of agricultural developments in South Africa. These International Bulletins are distributed at regular intervals and can also be found on TAU SA’s website at www.tlu.co.za.

TAU SA is the oldest agricultural union in South Africa and has been in existence since 1897. The mission of the union is to ensure a productive and safe existence for its members on the land they own. Current reality in South Africa indicates that this is not possible at the moment due to a variety of actions and threats against commercial farmers.

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THE GREED CONTINUES: TRYING TO “TOP-UP” BLACK EMPOWERMENT

The introduction of the concept of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) in South Africa presupposed that this particular population sector had been historically suppressed economically and were not given a chance to partake in the South African economy. Yet many black businessmen flourished during apartheid and well before, not to mention the country’s Indians whose business prowess is well known. They have always prospered wherever they are: their forefathers arrived in South Africa as indentured labourers, brought to this country by the British in the nineteenth century. They worked hard and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and they were never “empowered”. Nor were the whites.

Came the 1994 election and South Africa’s new ANC rulers and their struggle friends were enjoined to take up opportunities purportedly denied them for hundreds of years. They were now in the economic driving seat, so to speak. This hoped-for blossoming of heretofore suppressed economic prowess didn’t happen. History may have the answer: missionaries and others wrote about the black tribal groups they encountered in the mid nineteenth century in southern Africa. There was no established economic activity at all, with the exception of barter and plunder. A Western-style economic tradition was not generic to these societies.

This past dilemma should not have been a deterrent to those now holding the reins however. For more than 150 years their forefathers lived side by side with Europeans, Indians and others who progressed economically through their own efforts. South Africa’s economic development matched that of the rest of the Western world.

During the post-election Mandela presidency, many blacks entered the economy on their own steam, while thousands of whites remained within the civil service and kept South Africa’s ship of state on an even keel. It looked as if South Africa was on a roll until the ruling clique and their pals realised the masses would contribute very little to South Africa’s economic prosperity, except for their labour. Other forms of funding would have to be found to bring the masse into the economy, as promised pre-election. Jobs for everyone had been the clarion cry! This was the theoretical justification for the introduction of BEE – to broaden black participation in the economy.

The Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998 was supposed “to achieve equity in the work place by promoting equal opportunity and fair treatment in employment”. This precipitated the wholesale co-option of blacks onto company boards and into shareholdings, the latter by way of financing these shares for the new shareholders in said companies. The masses had been promised a share of South Africa’s wealth and the golden geese were the wealth creators – the private sector which included agriculture.

Businesses were an ideal target to fulfil the goals of BEE. Businesses didn’t exist unless they were profitable. BEE thus became a tool to enrich those who could not create but who voraciously consumed. The word “transformation” was added to the lexicon and the focus moved to farming, with a swathe of legislation so designed that agriculture was forced to provide social and financial support to hundreds of thousands of rural workers. In addition, thousands of farms were handed over to beneficiaries, which farms now lie fallow or have become squatter camps.

This BEE policy was supposed to create a “trickle-down” economic bonanza for the masses, fuelled by BEE recipients who could develop businesses with a financial leg up from the private sector. As with the farms, it was all take and no give. All this policy achieved was make a small black coterie fabulously rich, one of whom is South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa who, in 2012 before he became the ANC’s vice president, was worth R5,67 billion according to Forbes magazine.

LARCENY

Business accepted this BEE larceny with hardly a peep, possibly believing that if they gave a little now, the governing takers would leave them alone in the future. It was a serious mistake. They should have said “no” to the legalised theft from the beginning. In 1999 John Kane Berman, then head of the SA Institute of Race Relations, warned that the word “transformation” had “no fixed abode in the dictionary of political discourse”. Business should therefore not give the government a blank cheque by endorsing transformation, he said. ”Unfortunately South Africa seems to have put its critical faculties on hold. This is also a problem in the media and non-government organisations”.

AGRICULTURE

Some sectors of agriculture also tried to appease BEE demands. TAU SA has hit back at the government’s ever-increasing anti-farming antipathy. In March of this year, TAU SA president Louis Meintjes declared that farmers themselves will decide what happens to their land, this after a debate about the new SA president’s declaration of expropriation of land without compensation. This debate included people and groups who have nothing to do with land. “We are tired of people outside agriculture prescribing to us what should happen to agricultural land”, said the TAU SA president. In addition, the government’s decision to pass a motion regarding this expropriation of land without compensation “resulted in two European projects in South African agriculture being cancelled”, he added.

TOP UP FUNDING

It wasn’t long before the proponents of the BEE “top up” idea entered the fray. They tried this on the mining sector which, like TAU SA, dug in its heels. Mining’s rule for BEE ownership was tested in the courts when BEE beneficiaries declared they should always be empowered, even if they sold their shares. The Chamber of Mines disputed a provision in the 2017 Mining Charter which required holders of mining rights to “top up” black ownership of its mines to 30% if this fell below that level. The court ruled in the mining industry’s favour.

(This reveals the culture of entitlement which is now a government behavioural norm. They and their supporters are entitled to everything because of what they call “an historic inequality”. This is propagated by the media which fuels the fire of constant demands. These demands are necessary to keep the kleptocracy up and running.)

As was expected, the government is appealing the court ruling. This does not auger well for the mining industry, and foreign investment will surely take a step back while the case grinds through South Africa’s notoriously slow court system. A government which has already been indulged by the business community has no qualms about demanding more.

And more! Despite their gross inefficiency and corruptive tendencies, the public sector is constantly on the demand bandwagon. The growth of wages has tipped public finances into imbalance. (Business Day 5.4.18). The government spends 32.5% of all expenditure on salaries. The number of public servants in absolute terms grew between 2007 and 2013. South Africa’s public sector pay as a proportion of GDP is higher than the average in the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of rich nations. “Public sector unions have become untouchable” says Business Day.

In this financial year’s budget, instead of cutting wages and jobs, the government raised taxes and cut infrastructure spending to try and fill the R50 billion shortfall in the budget. Holding on to power means more than life itself to the ANC, and power fuels entitlement. The ANC’s supporters, their power base, come first, above all else.

Yet our media is replete with the horrors of white privilege and Eurocentric cultural norms. The focus is skewed.

Says author and commentator R.W. Johnson: “South Africa became a democracy in 1994, fully 30 years after the rest of Africa, and many of its problems now are simply a re-enactment of where most of Africa went wrong. Everywhere the continent is governed by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie which is almost wholly unproductive and parasitic.”

“Black empowerment is just another scheme to help black businessmen. Many black shareholders, having received their share at sub-par prices, quickly cashed them in for a quick profit. This lead to government demands that companies “empower” another set of black shareholders to bring the equity back to its original figure”.

Is this a recipe for success? And from where originates the culture of entitlement? Usually one is entitled to something one has earned, or achieved. The ANC has done nothing for South Africa except plunder and destroy. Their entitlement is way out of line.